‘Paw Patrol’s’ Nonbinary-Coded Character Is, Um, Very Subtly Coded

Joining the vaunted ranks of Disney’s personified lake with earrings and some guy in a trans flag tank in one scene of Baymax!, a Paw Patrol spinoff has brought viewers its first nonbinary character.

Rubble & Crew, the aforementioned spinoff of the popular children’s copaganda program, semi-recently introduced River, a skateboarder and amateur photographer who’s new to the town of Builder Cove, where the show is set. By “semi-recently” I mean that the episode aired on August 21, but for some reason, conservatives only caught wind of the show “going woke” this week.

The reason it took them so long is perhaps because River is never once identified as nonbinary, nor are third-person pronouns used for them. But they are wearing socks that are kind of the colors of the trans flag, as the character’s writer, Lindz Amer, pointed out in an Instagram post.

In Rubble & Crew’s defense (which yes, is a phrase I never thought I would have to type in my life), they did the right thing by specifically seeking out a nonbinary writer to inform the character. Amer runs the webseries/podcast Queer Kid Stuff, which is focused on providing child-friendly queer edutainment. So they were, by all accounts, the perfect person for the job. Plus, River is also voiced by a nonbinary actor, Cihang Ma.

This all went over pretty unremarkably until this past Monday when conservative influencer Robby Starbuck posted about the character (and Amer themself) to Twitter.