The moment Disney fired Gina Carano was the moment it tied itself to her in a way that, in its hubris, they didn't anticipate.
Many of you know the tale by now. Carano was a star on the hit Disney+ show, The Mandalorian. She refused to play politics by adopting pronouns into her bio, and even went so far as to mock the outrage that came to her after refusing to play the pronoun game.
From there, the leftists at Disney plotted to acquiesce to the demands of the terminally online rage mobs, and finally got their chance when Carano published an Instagram post warning people about how treating each other as "others" can lead to disastrous outcomes through the history lesson of Nazis rounding up Jews so easily thanks to neighbors being seduced into hating them via Nazi propaganda.
They fired Carano, calling her post "abhorrent" despite the fact that her co-star, Pedro Pascal, had compared the Trump "kids in cages" talking point to Nazi concentration camps.
Disney thought she was a goner, but the cat came back the very next day. Carano — with the help of Elon Musk — launched a lawsuit that Disney has now settled with her on. As Katie Jerkovich reported, Carano considers this a huge victory — as she should — and hopes this will bring "some healing to the force."
Read: 'I'm Smiling': Gina Carano Announces Update In Suit Against Disney Over ‘The Mandalorian’ Firing
For its own part, Disney-Lucasfilm gave an interesting quote, according to The Hollywood Reporter:
In a statement, a Lucasfilm spokesperson said, “With this lawsuit concluded, we look forward to identifying opportunities to work together with Ms. Carano in the near future.”
“We have reached an agreement with Gina Carano to resolve the issues in her pending lawsuit against the companies,” it added. “Ms. Carano was always well respected by her directors, co-stars, and staff, and she worked hard to perfect her craft while treating her colleagues with kindness and respect.”
The important phrase here was, "we look forward to identifying opportunities to work together."
I hope, for Disney's sake, they're being genuine with this, because I see Carano as their main way to begin winning back the trust of Americans, which Disney broke so severely over the course of the last five years.
I think it's clear that Carano wants to get back to it, and putting Carano back into the role of Cara Dune would be a huge step for her, but it would also be something Disney could use more symbolically.
The fact is, Disney fired Carano because of a radical ideological bias that had — and still does to an extent — infected the company. There was no real reason to fire Carano other than to scratch that particular itch. There was a conservative Christian working among them, she refused to bend the knee to their politics, and as such, she had to go.
The entire world saw Disney do this and immediately knew it was over that bias, especially in the light of Pascal's own tweet going wholly unpunished.
Yet, there have been ongoing signs that Disney's been trying to right the ship. While I wouldn't say they've been entirely successful, it can't be denied that Disney executives have been trying to drag the company back toward the middle. Firing hyper-woke executives, laying off radicals within the company, forcing re-writes on movies that had too much political messaging in them — it's all a sign that Disney is trying to leave the radicalism behind, at least in a public-facing way.
But it's all not good enough, because none of it is actually a full sign of commitment.
But putting Gina Carano back into a central role? Now that wouldn't just be correcting a mistake they made, it would be a statement.
Putting Carano back into their ranks would show the rigidity is easing. Other opinions and beliefs are welcome. It would show that the era of Disney's fascistic commitment to leftism is melting.
Would it bridge the divide? No, but it would be the beginning of something that would eventually become healing the trust Disney broke with the American people. It would be proof positive that it's at least trying by bringing in the one innocent person they probably hurt more than any other.
A bonus to this would also likely be that bringing Carano back on would cause some at Disney to jump ship, because there isn't enough room for actual inclusion and their ideological ego.
Carano is the key, I think, and if I'm thinking this, there's undoubtedly an exec or two thinking the same.
