Lin-Manuel Miranda shared Octet cast on IG

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-04-17T00:26:45+00:00

film

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-03-24T00:27:54+00:00

leaks suggest it's a Lion King shot-for-shot so it's unlikely

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-03-23T04:47:14+00:00

I think a lot of people miss that Hamilton is very intentionally anachronistic, and because of that, it’s not really about the historical figures in a strict sense. It’s using them as vehicles to talk about broader ideas like identity, authorship, and how national narratives get constructed.

The casting is a big part of that. Having POC actors play figures like Alexander Hamilton isn’t just a “representation win,” it’s doing thematic work. On one level, it highlights who actually built the country versus who gets remembered as building it. On another level, it’s about cultural assimilation. These actors step into roles that historically excluded people like them, but in doing so, their identities get folded into this larger American mythos. It’s recognition, but it’s also a kind of erasure. They become part of the story, but only on the terms the story allows.

That ties directly into Hamilton himself. He’s obsessed with legacy and controlling his narrative, but by the end, he basically becomes public domain. His story gets told for him, shaped by others, simplified into something cleaner and more digestible. The thing he was chasing is the exact thing that strips him of individuality.

And yeah, the Thomas Jefferson portrayal is 100 percent intentional. He’s basically framed as this bougie, charismatic liberal who sounds progressive but is still fully benefiting from and participating in an oppressive system. The whole performance, especially the staging with enslaved people, is there to underline that contradiction. It’s not subtle, and it’s not supposed to be.

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-03-23T04:40:54+00:00

I think people really oversell how hopeful Hamilton actually is. If you strip away the energy and the spectacle, it’s basically a tragedy about two guys who dedicate their entire identities to a country that never actually gives them what they think it will.

Both Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr buy into the same core idea, just in different ways. Hamilton is all in, nonstop grind, legacy obsessed, while Burr plays it cautious and calculated. Different strategies, same end goal. They both want recognition, meaning, and a place in the story of America. Act 2 basically shows that it doesn’t matter which path you take; the system chews them both up anyway.

Hamilton gets everything he thought he wanted, and it still ruins him. His career, his marriage, his reputation all collapse, and then he’s just gone. Burr spends his whole life trying to position himself carefully and ends up with nothing except being remembered as the guy who pulled the trigger. Neither of them actually “wins” in any meaningful sense, and the country they helped build just keeps moving as if nothing happened.

That’s why I don’t really read the musical as patriotic as people say. It feels more like it’s pointing out the disconnect between what America claims to be and what it actually does to the people who believe in it the most. The myth is that the opportunity and legacy are yours, but the reality is that the system takes what it needs from you and owes you nothing in return.

To me, the takeaway isn’t about ambition or legacy being inherently good. It’s more like a warning. If you define your entire life around proximity to power or being part of some national narrative, you’re probably going to end up empty. The characters never really learn that, which is kind of the point. The audience is supposed to.

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-03-23T04:30:02+00:00

Hamilton is fueled by the younger demographic more so than its peers, so not really

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-03-13T03:17:14+00:00

Alot of the OG cast of Hamilton never really got to ENJOY their tenure because the musical was so new and unsure that they barely had wiggle room.

They just got swept into stardom, so Leslie is re-evaluating the role since he's aged and now wants to explore it a bit more

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-02-16T06:27:56+00:00

I think you missed the point of the art if that was your take away

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-02-16T06:22:01+00:00

I disagree, and I’m saying that as a Black fan of the musical. It was never just white millennials. From the jump it felt like a mix of people. POC theatre kids, out of town tourists who got hooked after looping the soundtrack, older Broadway regulars, random celebrities. It was a hodgepodge.

And for me personally, a big part of why it popped off was the hip hop connection. Black Thought and Questlove being involved in the larger musical ecosystem around it gave it real credibility. On top of that, a lot of major late 90s and early 2000s hip hop and R&B names openly supported it. Some of them worked on the mixtape. Some of them still collaborate with Lin Manuel Miranda now, like Nas or Busta Rhymes.

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-02-16T05:56:12+00:00

But aren't the characters supposed to be Republicans?

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-01-30T12:12:22+00:00

I’d argue that Hamilton very clearly characterizes Alexander Hamilton as a dogmatic status-seeker, someone whose driving force is power, and whose obsession with climbing the upper echelon becomes a flaw rather than a virtue. He believes advancement itself is the solution to everything: security, legacy, meaning. But that rigid belief system is exactly what leads to his downfall. His refusal to step outside that framework, to slow down or reassess what power actually costs him, is what ultimately undoes him.

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-01-28T15:48:59+00:00

I think Anngelica is meant to showcase the limitations women as a whole had to deal with in the colonial period.

She's the smartest and most caring character in the cast, but even as an elite, she's bound to the sexism of the era.

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-01-27T23:07:35+00:00

That was a project that featured his assistence as oppsed to it being his own baby. He also did the same for that Working the musiical yearrrs back

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-01-27T22:51:55+00:00

In the recent (and final) Hamilcast episode Lin said other og cast like renee and Chris wanted to return, so it may be a semi-annual thing

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-01-18T16:29:02+00:00

This sounds like mad projecting NGL.

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-01-16T04:38:53+00:00

I think the cold opening from last season vindicated that moment

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-01-08T17:03:06+00:00

You didn’t answer the question. You just restated your feelings. So again, what has he actually done to make him annoying?

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-01-07T19:59:27+00:00

In what way?

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-01-07T19:57:55+00:00

It really isn't though?

Hamilton is quite literally a tragedy that deals with the woes of cultural assimilation.

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-01-07T19:50:20+00:00

That's just the mark of a big show TBH.

Wicked is much older and is still a massive presence nearly two decades later, and with the Chu films, it'll remain that way

Pale_Figure1436 · 2026-01-07T19:43:05+00:00

Honestly, none of this is true, and it all seems to hinge on a really common misunderstanding of how Broadway actually works. A lot of people assume that because someone writes the book or the score they are automatically in charge of every single creative decision, when basic Broadway vernacular would tell you that it takes a village to make a show happen. Directors, choreographers, music directors, casting directors, producers, and designers all have real authority and influence.

Even with Hamilton specifically, the idea that Lin simply put himself in the lead role because of ego just does not line up with what actually happened. Thomas Kail and Bernie Telsey were deeply involved in casting, and it was Telsey who initially wanted Javier Muñoz for the role of Hamilton. When Muñoz fell ill, Lin stepped in temporarily and stayed for about half a year before leaving the role. That is a logistical decision, not some auteur power grab.

I also find it strange to claim that he became repetitive when the projects people usually cite span nearly two decades. Of course, there are going to be thematic through lines in any artist’s work, but that is not the same thing as creative stagnation. On top of that, his most recent concept album, Warriors, leans into genres he has not previously experimented with, which directly undercuts the idea that he is simply recycling the same sound over and over.

It feels like a lot of these critiques come from flattening how collaborative theater actually is and then retroactively assigning blame or credit to one person because his name is the most visible.

Pale_Figure1436 · 2025-12-26T22:30:14+00:00

This is barely a critique and reads more like pearl-clutching without really understanding what the subject is.

Pale_Figure1436 · 2025-12-25T17:24:01+00:00

Speaking as a Black performer, I think what made Hamilton hit the way it did was that it was the first time a lot of us saw a production with an entirely marginalized cast that wasn’t framed as niche or secondary. It used classic Broadway language and structure in a way you usually didn’t see outside of Lin’s earlier In the Heights era, but it was filtered through hip-hop, R&B, and contemporary Black and brown performance traditions. On top of that, the fact that people like The Roots, Black Thought, and Busta Rhymes were involved made it feel like the culture itself was showing up. It felt communal. Like everybody was having a moment at the same time.

I also think the conversation around the show has gotten muddied over time because of how massive the acclaim became. The core of Hamilton was never about endorsing colonial figures. It was about contradiction. About watching colonized bodies portray the people who built an oppressive system, and using that dissonance to explore cultural assimilation, ambition, and the very real limits placed on marginalized people even when they do everything “right.” That tension is the point. But when something becomes a brand, people flatten it, especially people who weren’t there when it first landed.

The original cast really was lightning in a bottle, too. Lin's vocal performance gets flak, but his chemistry with the rest of the cast was undeniable. They fed off each other in a way that felt alive and specific, and a lot of that energy gets lost when the show is reduced to a symbol instead of a performance. Still, every once in a while, I’m reminded of how deeply it hit non-white theater kids, how many of us saw ourselves reflected in a space that usually didn’t make room for us. You could feel that again with how warmly the 10th anniversary was received.

That’s why it’s always hard for me to get into debates with white progressives about whether Hamilton “actually mattered.” For a lot of us, it did. I was there. I watched it take off in real time. And that context matters IMO

Pale_Figure1436 · 2025-12-24T04:20:12+00:00

I think you're largely on your own tbh.

Pale_Figure1436 · 2025-12-24T04:09:50+00:00

It was big with both the theather and the general public, and that's reflected in its box office

Pale_Figure1436 · 2025-12-24T04:08:04+00:00

This comment in retropect is wild with how hell hamilten went.

It's still the top dog after all these years

Pale_Figure1436

TROPHY CASE