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This can only really be a quick history because there isn’t much of it. With the release of Strange World though, Disney Animation Studios’ sixty first feature length movie, that may be set to change. The story centres around three generations of an influential family; the intrepid explorer grandfather, the reformative farmer father and the undecided son. While that last character is sketchy in terms of who to follow with his vocational calling though, he is a lot surer of his sexuality as he is openly and significantly, for reasons we will see, unambiguously gay.

To trace the baby steps Disney have taken in finding this representation in their cartoon films we only have to go back to 2016 (I told you it was a short history). You may remember that there was a couple of antelope guys living next door to rabbit police officer Judy Hopps in Zootropolis and that they made a lot of noise, disturbing the young bunny while she was trying to rest off duty. What you may not recall though is that these two, credited as Bucky and Pronk Oryx-Antlerson, we actually married. You’d be forgiven for missing this as they made nothing of it whatsoever in the film, they could have just as easily have been brothers, but when viewers looking for this possibility inquired as to their relationship status, it was confirmed that they were indeed Mr and Mr.

These ‘could be/maybe/maybe not’ gay players might also feature in 2019’s Frozen 2 and 2021’s Raya & the Last Dragon. There has long been a suggestion that Elsa is a lesbian, and the whole not fitting in or wanting to go public thing about her character leans in to this. In the second Frozen movie though there is a stronger suggestion that she may be feeling an attraction to the young Honeymaren but it doesn’t go anywhere. Similarly, when she is a girl Raya becomes friends with a quickly trusts Namaari who soon rejects and deceives her. Some have read that the reason she was unable to see her new friend’s dishonesty was because she was blinded by fancying her. None of this is clear or key to the plot in either movie though and it might just be because neither lead female has a male love interest which doesn’t feel like a good enough reason to assume they are gay. Moana hasn’t been a part of this conversation for some reason but Pixar’s Merida certainly has. They might just be strong, independent ladies and that is enough. Not finding men attractive is not the only reason not to be in a relationship with one.

To be fair, Pixar have lead on this compared to their parent company. It didn’t really go any further than the Oryx-Antlersons but there were lesbian couples in the background in Finding Dory in 2016 and Toy Story 4 in 2019. More explicit was Officer Spector, the cyclops cop in Onward who actually had lines and used them to reference her wife and then they had a clear gay couple in Lightyear earlier this year. (Incidentally Lightyear and Strange World were box office failures but I really hope no one suggests this is because of the inclusion of homosexual people.)

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Of course if we are counting Disney animation characters who ‘might be’ gay then we can go further back. La Fou’s orientation in 1991’s Beauty & the Beast was confirmed when they gave him a same sex love interest in the 2017 live action adaptation and there is also Li Shang in 1998’s Mulan who was very quick to fall for the titular lady warrior as soon as she was shown to be female so might have been bi and liked her already. (Their relationship was totally written out of the live action version because he was also her commanding officer and this is more problematic in relationship terms now than it was twenty four years ago.)

Then there are others like Jafar and Timon and Pumbaa, and Madame in The Aristocats who have all been discussed as possibly being gay over the years. The one that has been most analysed in this respect is Ursula from The Little Mermaid but actually there is a theory that Ariel herself might be coded gay and the whole story might be a metaphor for young people not being allowed to love who they want to love. (Let’s see if the live action version does anything with that, although they are already doing great things for representation without this.)

With so many gay artists working for Disney over the decades, it is very likely that some of the above characters were drawn with this intention. If you look at Pleakley in Lilo & Stitch and Ratcliffe’s servant Wiggins in Pocahontas, this seems quite obvious but I’m sure it’s not limited to these two.

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Either way, with Strange World it finally looks like the closet is open. Interestingly young Ethan’s homosexuality is not really a part of the story but it does figure quite heavily. It might even be laboured at times but nonetheless it presents a world where whether your crush is on a boy or a girl is irrelevant and that said world is not actually strange at all. I did wonder if the grandfather who has been out of touch with society for two decades may be seen to pause on hearing his grandson is gay but he doesn’t react to it at all which is how it should be if not always how it would be.

The path is definitely set then, whether it be in the rumoured Frozen 3 or some other story we seem very likely to soon get a lesbian Disney Princess. The studio has already done much to move away from the idea it once established, that a woman’s path to happiness was in marrying a man, but they now look ready to go one further. Even Strange World backs away from any gay kissing but I look forward to the Disney fairytale movie that closes on the image of two women, or men, locking lips like the end of all of those other classic films.

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Strange World is on Disney+ now. It is entertaining enough but that doesn’t matter, you have to watch it and contribute to those viewing figures for other reasons.