The Disney Channel series The Owl House is the very first Disney show with a main character who is bisexual.
While the Pixar short Out was released on Disney+ in May, featured a gay main character, The Owl House’s Luz Noceda, a 14-year-old Dominican American girl who travels to another world to become a witch — is the first bisexual character to be featured in a Disney TV series.
According to ABC News, the show premiered in January and just returned in June after a short break. Throughout the series, Luz was “at odds” with another female character named Amity, but in the two most recent episodes, it was revealed that Amity wanted to ask Luz to Grom—their world’s version of Prom—and they end up dancing together, Gizmodo reported.
Dana Terrace, the series’ creator, confirmed that Luz is bisexual in a tweet after the most recent episode aired, writing that Disney leadership initially told her that she could not depict a gay or bisexual relationship on the Disney Channel. But she didn’t give up, and she says leadership is now very supportive.
“I’m bi! I want to write a bi character, d****t!,” she tweeted on August 9. “Luckily my stubbornness paid off and now I am VERY supported by current Disney leadership.”
RELATED: Is SpongeBob Squarepants Actually Gay?
She then pushed other creatives to not give up when it comes to fighting for characters who look like them. “Representation matters! Always fight to make what YOU want to see!” she wrote.
In film and media that younger audiences consume, LGBTQ+ characters are lacking despite the fact that an estimated 2 million to 3.7 million children under the age of 18 in the U.S. have an LGTBQ+ parent, according to a 2015 survey.
And according to 2017 data from the CDC, an estimated 1.3 million high school students (8%) reported identifying in the LGBTQ community.
RELATED: ‘I’m Free!’ 90-Year-Old Man Comes Out to His Gay Daughter in Truly Touching Video
As a result of this, Disney has been faced with mounting pressure over the years to include more diverse main characters and show more queer relationships.
Pride described many of Disney’s first attempts at depicting queer characters as “blink-and-you-missed-it” moments, where the characters were shown only in passing.
And in March of 2020, Onward featured the first openly gay animated character in a Disney movie. A cyclops cop by the name, Officer Specter, voiced by out actor Lena Waithe, mentions in passing how her “girlfriend’s daughter got me pulling my hair out.”