Gonzo, the blue alien character in Disney Junior’s Muppet Babies reboot, is gender creative! An episode last week showed him donning a princess dress, with his friends offering unconditional acceptance.
In the episode “Gonzo-rella,” the characters are all getting ready for a royal ball being planned by Miss Piggy and penguin Summer. Gonzo sees a picture of a dress in a book and says he’d love to wear something like that to the ball. Summer tells him, however, that boys must come as knights and girls as princesses. Gonzo is crushed.
Rizzo the Rat, playing the Fairy RatFather, sees his friend’s distress and gives him a dress and mask to wear to the ball. After the ball, all the friends talk about the beautiful unknown princess who was there, and Gonzo tells them it was him. Miss Piggy asks why he hid his identity, and he explains, “You all expected me to look a certain way. I don’t want you to be upset with me. But I don’t want to do things because that’s the way they’ve always been done either. I want to be me.”
Muppet Babies executive producer Tom Warburton told D23, the official Disney Fan Club, that they had long wanted to do an episode where Gonzo just showed up wearing a skirt and “No one cared or questioned it because Gonzo is always 200% Gonzo 347% of the time.” Then story editor/co-producer Robyn Brown and her team came up with the Cinderella theme, “And it was just SO wonderfully Gonzo. We hope he inspires kids watching to be 347% of themselves in their own way, too.”
Muppet Babies isn’t the only show for younger children (preschoolers) showing characters with a range of gender expressions, gender identities, and sexual identities: Sesame Street (HBO Max/PBS), Madagascar: Call of the Wild (Dreamworks Animation), and new show Ridley Jones (Netflix) have recently done so. (Click the links for more info.) Additionally, Disney’s The Owl House, for slightly older children (approximately eight years old and up), last week introduced nonbinary character Raine Whispers, voiced by nonbinary actor Avi Roque, although according to a tweet by Roque, this was only a guest appearance. The Owl House, however, last year introduced the company’s first bisexual character in protagonist Luz Noceda (voiced by Sarah-Nicole Robles), along with ongoing character Amity Blight (voiced by Mae Whitman), who is a lesbian.
Watch a clip of the Muppet Babies episode below, or watch the whole episode on Disney Junior. You can also stream it on the DisneyNOW app (requires a cable subscription) or Disney+ (though the episode hasn’t dropped there quite yet).