This article was originally published in WSS’s print edition March 6 under the title “Grayscale.”
“Leaving soon.”
The words appear encased in red on my favorite show. I feel a flash of anger, but mostly disappointment. It’s ironic — a successful Netflix original gone just eight years after its debut.
“She-Ra and the Princesses of Power” was one of the first shows where I saw LGBTQ+ representation in younger characters. Growing up, queerness felt like something that was limited to adults — something far away — something not for me. It took meeting dozens of other queer kids in middle school for me to realize that being “not straight” was even an option before adulthood.
The representation within these characters is something rare and beautiful. A majority of the cast is queer, and it’s never a thing. No one ever has to come out, and no one is ever treated differently based on their sexuality. What matters is simply who they love.
“She-Ra” debuted on Netflix as an original in 2018 to critical acclaim, adapted from the original 1980s show for a new generation. In its first year, it received around nine million views and a GLAAD win for Outstanding Kids and Family Programming in 2021.
But that success wasn’t enough. When Netflix’s distribution license with Dreamworks expired, the platform chose not to renew it.
“The Owl House” faced a similar misfortune. The show built a devoted audience and received widespread praise, particularly from young LGBTQ+ viewers. Like “She-Ra,” queerness was normalized in their society. When the main character, Luz, who is bisexual, falls for a classmate, the focus is on whether she likes her back and how to ask her out — never if she likes girls or not.
Despite its popularity, Disney canceled the show because it tended to have an older audience and “didn’t fit the brand,” according to “The Owl House” creator Dana Terrace. That may be the official explanation, but it’s difficult to ignore the broader climate — one where parents may complain about indoctrination due to its LGBTQ+ representation. Because of the cancellation, the third and final season was shortened and rushed.
This kind of authentic and diverse representation is rare. More shows are starting to have queer characters, but they often fit into a box of what straight people think LGBTQ+ people are. Everyone deserves to have characters they can connect to on screen, to have the world they live in reflected in all its beauty and all its flaws.
When it comes to children’s shows, LGBTQ+ representation is especially limited, with same-sex parents being the majority of representation. This creates the idea, especially among youth, that queer people are only background characters in someone else’s life. Beyond that rigid perspective, people complain that a show “already has enough queer characters” or that creators didn’t need to “make someone gay.”
This is an ongoing trend. From “She-Ra” to “The Owl House,” it’s become evident: the more representation the media has, the more it gets attacked. Parents accuse creators of indoctrination and create “no-watch” lists of kids shows with LGBTQ+ characters, doing anything they can to get even the idea of queerness away from their kids. Media companies bent to that backlash.
Erasing queer characters from kids’ shows and movies doesn’t erase queer people from existence. The reality is that queerness isn’t just for adults, and these shows help kids know that they are valid and not alone. Representation at all levels of media is vital to cultivating a society that is accepting of all people.
Granted, society has come a long way. But representation rarely encapsulates the true diversity of the queer community, and the shows that do often face extensive criticism and cancellation. A study from GLAAD indicates that in shows that premiered across a variety of platforms from summer 2024 to summer 2025, around a third of queer characters will not be returning for another season. Queer people are here to stay, and taking away our representation won’t change that.
