Mamma Mia just became available for those with a Netflix subscription again, which means a lot of people are going to be rewatching the beloved musical, and talking about it. As a longtime fan of both Mamma Mia movies, I want to get into the ongoing dad debate, because my blunt take is that it just doesn’t matter, despite people loving to argue about it.
I Need To Talk About The Ongoing Dad Debate In Mamma Mia
If you’re out of the loop here, Mamma Mia revolves around Amanda Seyfried’s Sophie finding her mom Donna’s diary from when she was a young woman. There she finds out that she had flings with three men around the same time right before she got pregnant with her. As Sophie gets ready to get married, she decides to invite all three of them to her big day in Greece, and they all come! As you can imagine, Donna is incredibly surprised to see them all again, and hijinks ensue.
The three possible fathers are Pierce Brosnan’s Sam, Colin Firth’s Harry and Stellan Skarsgard’s Bill (ugh, I still can’t get over how good the Mamma Mia cast is!). By the time the first movie and the sequel ends, we still have no idea which one is Sophie’s biological father, and it’s never been officially revealed. Pierce Brosnan recently shared that a third movie could finally divulge this information as chatter continues for Mamma Mia 3 – including questions about how the heck Meryl Streep would come back, but I honestly don't want to know.
Look I get why it’s interesting to people to theorize who Sophie’s actual dad is. I just read a Reddit thread that attempted to math it all out down to the day, but the more I’ve watched it I’ve personally given up on it, because I think knowing who the dad is actually missing the point of the movies.
I Think Something Else Is More Interesting Than Which One Her Dad Is
So technically if the movie was actually interested in telling us about Sophie’s dad, they’d have all the men take DNA tests, and there the answer would be, but notice how that’s never happened? I think it’s because the writers know that it’s more interesting that Sophie bringing Donna’s flings together to Greece and them all becoming this weird found family is way more interesting. I love how Bill ends up with Donna’s friend Rosie, and Donna and Sam end up falling back in love as a result of the whole thing. And, Harry might have a thing with Petros?
I think one of the reasons why I love this movie so much, is how it handles its three dads. The movie actually celebrates Donna being sexually adventurous and having multiple lovers when she was young, and her life turning into this dreamlike musical ride even though she was single and without a partner for most of her life.
It’s very rare for a piece of media to turn a young woman’s sexual coming-of-age this way. While sure, each of the men must be curious about which one of them it is, I love more how they become good friends with each other and everyone in Donna’s circle, and they all kind of mentally adopt Sophie because they were each charmed by Donna so much in their younger years. It totally defies the common trope of men walking out on women they randomly get pregnant, and it just makes for such a fun storyline. None of them actually raised Sophie anyway, but knowing they all stepped up when she needed them kind of make them all her dads, and that's sweeter to me than one of them being the dad.
Anyway, I’m sure I’ll be watching Mamma Mia again for the millionth time soon, and not bothering with this dad debate.
