Progressives Hope ‘Finding Dory’ Features Disney’s First Lesbian Couple

FindingDory
Screenshot/Disney

A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment from the latest trailer for Disney/Pixar’s upcoming film Finding Dory has prompted speculation that the film will be the first Disney project to feature a lesbian couple.

Just after the 1:00 mark in the latest teaser for the film (above), which premiered on the Ellen DeGeneres Show last week, a child gets a bottle knocked out her hands and is helped by a passing adult, possibly the child’s mother. When the camera focuses on the adult, she appears next to another woman.

“Did Disney just unveil its first lesbian couple?” Salon’s Nico Lang asked. “If audiences are perhaps jumping the gun in anticipation of this possible milestone, it’s because queer people are desperate and hungry for more than we’ve been given in the past.”

The speculation over the possible lesbian characters in Finding Dory comes just a few weeks after progressives took to Twitter to launch a hashtag campaign urging Disney to give one of its princesses — Elsa, from Frozen — a female love interest in that film’s upcoming sequel.

Thousands of tweeters used the hashtag #GiveElsaAGirlfriend to campaign for that storyline.

Just last week, a similar hashtag campaign was used to urge Marvel, another subsidiary of Disney, to #GiveCaptainAmericaABoyfriend. Many already had a possible suitor for Cap in mind: Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier.

While it was unclear whether or not the characters in the Finding Dory trailer are, in fact, lesbian, LGBT characters could soon find their way into Marvel’s wildly popular superhero films.

Earlier this month, Captain America: Civil War directors Joe and Anthony Russo said that “chances are strong” that gay characters will appear in an upcoming Marvel film, though they wouldn’t speculate as to when or in which films.

Finding Dory stars Ellen DeGeneres as the titular forgetful fish. Albert Brooks, Idris Elba, Bill Hader, Kate McKinnon, Dominic West, Eugene Levy, Kaitlin Olson, and Ed O’Neill co-star. Andrew Stanton returns to direct.

The film is in theaters June 17.

Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum.

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