The Lilo & Stitch directors drew Stitch feeding Pudge the Fish in tribute to Daveigh Chase
Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois posted a wordless tribute to the voice of Lilo. If you know what feeding Pudge meant to her, the drawing will wreck you.
When Daveigh Chase died on June 16 at 35, the people who knew her work best didn’t reach for a press statement. They drew.
Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, who directed the original 2002 Lilo & Stitch and gave Chase the role that defined her, posted a single illustration to Instagram with no caption. Both their signatures are on it.
A small detail on the rock reads 6-16-2026, the day she died. It’s a quiet, devastating piece of art, and you have to know the movie to feel the full weight of it.
What the drawing shows
The image is simple, which is part of why it lands so hard.
Stitch sits alone on a rock by the water, wiping a tear from his eye. Beside him is Scrump, the handmade rag doll Lilo carried through the whole film. In his hands is a peanut butter sandwich, and in the water below, surfacing for it, is Pudge the fish.
Lilo isn’t in the picture. That’s the entire point.
Why feeding Pudge means everything
Here’s the detail that turns a sweet drawing into something that knocks the wind out of you.
In Lilo & Stitch, Lilo believes Pudge the fish controls the weather. So every week she walks to the shore and feeds him a peanut butter sandwich, rain or shine. It isn’t a quirky throwaway gag.
Lilo’s parents died in a car accident on a rainy night, and this small, sacred ritual is how a grieving little girl tries to keep the weather good and keep the people she loves safe. Feeding Pudge is Lilo holding the sky together with a sandwich.
So a drawing of Stitch making that walk alone, doing Lilo’s ritual without her, is Stitch taking up the thing she can’t do anymore.
The caretaking has turned around.
The creature she rescued and taught to love is now the one left behind, keeping her tradition going, feeding the fish so the weather stays kind.
For her.
A goodbye from the people who found her voice
Sanders and DeBlois have said for years how hard Lilo was to cast.
They had casting directors searching Hawaii for the right voice and couldn’t find it, until Chase came in and, as they’ve told it, made the decision easy.
She won an Annie Award for the performance and voiced Lilo across films, a TV series, and video games for years afterward. She was, in Sanders’ words to the press this week, “the sweetest and brightest light,” and he said the team had been trying to reconnect with her near the end. “We were so close to finding her.”
The wordless tribute is its own kind of sentence. No statement they could have written would say what that sandwich says. Chase gave Lilo a voice full of loneliness and stubborn hope, and her directors answered her passing in the language of the film itself, with Stitch on a rock, finishing the ritual, making sure the weather stays good for the girl who taught him how.
Rest easy, Daveigh. Ohana means nobody gets left behind.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (theme park editor) and the Pirates and Princesses newsroom.
Hat Tips:
TheWrap and ScreenRant (June 2026), verified for the tribute art’s details, the Scrump and Pudge elements, the 6-16-2026 date on the rock, and Sanders and DeBlois posting it without a caption
Trevor Decker News (June 20, 2026), verified for the Pudge weather lore, the casting history, and the artwork being signed by both directors
New York Post, via AOL/Yahoo (June 2026), verified for Sanders’ “sweetest and brightest light” and “so close to finding her” quotes
Wikipedia (June 2026), verified for Chase’s Annie Award, her run voicing Lilo across the franchise, and the June 16 date of death