Neurodivergent Diversions: Marcy Wu — Clumsy, Clever, and Completely Hyperfocused in Amphibia
by James Coulter
If there’s one cartoon character who reflects me, it’s Marcy Wu from Disney’s Amphibia.
Marcy Wu: Autism Personified
Amphibia is an animated fantasy adventure series about a young girl named Anne Boonchuy, who gets transported to the strange, amphibian-inhabited world of Amphibia with her friends. One of those friends is Marcy Wu, a plucky fantasy-obsessed girl who’s essentially Autism personified.
Marcy’s love of fantasy games and movies, her intense focus on her special interests to a fault, her tendency to interpret life through media tropes, and her clever but socially awkward manner all feel like me—so much so that when my niece got tattoos representing each family member, I asked her to use Marcy for mine because she’s essentially me as a cartoon character.
While never directly stated as having Autism, Marcy displays many autistic traits that make her relatable to people with Autism like me. And what makes her especially relatable is how she exhibits a trait common in Autism and other forms of neurodivergence: hyperfocus.
What is Hyperfocus?
Hyperfocus is an intense, prolonged concentration on a single subject or task, often to a point where a person becomes unaware of their surroundings and other obligations. Essentially, an individual becomes so absorbed in a task that they tune out everything else.
Most people tend to focus on something to the point where they ignore everything else, whether it’s a sports fan so obsessed with watching a game that they don’t hear someone call from another room, or a teenager losing track of time while scrolling through their phone. However, people with Autism are especially prone to this behavior.
Why? Experts believe it stems from a sharper gradient of spatial attention: autistic individuals take in a lot of information at once but concentrate more strongly on the center of their focus while paying less attention to the periphery. This creates a kind of tunnel vision, where their current object of attention dominates,and everything else fades into the background.
As Eva Silvertant writes on Embrace Autism: “In other words, it seems that when autistic people look at anything, they take a lot of information in at once, but with a greater focus on the center. Although the drop-off of attention is sharper in autistic people, perception in general is still enhanced compared with neurotypicals.”
Hyperfocus can prove to be both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it can help boost productivity and deep engagement in a current area of interest. On the other hand, it can make shifting to different, often less interesting tasks difficult, even to the point of ignoring one’s surroundings, other people, and even basic needs like hunger, fatigue, or the passage of time.
Lost in the Frogs and the Facts
Marcy Wu’s most defining character trait is her adorkable klutziness. She often hyperfocuses on her current obsession that she’s oblivious to others and her surroundings to the point of clumsiness. As Anne tells her: “When you get this into something, you tend to tune everything else out.”
A montage in the show makes this clear. Marcy becomes so absorbed in a video game that she lets frozen yogurt overflow, misses her role in the school play, nearly walks into an open locker and slips on a wet floor, and even wanders into a pen of venomous snakes.
Her fixation follows her to Amphibia, where her awe at the fantasy world leads to a fall down a flight of stairs and a broken leg. At times, her single-mindedness doesn’t just put her at risk, but her friends as well, such as when she obsessively attempts to solve a temple puzzle and unknowingly triggers traps that threaten the group.
My Own Instances as Marcy
One personal episode of hyperfocus worried my mother enough to take me to a neurologist to be diagnosed with Autism. As a child on New Year’s Day, I played with LEGOs the entire dayand didn’t eat or drink anything until dinner.
My family has long noticed how I “zone out” and become oblivious to my surroundings. After I moved back to Virginia, my nephew-in-law called out to me as I walked by his house with headphones on. I didn’t hear him, and he later said I was in my own little world.
Another time, while my niece and her family shopped, I wandered the parking lot listening to music so intently that I didn’t notice I’d walked into a sketchy area where someone was sleeping. My nephew-in-law joked that I could walk through a shootout and only learn about it later on the news.
Like Marcy, I often get so absorbed in my interests that I ignore everything else, even to the point of clumsiness: bumping into things, knocking items over, or tripping. Is it any wonder, then, that I see her as an animated reflection of myself?
