What if Peaches’ teenage conflict with her family in Continental Drift had not been limited to Manny, but also included Sid and Diego?

I mean, she was the 2nd generation of an interspecies family, and they reduced all that potential to the stereotypical overprotective father-daughter conflict.

So, what if they had gone in this direction instead?

As Peaches grows older, her questions and frustrations about being raised in an interspecies family rather than a “normal” mammoth family gradually grow stronger. As she begins to struggle with her identity and her place within her unusual family, she also starts to distance herself from her “uncles,” Sid and Diego, whom she had once been very close to and loved dearly as a child.

For Sid, this growing distance is especially painful. Having been abandoned by his own family in the past, he knows all too well how painful it is to grow up without a family who truly cares about you. That is why he treasures Peaches deeply and desperately wants to be the best uncle he can be to her. Unfortunately, his goofy nature often gets him into embarrassing situations, and Peaches ends up pretending not to know him in front of her friends.

Diego’s situation, however, is more complicated. Because of his tough-guy personality, he has always had a hard time expressing his feelings openly, and this becomes even more pronounced once Peaches enters her teenage years. He can’t bring himself to approach her as casually or affectionately as he used to.

For Peaches, meanwhile, Diego’s identity as a carnivore makes things difficult in a different way. Her peers sometimes make snide remarks about him behind her back, so she ends up pretending not to know Diego when she is around them.

Unlike Sid, neither of them is deliberately pushing the other away. They simply begin keeping their distance from each other, each for their own reasons.

In the midst of all this, Peaches eventually ends up being humiliated in front of the friends she desperately wants to fit in with. Overwhelmed by anger and frustration, she lashes out at Manny, Sid, and Diego, saying things she doesn’t truly mean. Almost immediately afterward, the continental drift separates her from all three of them, leaving their relationships unresolved.

While separated from them, Peaches finally begins to realize just how much each of the three means to her. She comes to feel the absence of Manny, who could be overprotective and nagging but was, deep down, a caring father; Sid, her goofy but comforting uncle who always knew how to make her feel at ease; and Diego, who may have been quiet and reserved, but had always been there to watch her back and keep her safe.

Through this alternate storyline, the film could have maintained the continuity of one of the core messages established in the first Ice Age film: that family is defined by love, loyalty, and the choices we make, rather than by blood relations. At the same time, it would have given Peaches’ relationships with Sid and Diego much more depth, since in the actual movie, she barely had any meaningful interactions or real conversations with either of them.