Has Marvel's Moon Girl And Devil Dinosaur Been Canceled?

The mosr critically acclaimed Marvel TV series is not even officially a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Instead, that honor goes to "Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur." This colorful and inventive animated series boasts a Rotten Tomatoes score of 100%, making it the only Marvel project with a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score. The show's small scale and sense of community distinguished it from most other Marvel TV shows and made "Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur" unique. However, even the most beloved TV shows don't last forever: "Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur" has been canceled, and Season 2 will be its last.

If it's any consolation, viewers won't be left with a cliffhanger, even though the first batch of episodes from Season 2 ended with Moon Girl (Diamond White) revealing her identity to her family, only for her mom (Sasheer Zamata) to forbid her from doing any superhero work. Although there will never be a Season 3, Disney permitted the show's creators to release an additional 10 episodes – which were reportedly meant to be part of a third season — in February 2025 to wrap up Season 2. While it's nice that Moon Girl at least gets a proper send-off, this beloved show has ended all too soon.

As is the case with many TV shows, poor viewership numbers may have been the reason that "Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur" was canceled. Yet according to some metrics, the series was relatively popular. Data collected by Parrot Analytics shows that audience demand for "Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur" was within the top 3% of the market.

Regardless of the actual viewership, Disney's perception of the show's performance undoubtedly impacted its cancellation. Executive producer Steve Loter told GamesRadar+, "It's going to be viewership that kind of dictates where we go from here." He urged viewers to watch the Season 2 premiere in February 2024, saying that audience engagement could make or break the chances of Season 3 happening. But it seems like not enough folks watched — or at least not as many folks as Disney was hoping — because the show was canceled later that year.

Some fans speculate that Disney may have set unrealistically high viewership goals for "Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur," essentially setting up the show for failure. It certainly didn't help that, after the first two episodes premiered on the Disney Channel, Disney made the next 12 episodes available on Disney+, giving viewers no reason to tune into the Disney Channel each week to watch the remaining episodes. What's more, many viewers believe that the show could have been more successful if Disney had put more effort into promoting it. In the eyes of many fans, however, the show was canceled for a dumb reason.

A backlash may have been one of the factors that affected the cancellation of "Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur." The showrunners originally planned to release an episode called "The Gatekeeper," which featured a storyline about a transgender character, yet Disney decided not to air it. In the now-leaked episode, trans teenager Brooklyn (Indya Moore) plays on a girl's volleyball team, but the coach (Amy Sedaris) of the opposing team tries to get Brooklyn disqualified after discovering her gender identity.

Some artists who worked on the show have argued that Disney made this decision to appease (or at least avoid attacks from) the Republican Party after the U.S. presidential election in 2024. Disney claims that it had already intended to withhold that episode long before the election. However, multiple viewers have pointed out that, in order for the episode to be this close to completion, Disney must have already approved it in the earliest stages of production, only to backpedal at the last minute.

Although the banned episode was announced after Season 3 was already canceled, both were probably sources of contention within Disney long before that. Insiders within the company have revealed that Disney had stopped production on the show for more than a year before the official cancellation announcement. Storyboard artist Gabi Rodea wrote on X (formerly Twitter) in a since-deleted post, "What sucks is that a bunch of us at Disney knew about this for so long but couldn't outright say it. The MoonGirl production area was a ghost town for over a year." It's sad to think that Disney may have given up on the show long before it did so officially.