'Moon Girl And Devil Dinosaur' Ending After 2 Seasons, A 'Spidey' Visit, And Shelved Trans Rep Episode
Even as despair in the animation industry lingers, it’s important to remember Trans rights are human rights. Substantial trans representation on television shouldn’t be discarded
For all there is to be excited about Marvel Television in 2025, there’s going to be one dark mark. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur from Disney Television Animation has been canceled and will not get a third season. One was being crafted but it instead became part B of season 2, set for February on Disney Channel and Disney+. Its Disney+ viewership is believed to be a major factor.
This wasn’t officially announced by Disney Channel, but instead passed along by an insider to Owlphibia/DisneyToon. The first hint was in September, when Steve Loter, the show’s executive producer cryptically posted on social media an image of an empty room full of musical instruments asking, “Where’s The Orchestra?”, tagging Disney and the show itself. Owlphibia’s reveal tweet was subsequently shared and therefore validated not just by show staff, but even from elsewhere in the studio. Director Samantha S. Lee, who has since moved on to Sony Pictures Animation as a story artist, said “I love this show and the entire crew.. to the moon and back 🌙♥️ we made something great.” Storyboard artist Sixiao Tang is forever grateful for what the show meant for her and her career, writing “this show will always have a special place in my heart as my first revisionist+boarding gig. thanks for taking a chance on me and i hope everyone enjoys the last batch!!! it’s been real, moon girl”. Another storyboard artist, Jules Bridgers, wrote “Please watch when they drop! This crew was one of the best I’ve gotten the honor to work with and all their hard work shows!” However it was Big City Greens storyboard artist Gabi Rodea who probably let out the biggest sigh in acknowledgement that the reality is finally out there, revealing “What sucks is that a bunch of us at Disney knew about this for so long but couldn’t outright say it. The MoonGirl production area was a ghost town for over a year 🙁”. With the cancellation of Hailey’s On It! on a season/series-ending cliffhanger and its subsequent removal from Disney+, it’s been said that Moon Girl has no such cliffhanger.
Due to the manner by which this was revealed, that it wasn’t done by Disney there’s no press release provided for any sort of synopsis for these 10 episodes, but the season set-up was that 13-year-old super-genius Moon Girl aka Lunella Lafayette, voiced by Diamond White and her 10-ton tyrannosaurus Devil Dinosaur, voiced by Fred Tatasciore are very much settled into their superheroing, continuing to protect her Lower East Side community from super threats, but it’s starting to have compatibility issues with her personal life, and thus the quandaries over secret identities have hit her for the first time.
Unfortunately, Disney is also pussyfooting around LGBTQ+ representation, this time with the T thanks to #45 becoming #47. Storyboard artist Derrick Malik Johnson wrote on Bluesky “So guess i finally got hit with one of the projects (episode) i worked on is getting shelved because of which party that won the recent election. It breaks my heart knowing this impactful and amazing is now about to be consider a lost media episode.” According to the staff member who goes by Superootoro on Reddit, it was one of the early season 2 episodes so it could have been delayed while awaiting those results, and not part of batch 2 in production order. It was Superootoro who revealed that the episode was about Brooklyn, who has been hinted as trans all series, and in the name of NDA compliance basically said “If you know you know”.
Three prominent DTVA alums chimed in, starting with The Owl House creator Dana Terrace, who wrote “Those of you who fought for this ep, right on. Good for you. I know you’re there. I’m sorry you’re dealing with the knee-jerk reactions of a bunch of toothless punks.” The Owl House notoriously had the optics of being screwed over by corporate pushback against LGBTQ content as the timeline of the decision of its abbreviated third season aligned with the pairing of main character Luz Noceda and Amity Blight. Emmy Cicierga, who also worked on The Owl House and like Terrace, Gravity Falls and DuckTales said “Disney should be ashamed of themselves for canning this episode. You don’t get to approve approve approve something and then destroy it at the last minute, shattering the crews hard work and hopes.” Amphibia creator Matt Braly, also a Gravity Falls alum, responded, breaking down just how defeating and also cowardly it is that it got shelved this late: “if an episode got this far, it was approved multiple times by multiple divisions, only to suddenly be struck down at the last second? Total break down of process and spitting on your team's careful/thoughtful work. S&P approved this ep. It was good to go.” Cicierga’s tweet was quoting a comment on a clip of the episode because, the cartoon community being what it is, got angry enough that Owlphibia quickly leaked the episode. It got taken down by the time I was writing this part. I probably would’ve embedded it if it was still up. So instead, have the Chibi Tiny Tales episode posted during writing.
According to a Disney source, the episode is being called “held” instead of banned, though an actual release has not been indicated. The decision to “hold” the episode as they say was allegedly made more than a year ago and was not made in fear of reprisal from anti-trans Republicans. That source said that “in this case, this decision was based on this specific episode, not because of the character being trans.” and Disney is “really proud” of the series. However what doesn’t instill confidence and instead makes one more leery is the noting that its target age range is kids age 6-12 and that the company is “respectful of the role that parents play in the discussions they have with their children”, which doesn’t dispel the narrative, since there’s no reason trans people shouldn’t be seen by children, but parents are allowed to feed them anti-trans propaganda. Trans people are people.
But what is the episode? What’s it about? In “The Gatekeeper”, the aforementioned Brooklyn, voiced by actor Indya Moore, is competing in a girl’s volleyball game. The opposing team’s coach, Greer (played by Amy Sedaris), tries to have her disqualified, after listening in on Brooklyn thinking back to her time spent playing soccer and “the darkness of me having to play on the boys team”. Brooklyn’s coach, gym teacher Coach Hrbek, tells Greer, “Brooklyn IS a girl, and she’s gonna play.” Greer pivots to extreme supervillainous measures, using a magical key to confine Brooklyn, her teammates, and watergirl Lunella in the girl’s locker room. Brooklyn explicitly tells her teammates “I’m trans, my very existence breaks Greer’s rules,” before breaking down into tears. Brooklyn’s trans identity continues to be communicated through imagery as it had been throughout the series; whether it’s her Pride-themed kneepads or her “Trans is beautiful” sticker on her water bottle. The episode’s color palette is saturated in hues from the transgender flag. Its themes of prejudice, exclusion, and finding support through progressive allies is intentional and blatant.
At the same time, it’s becoming clear that this iteration of Moon Girl, not just in design but performance (admittedly in season 1 light blue accents instead of season 2 purple) has broken out to the mainstream, appearing in Lego Marvel Avengers: Mission Demolition, the latest Lego Marvel special I just could not get around to before it was released, and now, in Friday’s episode of Spidey and His Amazing Friends, the heroic duo team up with Spidey and Spin to take down the Green Goblin and his dino-mech after some initial miscommunication.
“Every year we just want to find something fun and new for our audiences to enjoy, and we knew because a lot of people work on the show have kids that preschoolers love dinosaurs,” executive producer Harrison Wilcox said, finding Devil Dinosaur perfect to be part of such a dinosaur-focused arc. “And we had Reptil kicking around on the show for season two. For those who don’t know, Reptil is a character who has the ability to transform into different dinosaurs, and we just thought it would be a very Marvel thing for him to be able to share that power with some of the heroes this season. And also it would be equally fun to see what would happen if that power got into the hands of some of our villains.”
Uncommon for onscreen team-ups but very common in the comics, this is the actual first meeting between the two parties, which Wilcox found fun. “I think the other thing that’s kind of fun about this story that we haven’t really done a lot on Spidey and His Amazing Friends is this is the first time on the show we’ve done two heroes meeting each other for the first time,” he said. “There’s a little bit of that classic Marvel mistaken identity where Spidey’s responding to a problem about a dinosaur which Goblin has caused. But when he shows up on the scene, he sees Devil Dinosaur and assumes, like anyone would, oh, if there’s a dinosaur problem and there’s a giant red T-Rex in front of me, that must be the problem,” Wilcox said. “So Spidey and Moon Girl have to work out the misunderstanding and then team up together. And I think that’s a unique thing that we haven’t done yet on the show, and I think there’s a good lesson there for kids.” He also remarked “I knew a lot about the Moon Girl project from being the exec for Marvel on it, and I just thought, hey, we’re doing a season about dinosaurs. How great would it be? How do we not include Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur and introduce that character to a slightly younger audience?”
The episode premiered Friday on Disney Channel and Disney Jr. and the clip can be watched below. The full episode will likely make it on Disney+ in due time.
Sources: What’s On Disney+, ComicBook, DTVA Digital, Dana Terrace, Emmy Cicierga, Matt Braly, Polygon
You know, Disney, if you keep doing this to your animated shows, people won't want to work with you in making them anymore, and then you might go out of business...