Elio Is Sporting an Eyepatch in Pixar's Film 'Elio,' but Why Does He Need One?

Movie studio Pixar is not cranking out original movies at quite the same pace it once did, which makes the excitement around each new film feel even greater. Elio, Pixar's latest original effort, is just a few weeks away, and it seems guaranteed to generate major interest at the box office thanks to the Pixar brand alone.

The movie follows a young boy named Elio who finds himself mistaken for the intergalactic ambassador for Earth at a council of other alien life-forms. As many have noted from the trailers for the movie, Elio also appears to wear an eye patch through most of the movie. Here's what we know about why that is.

Because the movie isn't out yet, we actually don't have a definitive answer to that question. Most fans seem to think that he's wearing the eye patch not because he hurt his eye or because he's pretending to be a pirate, but because he suffers from a condition known as amblyopia, or a lazy eye. Essentially, he might be wearing an eye patch over his stronger eye so that his weaker one can get stronger.

That explanation would undoubtedly help make Elio a more relatable character to young kids, and might also turn out to be a tidy metaphor in the final film (Pixar does love a good metaphor).

While we can't say for sure why he's wearing the eye patch, it seems like exactly the kind of character detail that helps make him feel fleshed out and real, and one that also might speak to his outsider status at the beginning of the movie.

Although it's still a little less than a month away, we're learning more and more about Elio, including where the titular character's name comes from.

When asked whether the character's name was an homage to Elliott, the main character in Steven Spielberg's E.T., co-director Madeline Sharafian confirmed that that's exactly what they were thinking of while making the movie.

“There’s even a teeny little … this is the most nerdy [thing] … I remember when we were choosing the coloring for his socks and shoes, we were like, ‘This is the color from at least one scene in E.T.‘ … We were hugely inspired by E.T. and Spielberg films in general," she added.

Elio is slated for release on June 20 and was pushed back a week in February so that it wouldn't have to compete directly against the live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon.

In 2024, Pixar released Inside Out 2, and the movie went on to earn more than $1 billion and became one of the most successful movies ever made. Elio probably isn't going to have quite that level of success at the box office, but it has the potential to be quite huge. Lilo & Stitch certainly suggests that there's an appetite for kids' movies.