Each year on their daughter's birthday, the king and queen release sky lanterns in hope they will guide her home. Rapunzel (Florence Pugh) is fascinated by the annual lights, and, on the eve of her 18th birthday, asks for permission to attend the release as a birthday gift. Gothel refuses, saying the outside world is too dangerous for her. Later, handsome thief Flynn Rider (Andrew Garfield) steals Rapunzel's intended crown from the palace and abandons his partners, the Stabbington brothers, while being relentlessly pursued by a royal guardsman's horse named Maximus, he takes refuge in the tower.
