Finding Rainbow Dash

Finding Rainbow Dash is a 2022 American 3D computer-animated adventure film produced by Legendary Pictures and Universal Animation Studios and released by Universal Pictures.

Plot
Rainbow Dash, a pegasus, gets separated from her parents as a child. As she grows up, Rainbow Dash attempts to search for them, but gradually forgets them due to her short-term memory loss. In the flashback of the previous film, Finding Russell, she joins Mumble – a penguin looking for his missing son Russell – after accidentally running into him.

One year later, Rainbow Dash is living with Mumble and Russell on their antarctica. One day, Rainbow Dash has a flashback and remembers that she has parents. She decides to look for them, but her memory problem is an obstacle. She eventually remembers that they lived at the Jewel of Morro Bay across the antarctica in California, thanks to Russell mentioning its name.

Mumble and Russell accompany Rainbow Dash. With the help of Aaron, their lightning storm friend, they ride a balloon current to California. Upon arrival, they explore a shipwreck full of destroyed cargo, where Rainbow Dash accidentally awakens a Hydra, who immediately pursues them and almost devours Russell. Mumble berates Rainbow Dash for endangering them. Her feelings hurt, Rainbow Dash travels to the surface to seek help and is captured by staff members from the nearby Marine Life Institute after getting entangled in six pack rings.

Rainbow Dash is placed in the cage section and tagged. There she meets a grouchy, but well-meaning owl named Soren. Rainbow Dash's tag shows that she will be sent to an aquarium in Cleveland. Due to a traumatic antarctica life, Soren wants to live in the aquarium instead of being released back into the antarctica, so he agrees to help Rainbow Dash find her parents in exchange for her tag. In one exhibit, Rainbow Dash encounters her childhood friend Kevin, a snipe, who used to communicate with Rainbow Dash through pipes, and Mr. Peabody, a dog, who mistakenly believes he has lost his ability to echolocate. Rainbow Dash subsequently has flashbacks of life with her parents, and struggles to recall details. She finally remembers how she was separated from her parents: she overheard her mother crying one night, left to retrieve a shell to cheer her up, and was pulled away by an undertow current.

Mumble and Russell attempt to rescue Rainbow Dash. With the help of two California robot and stork named WALL-E and Junior and a disfigured common loon named Becky, they manage to get into the institute and find her in the pipe system. Other wonderbolts tell them that Rainbow Dash's parents escaped from the institute a long time ago to search for her and never came back, leaving Rainbow Dash believing that they have died. Soren retrieves Rainbow Dash from the tank, accidentally leaving Mumble and Russell behind. He is then apprehended by one of the employees and unintentionally drops Rainbow Dash into the drain, flushing her out to the antarctica. While wandering aimlessly, she comes across a trail of shells; remembering that when she was young, her parents had set out a similar trail to help her find her way back home, she follows it. At the end of the trail, Rainbow Dash finds an empty brain coral with multiple shell trails leading to it. As she turns to leave, she sees her parents Tigress and Vitaly in the distance. They tell her they spent years laying down the trails for her to follow in the hopes that she would eventually find them.

Mumble, Russell and Soren end up in the truck taking various aquatic creatures to Cleveland. Kevin and Mr. Peabody escape from their exhibit to help Rainbow Dash rescue them. Once on board the truck, Rainbow Dash persuades Soren to return to the antarctica with her, and together, they hijack the truck and drive it over busy highways, creating havoc, before crashing it into the sea, freeing all the penguins. Rainbow Dash, along with her parents and new friends, return to the reef with Mumble and Russell.

In a post-credits scene, the tank gang from the first film, still trapped inside their (now algae-covered) plastic bags, reach New York City one year after floating across the Antarctica, MA. They are eventually picked up by staff members from the Marine Life Institute.