The controversy over Disney’s new Christian character, briefly explained

Disney has added an explicitly Christian character to Pixar’s new series Win or Lose. That might not be head-turning in isolation, but it comes just months after nixing a transgender character’s storyline from the same show, and amid a cultural wave of pushbacks to diversification, both for Disney and the country at large. Now fans online are speculating about exactly what this latest move might mean. Is Disney entering a new conservative era, or is this just all business as usual? Let’s take a look. Pixar’s series, which debuted on Disney+ at the end of February, follows a team of preteen softball players, with each episode focusing on a different character. Reports about what actually happened to Win or Lose’s trans character seem to be in conflict. In December, the Hollywood Reporter reported that Disney characterized the changes as simply removing “a few lines of dialogue that referenced gender identity” from one character’s storyline. But as Deadline reported, Pixar had explicitly sought a trans voice actress to play the role, and she later described herself as “very disheartened” by the change. Some media reports have been oversimplistically juxtaposing the two decisions, either lamenting or celebrating the Christian character as a repudiation of the trans one, when of course, there can be overlap between religion and gender identity, and the Christianity portrayed in the show doesn’t take a position on the issue. Yet in a larger context, there are some grounds for questioning the company’s motives. Disney has spent decades battling pushback from conservatives over its LGBTQ inclusivity, most recently over its hostile response to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. The feud resulted in backlash on all sides, both for Florida and for then-Disney CEO Bob Chapek, who was subsequently given the boot in favor of his predecessor, Bob Igor. Igor’s second tenure over the company has been markedly less progressive. In November 2024, the Disney channel pulled an episode of the Marvelverse show Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur that featured a trans character. And this week, Disney+ canceled Tiana, a series sequel to animated film The Princess and the Frog, even though it had been underway since 2020. The film featured Disney’s first Black princess (Anika Noni Rose, who was reprising her role) — but the Mouse said this decision was about moving away from long-form streaming content rather than pulling back from shows with diverse casts. (For other recent diverse examples across the Disney empire, see Moana 2 and Agatha All Along.) That hasn’t stopped audiences across the political spectrum from making connections to what they see as a bigger change afoot. One frustrated fan described the cancellation of Tiana as “pure antiblackness.” “Openly gay out. Openly Christian in,” was how another Twitter user framed Win or Lose; yet another cheered the removal of the trans character and the portrayal of the Christian character as “what winning looks like!” In its current incarnation, however, Win or Lose isn’t easily a “win” for regressive politics. The show is not exactly pushing any barriers, but it’s far from proselytizing. The first episode shows a kid, Laurie, praying out loud to “Heavenly Father” as she waits for her turn to bat — but then she goes home and greets her tarot-reading, crystal-wearing mom. Meanwhile, there has been conservative upset online about another character: a Black mother who twerks. What these character decisions add up to for the company’s future is unclear. Ultimately, this doesn’t seem like a situation where anyone has to win or lose.