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.

Starbuck claimed that Lindz’s Queer Kid Stuff YouTube channel “indoctrinates kids into the trans ideology.”

“Hollywood is working to indoctrinate your kids into the woke cult,” Starbuck wrote. “Paw Patrol’s new spinoff series is just the latest example of it.”

My hardened, cynical nonbinary self really wanted to be a hater about the nonbinary coded Paw Patrol spinoff character, if only for the fact that the phrase “nonbinary-coded Paw Patrol spinoff character” is hilarious and surreal. But seeing the ways that right-wingers are still freaking the fuck out over this incredibly subtly coded character, every ounce of haterism dissipated from my body. (All of Amer’s recent replies are flooded with dozens of tweets from conservatives accusing them of being a pedophile and a groomer.)

Elemental Features Pixar’s First Nonbinary Character, a Lake Who Wears Earrings

Fans compared the revelation to a recent episode of The Other Two.

And again, this is not an example of Disney-style blink-and-you-’ll-miss-it “representation” that can be cut in an instant to appease international censorship laws. Beyond being a nonbinary person themself, Amer has years of experience and a clear passion for creating LGBTQ+ content for children. I’m not particularly invested in representation discourse in general, but I can acknowledge that when it comes to children’s media, diverse characters and storylines are genuinely important.

I truly hate to hand it to the Paw Patrol extended universe, but honestly, they did a good job, aside from the whole “subtly normalizing the police state” thing. Thankfully, we live in a time where there are quite a few nonbinary characters in children’s media that don’t normalize the police state. But again, if Paw Patrol had to throw a character in there that’s only identifiable as nonbinary by their socks, at least they got an actual nonbinary person to write them. And honestly, maybe that subtler-than-subtle approach is preferable to um, the other way.

Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s weekly newsletter here.