An episode of Disney’s animated show “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur” focusing on a transgender character will no longer air.
News broke this week that the episode, which debuted on YouTube, has been pulled from airing on the Disney Channel in 2025 due to its LGBTQ storyline.
According to Polygon, the episode titled “The Gatekeeper” is about the transgender character Brooklyn, who is voiced by “Pose” star Indya Moore. Brooklyn is competing on the girls’ volleyball team and faces discrimination from the opposing team’s coach, Greer (voiced by Amy Sedaris).
Greer reportedly uses a magic key to lock Brooklyn and her teammates in the girl’s locker room. Brooklyn breaks up with her friends and tells them, “I’m trans, my very existence breaks Greer’s rules.”
Brooklyn also wears Pride-themed knee highs and has a “Trans is Beautiful” sticker on her water bottle in the episode, according to Polygon.
Derrick Malik Johnson, a member of the series’ story revisionist team, addressed the episode by retracting it in a since-deleted post on the new social media microblogging app Bluesky.
“So apparently I finally got hit with one of the (episode) projects I worked on being shut down because of which party won the last election,” he wrote. “It breaks my heart to know that this influential and amazing episode will now be considered a lost media episode.”
Other animation artists took to social media and similarly speculated that the episode was removed because Donald Trump won the presidential election.
Emmy Cicirega, a story artist on Gravity Falls, wrote in X, “Disney should be ashamed of themselves for canning this episode. You can’t approve approval of something and then screw it up at the last minute, destroying the hard work and hopes of the crews.”
Matt Braly, who created Amphibia, responded to Cicirega’s post and said, “If an episode gets this far, it gets approved multiple times by multiple divisions, only to be suddenly shot down at the last second? The total split of process and salivating over your team’s careful/thoughtful work. S&P approved this episode.”
“Preemptive action makes it that much worse for me,” Braly added in a second tweet. “Absolute bullshit and second guessing when in fact this is when this content is most needed.”
However, a Disney source told Polygon that the show’s decision was made more than a year ago and was not based on the outcome of the election.
“In this case, this decision is based on this specific episode, not because the character is trans”, the insider claimed, adding that the episode is not “banned” but is being “held”.
The source also said that Disney is “really proud” of the show and that the company “respects the role parents play in the discussions they have with their children.”
The Post has reached out to Disney for comment.
Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is based on the Marvel Comics characters Lunella Lafayette and her dinosaur companion.
The show premiered in February 2023 and won five Children’s and Family Emmy Awards, but was canceled after two seasons.
However, Disney still has a few more episodes in the tank that are expected to air in 2025.
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