It’s bad enough that “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur,” the Disney Channel/Disney+ series about superhero genius pre-teen Lunella “Moon Girl” Lafayette and her sidekick, Devil Dinosaur, has been quietly canceled. News came awhile ago that Disney has ended the series, with no plans for any new episodes after its second and current season.
However, more bad news came along last week. Production staff of the show state that Disney’s pulled one episode from airing. Titled “The Gatekeeper,” the episode centers around Brooklyn, a trans girl and a classmate of Lunella. Brooklyn’s volleyball team is preparing to play against a rival school, but are forced to deal with that team’s transphobic coach.
Disney confirmed it pulled the episode, but only gave vague reasons why. A source told The Mary Sue that the decision to pull it came a year ago, and not as a result of the election. Which doesn’t exactly sound any better: “the election being won by a transphobic candidate had nothing to do with our pulling the episode—we already decided to shelve it a year ago!”
As for the pulled episode, someone managed to leak it online. (I won’t say where, but Google searching works.) News about the “Moon Girl” episode and Brooklyn has also reached mainstrean news outlets, if Disney was thinking they could do this quietly. Gizmodo, AV Club, Polygon, and a Cincinnati TV station have all reported on “The Gatekeeper”’s removal.
Like I said before, I worry the election outcome will make corporations more regressive or hesitant about LGBTQ content, especially in kids’ programming. Specifically, positive trans representation in animation is rare, especially in children’s animation, which makes this “Moon Girl” episode being shelved even worse. (Things fare better in comics, at least.)
As for Disney deciding to shelve the episode a year ago, at the time they were still reeling from the failures of “Lightyear” and “Strange World” (two films with LGBTQ characters), plus Ron DeSantis’ anti-LGBTQ culture war attacks. See: reports of Disney supposedly pressuring the makers of “Inside Out 2” to make sure nothing about Riley and her friendship with another girl could be remotely interpreted as non-heterosexual.
Image: Eduardo (left) and Brooklyn (right), “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.” (Disney)
