Before Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania hits theaters next week, fans should be aware that another new effort from the House of Ideas is arriving on the small screen this Friday. Namely, Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, a Disney animated series based on the underrated and unlikely titular duo. The brain behind the project is none other than Marvel veteran Laurence Fishburne, who has now revealed how he thinks his show compares to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Fishburne — who voiced the eponymous ally in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and played Bill Foster in Ant-Man and the Wasp — opened up to Good Morning America about why he thinks Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur is such a special series that deserves your attention. The Matrix icon highlighted the importance of its young African-American heroine, Luna Lafayette (played by Diamond White):
“You can’t be what you can’t see, so Wakanda Forever… all five of the leads are Black women. This is very much in that vein,” he noted, likening Luna to such popular characters as Shuri (Letitia Wright), Okoye (Danai Gurira), and Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) from the MCU.
As for Luna herself, Fishburne summed up the show’s premise in this handy-dandy soundbite that is guaranteed to make you want to watch: “Our lead is an African-American 13-year-old girl who lives on the Lower East Side with her family and runs a roller rink, and she just happens to have a 50-foot T-Rex as a sidekick.”
Fishburne states that the series has been in the works for five years, so this is clearly a passion project for him, which is probably why he gave himself the juicy role of the show’s villain, none other than The Beyonder, a character who could easily go on to a major player in the MCU, too.
Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur makes its Disney Channel premiere this Friday, Feb. 10 before hitting Disney Plus on Wednesday, Feb. 15.
