The following contains spoilers for Snow White, now playing in theatersSnow White makes some pretty big changes to Dopey, including giving him a voice. Snow White expands on several elements of the original 1937 animated classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, adding a lot of new character depth and modern thematic elements to the same broad storyline. Some of the characters who remain the most consistent between the two versions are the dwarfs, the friendly miners that Snow White encounters and befriends while trying to escape from the vicious grasp of the Evil Queen.

The dwarfs are given more comedy beats to showcase their personalities in the film’s expanded musical numbers, but 2025’s Snow White doesn’t make too many overt changes to six of them. However, Snow White does implement some major tweaks to Dopey, the most iconic of the characters. This includes giving the character a voice and making him a deceptively more important character to the overall film, as revealed in Snow White‘s ending.

Dopey Is The Narrator Of Disney’s Live-Action Snow White

Dopey Talking Is A Big Shift For The Character

One of the final reveals of 2025’s Snow White is that Dopey has been the narrator all along, highlighting how different the character is from his original animated counterpart. Dopey is arguably the most iconic of the dwarfs, and quickly gets the emotional connection to Snow. After learning that Dopey has never had the courage to speak out among the other dwarfs, Snow teaches him how to whistle as a means of raising his confidence. This quickly endears her to Dopey, who had been the first dwarf to meet her and arguably the most attuned to the young woman.

After Snow is restored to life by a kiss from Jonathan, Dopey is the one who voices their commitment to Snow, leading the dwarfs to take part in Snow’s plans to bring down the Evil Queen. The final scene of the film is a celebratory musical number which reveals that the dwarfs have become an open part of the community. It’s also revealed that Dopey has been the narrator of the film all along, telling a group of children (and by extension, the audience) about Snow. This is a big divergence from the animated classic that inspired it.

Why Dopey Doesn’t Talk In The Animated Snow White

Dopey Didn’t Speak In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, And He Didn’t Seem To Mind

In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Dopey plays a largely similar role to his 2025 Snow White counterpart, save for one important distinction: it’s not that he can’t talk, just that he doesn’t want to. He never tried to talk according to the other dwarfs — he never speaks. Dopey is a slapstick and accident-prone goofball who is implied to be the youngest of the dwarfs. Instead of his muteness coming from any specific fear of speaking, the other dwarfs reveal that he’s never actually tried to talk and that he’s perfectly fine with this.

The biggest difference between the two versions of Dopey is the way this tweak impacts the character’s presentation. In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Dopey is arguably the most cartoonish member of the cast and the one most reminiscent of the prior animated shorts produced by the Disney studio. His slapstick is a big source of comedy in the film, including his charming but silly antics with Snow during sequences like “The Silly Song.” Dopey doesn’t get any more character development than any other dwarf, making his escalation in thematic importance for Snow White all the more telling.

How Dopey Talking Changes Snow White’s Live-Action Remake

Dopey Gets A More Fleshed Out Arc In The Modern Snow White

By giving Dopey a more grounded reasons he can’t talk, the latest Disney live-action remake makes a major moment out of his first words. It affixes an emotional core to the character that some audiences will inevitably relate to, especially those who have had trouble expressing themselves or speaking in public. In contrast, the Dopey of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs doesn’t get nearly as much grounded traits. Instead, he remains a more broad and cartoonish figure, who is never shown being bothered by his inability to openly communicate with the other dwarfs.

This lack of a specific human core might mean the original Dopey is less fleshed out than the modern version, but that broad appeal of the original has allowed that original Dopey to become a more encompᴀssing and flexible mascot for the studio. By contrast, the modern Dopey gets a sweet (if very brisk) subplot that gives his personal growth and discovery of his agency a parallel to Snow White’s own modern arc. It’s a big change for the character to have Dopey talk in Snow White and fits him into a much more thematically important role as a result.