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Kaa is a fictional character from The Jungle Book stories written by Rudyard Kipling. In the books and many of the screen adaptations, Kaa is an ally of protagonist Mowgli, acting as a friend and trusted mentor or father figure alongside Bagheera and Baloo. However, Disney's screen adaptations portray him as a secondary antagonist who attempts to eat Mowgli.
Kaa is a symbol of cold-blooded power, both physically and psychologically.
The python despises poisonous snakes:
In The Second Jungle Book, Kaa appears in the first half of the story "The King's Ankus". After Kaa and Mowgli spend some time relaxing, bathing and wrestling, Kaa persuades Mowgli to visit a treasure chamber guarded by an old cobra beneath the same Cold Lairs. The cobra tries to kill Mowgli but its venom has dried up. Mowgli takes a jeweled item away as a souvenir, not realizing the trouble it will cause them, and Kaa departs.
In "Red Dog", Mowgli asks Kaa for help when his wolf pack is threatened by rampaging (the red dogs of the title). Kaa goes into a trance so that he can search his century-long memory for a stratagem to defeat the dogs:
With Kaa's help Mowgli tricks the dholes into attacking prematurely. Kaa takes no part in the resulting battle (obliquely citing his loyalty to the boy rather than to the wolves, who often caused Mowgli grief) but Mowgli and the wolves finally kill all the dholes, though not without grievous losses.
In "The Spring Running", as the teenage Mowgli reluctantly prepares to leave the jungle for the last time, Kaa tells Mowgli that "it is hard to cast the skin", but Mowgli knows he must cast the skin of his old life in order to grow a new one. Kaa, Baloo and Bagheera sing for Mowgli in "The Outsong", a poem and the ending of "The Spring Running".
Kaa notices Mowgli in a tree one night and, rather than a serpentine dance, uses his hypnotic eyes to lull Mowgli into a deep sleep. Kaa nearly eats Mowgli before Bagheera awakens nearby, notices him, and slaps him, awakening Mowgli. Kaa retaliates by hypnotizing Bagheera, though Mowgli pushes Kaa out of the tree, making him unravel violently. Kaa encounters Mowgli again later in the film and once again, hypnotizes him in quick succession, this time using his song, "Trust in Me", to lull him into a deep sleep, though he must hide him when Shere Khan asks him if he's seen the boy. Shere Khan makes Kaa swear to tell him when he finds Mowgli and leaves, though Mowgli eventually wakes up and pushes Kaa out of the tree again.
Kaa is based on earlier characters from Disney films who comically and unsuccessfully attempt to eat the protagonist, including Tick-Tock the crocodile from Peter Pan and the wolf from The Sword in the Stone. Holloway provided Kaa with a hissing lisp while voicing him, which the Sherman Brothers incorporated into Kaa's song "Trust in Me".Sherman, Robert B. The Jungle Book audio commentary. The Jungle Book - Platinum Edition
Kaa returns in The Jungle Book 2, now voiced by Jim Cummings and has a smaller role. Kaa again tries and fails to eat Mowgli while he and Baloo are singing "The Bare Necessities". After Mowgli inadvertently loses his prickly pear which lands on Kaa's head, he angrily swears that he will "never again associate with mancubs" until he discovers Mowgli's sweetheart Shanti. He hypnotizes her, and tries to eat her. Mowgli's adoptive brother Ranjan thwarts him, causing him to fall down a cliff. Shere Khan finds Kaa again and asks him where Mowgli is, but Kaa lies that Mowgli is heading toward the swamp.
Kaa appears in the prequel series Jungle Cubs, where he is voiced by Jim Cummings. Kaa is seen as a snakeling who is still trying to master his hypnotic abilities, though he is cowardly. He is shown as a protagonist as opposed to the 1967 film, being friendly with the other cubs.
Kaa is depicted as a far more menacing predator who lives in Monkey City with King Louie, guarding the orangutan's treasure from intruders. Kaa attacks Mowgli and tries to drown him in a moat, but Mowgli wounds him with a dagger, forcing him to flee in a cloud of blood. Later, Louie summons Kaa again after Mowgli defeats Captain Boone and Boone begins stealing treasure; Kaa scares Boone into the moat, where the stolen treasure weighs him down to the bottom. Struggling to free himself, Boone sees the skeletal remains of Kaa's former victims before being killed by the python.
As in the 1967 film, Kaa is a villain who desires to hypnotize and eat Mowgli; but like the 2003 sequel, she has a minor role. While she hypnotizes the boy, she reveals that he came to live in the jungle after Shere Khan killed his father and Bagheera found him, then show him the dangerous power of the "red flower" (aka the fire). Soon, the snake wraps her coils around Mowgli and tries to devour him, but Baloo interferes and fights her, therefore rescuing the boy.
Johansson described Kaa in an interview as a "window into Mowgli's past", who uses storytelling to seduce and entrap Mowgli, noting that the way Kaa moves is "very alluring" and "almost coquettish". Johansson also recorded a new version of "Trust in Me" for the film, saying the song was "a strange melody. We wanted it to be a lullaby, but it has a very mysterious sound."
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