Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur has often touched on ideas about race, class, and issues like gentrification as it followed the adventures of genius 13-year-old Lunella Lafatette (Diamond White) and her pet dinosaur, Devil (Fred Tatasciore). But according to now-deleted social media posts from animators who worked on “The Gatekeeper” — an episode about Lunella and other members of her school’s volleyball team being terrorized by a transphobic adult — Disney has chosen to keep the episode from officially debuting because of its subject matter.
“The Gatekeeper” spends much of its runtime unpacking how no one has an issue with team captain Brooklyn (Indya Moore) being trans except for Greer (Amy Sedaris), a coach/parent from a rival school. It isn’t until Greer overhears that Brooklyn used to play on a boys’ soccer team that she tries to disqualify Lunella’s team on a technicality. Lunella, the other girls, and their own adult coach Hrbek (Tatasciore) can see (and explicitly say) that Greer is motivated by bigotry and an unfounded fear that her team will lose. But rather than taking that feedback to heart, Greer traps Brooklyn and most of the team in an escape room-like pocket dimension that looks like their locker room.
The episode (which The Verge has seen a leaked version of) features a couple of queer and trans pride flags, as well as a choice needle drop of Charli XCX’s “Unlock it (Lock It)” that’s fitting as the kids find themselves having to locate magical keys to free themselves. The episode’s messaging about embracing and celebrating people’s identities isn’t subtle, but it is fundamentally uplifting and clearly meant to emphasize the importance of respecting other people.
Reports of Disney pulling the episode comes a little over week after Donald Trump’s heavily transphobic presidential re-election campaign led him to victory and a year after Disney CEO Bob Iger insisted that he felt the studio’s project had become too message-focused. We’ve reached out to Disney for comment about whether it actually plans to keep “The Gatekeeper” from airing, and will update if and when we hear back.