A former Marvel showrunner has come forward with allegations that Disney instructed him to make two X-Men characters on his show “less gay.” On Tuesday, X-Men ’97 executive Beau DeMayo shared a post on X, alluding that the studio told him to make Magneto and Professor X’s relationship more platonic for marketing purposes.
Demayo was terminated from Disney in March after completing the first two seasons of X-Men ‘97, a revival of X-Men: The Animated Series, which ran for several seasons in the 1990s.
Although Disney issued a statement claiming the series creator was fired for “egregious misconduct,” DeMayo, who had his Season 2 credits stripped, denied the allegations on X, explaining he was terminated for posting X-Men fan art for gay pride on Instagram.
“Above is #XMen fan-art I posted on Instagram for Gay Pride in June,” he wrote. “On June 13, #Marvel sent a letter notifying me that they’d stripped my Season 2 credits due to the post. Sadly, this is the latest in a troubling pattern I suffered through while working on #XMen97 and #Blade.”
Although Disney did not respond to DeMayo’s accusations, in several other posts on X, he relayed examples of Disney executives pushing him to make X-Men ‘97 “less gay.”
In one episode, applauded by members of the LGBT community, Magneto is being held captive by supervillain Bastian in his secret base tied to a St. Andrews cross, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers. However, DeMayo claimed his original intention was for Magneto to be fully nude.
“Originally, he was nude, and the beat played as dehumanizing torture,” wrote Demayo. “It was Marvel’s idea to put him in briefs. The crew and I were so beaten down by that point we just gave each other looks, knowing their note would do the opposite. Such is ignorance…”
Similarly, in the season finale of the series, DeMayo shared that Disney referred to one of his scenes between Magneto and Professor X “exchanging brotherly solidarity” as being “too gay” and “creepy.”
DeMayo’s accusations come on the heels of a shocking expose detailing the pressures of working on Pixar Animation Studios blockbuster film Inside Out 2.
As previously reported by Bounding Into Comics, nearly a dozen Pixar employees came forward, admitting to poor working conditions following massive layoffs, pressure from executives to perfect the film after several box office failures, and an internal push to avoid LGBT themes. “That was the pressure felt by everybody,” explained one source, adding that most of the staff believed the studio would go under if the film wasn’t a box office success.
“We need this movie to succeed because we won’t have a studio [otherwise]. And that is the pressure that everybody felt the whole time. The whole time. Even now, I think people are gone, still feeling that pressure of like, ‘Oh my God, we did it. We did it.’”
In addition to noting the immense pressure executives put on animators and other people working on the film, many employees also admitted that the studio was keen to avoid LGBT themes following the Lightyear controversy.
In 2022, the Toy Story spinoff Lightyear sparked backlash for featuring a same-sex kiss, which was briefly removed from the film and restored following staff uproar over Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act.
“It is, as far as I know, still a thing, where leadership, they’ll bring up Lightyear specifically and say, ‘Oh, Lightyear was a financial failure because it had a queer kiss in it,'” said one source. “That’s not the reason the movie failed.”
According to several sources, many executives believed incorporating LGBT elements was why Lightyear flopped at the box office, prompting them to advise employees working on Inside Out 2 to make its protagonist, Riley, “less gay.”
In addition to being told to make the relationship between Riley and Val, a new supporting character, “as platonic as possible,” staff were also instructed to adjust the lighting and mood of some scenes to “remove any trace of romantic chemistry.”
“[It’s] just doing a lot of extra work to make sure that no one would potentially see them as not straight,” said one source.
News that Disney flip-flopped on promoting LGBT themes in its productions sparked a mixed reaction online, with many pointing out that the company’s attempt to incorporate a “not-so-secret gay agenda” has backfired.
In 2022, Journalist Christopher Rufo shared a video of Disney executives attending a virtual meeting to discuss the Parental Rights in Education Bill. Included among the footage was a clip of Latoya Raveneau, an executive producer, saying her team implemented a “not-so-secret-gay agenda and is regularly adding queerness to children’s programming.”
The video prompted immense backlash online and was leaked one day after Florida Governor Ron Desantis signed the bill into law.