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A month after the show was officially cancelled, news has broken that one of the remaining unaired episodes of Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur has been pulled from the announced 2025 final release, seemingly because of its storyline surrounding a trans classmate of the series’ main character.

News of the show’s cancellation broke in mid-October, accompanied by the information that the show’s remaining episodes would debut at some point in 2025. Now, it turns out, at least one of those final episodes will likely not air as originally intended.

In a Bluesky post made November 12 — and since deleted — storyboard artist Derrick Malik Johnson wrote, “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,” adding, “It breaks my heart knowing this impactful and amazing [story] is now about to be consider[ed] a lost media episode.” Johnson’s post was screenshotted and shared on Reddit, with a since-deleted response noting that the commenter — who claimed to also have worked on the series — writing, “if you put attention to details about the character, you can figure out what theme and why it was canned.”

According to an anonymous Disney source talking to Gizmodo, the decision to pull the episode was made over a year ago so apparently not due to the election, as part of “a regular review process the company makes with all of its kids content, with the intent to ensure material doesn’t potentially push ahead discussions around social issues before families can have them themselves.” Although not addressed specifically by the source, it would appear that the source is confirming that the episode was pulled by Disney specifically because "social issues" - which would seem to mean addressing anti-trans bigotry.

The episode, ‘The Gatekeeper,’ leaked online following Johnson’s post. The storyline centers around Moon Girl’s high school volleyball team, the Squirrels, being attacked by Greer, the coach of an opposing team who feels that the Squirrels are cheating because their captain, Brooklyn, is trans. “This is a girl’s volleyball league, only girls can play,” Greer threatens at one point, after complaining, “Your team captain used to play on the boys’ team. Boys’ team.” The episode is not afraid to spell out its subject matter. “I’m trans. My very existence breaks Greer’s rules,” Brooklyn says in the episode. “How many doors do I have to break through before they stop locking me out?”

Brooklyn, voiced by Pose actress Indya Moore, has been a recurring presence in the series since its first episode (although she didn't speak until the fourth episode, and wasn't named until the sixth); she was not revealed to be trans before 'The Gatekeeper,' although the episode makes it clear that she was openly transgender in her everyday life. While the series has a regular focus on diversity and inclusion, 'The Gatekeeper' was the first episode of Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur to exclusively focus on trans representation and pushing back against anti-trans bigotry.

Unclear at time of writing is whether or not the episode was intended to be pulled from both of Disney's release outlets for the series — Disney Channel and Disney+ — or merely the younger-skewing former outlet, which is aimed primarily at an age 6-14 demographic. On Disney+, Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is classified until the Marvel banner, which also includes the adult-content Echo series and R-rated Deadpool movies. Disney+ notably does have a Pride-bannered section of curated content that includes trans characters, and also features content such as ESPN's Mack Wrestles, a documentary short about a transgender wrestler. 

What’s particularly curious about this particular example of a pulled episode, the leak is not that of an unfinished work — ‘The Gatekeeper’ is fully-completed. As Matt Braly — who has worked on Big City Greens, Gravity Falls, and Amphibia for Disney animation, and is therefore very familiar with the process of Disney Channel animation — pointed out on social media, “if an episode got this far, it was approved multiple times by multiple divisions… S&P approved this ep. It was good to go.” (S&P is short for “Standards & Practices,” the network division responsible for monitoring content intended for air.)

Neither the Walt Disney Company, nor Marvel Animation — which co-produced the episode — have officially commented publicly on the subject at time of writing.

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