When Marvel Rivals launched Season 8 Sins of Alchemax on May 15, 2026, many players were surprised that Devil Dinosaur would be a playable character. The hero shooter teased Devil Dino would be added to the game at some point, nobody expected it would happen so soon.
Naturally, you’d expect Devil’s companion Moon Girl (Lunella Lafayette) would be in the game as well since the duo are usually tied to the hip. And she is in Marvel Rivals…as a non-playable character (NPC). It’s a frustrating decision that has a lot to do with Lunella’s age and a problem Marvel has been avoiding for years.
Why Isn’t Moon Girl a Playable Character?
In Season 8, Sins of Alchemax, Moon Girl is captured by the villainous corporation Alchemax alongside Cyclops. She appears in the trailer announcing the new season. You can hear her voice lines when Devil fights alone in-game (voiced by singer and actress Diamond White, reprising her role from the TV series Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur). It’s even implied Moon Girl came up with a solution to the Timestream Entanglement, the main source of conflict in Marvel Rivals.
She is as much of a main character this season as any other hero. She just isn’t playable.
According to a Twitter/X thread by prominent Marvel Rivals leaker Miller Ross, the reason is because including a child combatant would be more trouble than it’s worth. It would cause a brand image nightmare with the idea of having a 10-year old girl getting shot by an adult character in a PVP hero shooter. Some fans have also expressed their concerns that certain players would use Moon Girl’s model to sexualize the character (who again just turned 10-years old in the comics).
Another problem is that Marvel Games were allegedly against adding Moon Girl to Rivals because “she’s an Inhuman, a member of a race of genetically altered superhumans who gain unique powers after they’re exposed to a chemical vapor called the Terrigen Mists. Marvel has been reluctant to use Inhumans in any of their content after fans accused them of using Inhumans as a replacement for Mutants in the 2010s, along with the 2017 live-action TV series Inhumans being a disastrous failure.
“Marvel Games would rather they don’t [add Moon Girl to Rivals] by virtue of her being an Inhuman,” Ross said, “and them wanting to push mutants as we go into a very mutant-centric period of the MCU and the brand moreover.”
Despite it all, Ross made it clear that NetEase loves Moon Girl and had always planned to include her in the game. Having Moon Girl be a background character is better than if she wasn’t featured at all. Plus with Marvel Rivals driving public interest in lesser-known characters, the exposure Lunella is getting could open the door for her to appear in other Marvel-related content.
The Devs Aged Peni Parker Up… Why Won’t They Do It for Lunella?
Why not just age Lunella up? That sounds like a simple solution. Marvel Rivals did it with Peni Parker. In the comics and films, Peni is typically depicted as being around 14 years old. In Marvel Rivals, developer Danny Koo confirmed during the 2025 beta that she is officially 18 in the game’s continuity.
If it worked for Peni, why not Lunella Lafayette?
The difference comes down to what each character is about. Peni’s appeal lies in the psychic bond she shares with her SP//dr mech and her tactical brilliance. Aging her up from 14 to 18 is a minor detail that didn’t change who she is.
Moon Girl is different. Her core identity is the contrast between her age and her intelligence. In the comics, Lunella Lafayette has been confirmed to have a higher IQ than Reed Richards, one of the greatest scientific minds in the Marvel Universe. Being one of the smartest people in the world at 9 to 10-years old is remarkable. A 16 to 18-year old super genius doesn’t stand out as much.
Miller Ross even addressed this, stating that aging Lunella up “would basically mean making an entirely new character.” It’s a major problem.
Keeping Moon Girl a Child is a Limitation
Moon Girl’s age is a ceiling that limits what can be done with her character and Marvel helped create this issue. Keep her a kid forever and you lock her out of some interesting stories you could write about her.
Child prodigies in real life don’t always have easy lives. They spend their childhoods being the one who’s smarter than the adults. They can solve the unsolvable, which makes everyone rethink what’s possible. But then they reach adolescence or adulthood and everything becomes more difficult. Burnout, loneliness and isolation. They’re hit with the slow, disorienting feeling that being the smartest person in the room doesn’t teach them how to handle loss, or heartbreak. Many real-world prodigies describe adolescence and early adulthood as the hardest period of their lives.
That is excellent territory when it comes to storytelling. And Moon Girl never gets to that point. Devil Dinosaur can protect her from villains. He can’t help her through the moments when her intellect becomes a burden.
Moon Girl is a character whose greatest strength is also her greatest weakness. Her brilliance only makes her extraordinary because it’s inseparable from her being a child. Age her up and she loses the thing that makes her stand out.
Thankfully Rivals is renewing interest in Moon Girl. Maybe Marvel will decide to reinvest in the character. It would be nice to see a talented writer flesh out Lunella Lafayette’s story. To have her experience the fact that growing up can be the hardest problem you’ll ever face and the one her genius mind can’t solve alone.
We just need Marvel to decide they’re ready to let her grow up enough to tell a story like that.
Marvel Rivals is free to play on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.
