- Shrek 5 is set to hit theaters around Christmas 2026
- And while we have a little while to wait, eagle-eyed fans noticed something different about Shrek’s daughter – voiced by Zendaya – in a recent teaser trailer
- Some followers of the franchise are convinced that the character is trans, due to her changed eye color
Shrek 5 is officially in the works, and we’re sure theaters will be packed upon the movie’s release around Christmas 2026.
But until then, we’ll have to wait patiently for DreamWorks to feed us the teaser trailers for the latest film in the franchise – the first of which came last week.
While the clip divided fans – including the voice actor who plays Donkey at Universal Studios – due to the altered appearance of our favorite animated characters, others had questions surrounding Shrek’s daughter.
In the trailer, the character, who is played by Zendaya, is thought to be Felicia – Shrek and Fiona’s only female child.
But eagle-eyed fans are wondering if producers have something else up their sleeves for the teenager.
Why do fans think Shrek’s daughter is trans?
Longtime Shrek fans will know that the ogre and his wife became the proud parents of triplets in Shrek the Third.
The three babies – ‘born’ in 2007 – were named Fergus, Farkle and Felicia.
While the two male children had brown eyes, Felicia notably has blue eyes.
So viewers were puzzled when the new clip showed Zendaya’s character to have the same eye color as her brothers – prompting them to wonder if the teenager we were shown last week is actually Felicia, or if one of her siblings has transitioned to be female.
Anyway, Shrek's daughter is trans and yall cannot tell me otherwise, the only girl had blue eyes, she has brown eyes, trans queen pic.twitter.com/w4pHbq1jgZ
— ☆San☆ SEEING PTV 25/09 (@3Cheers4San) March 4, 2025
“Either they gave her brown contacts, or that’s actually Shrek’s trans daughter,” speculated one fan on social media.
Another went on, “Canon or not, I like the idea of a Shrek trans kid because literally one of the main themes from the franchise in both Shrek 1 and 2 was transformation.”
Someone else agreed, “It probably won’t be the case – but Shrek being a series all about identity and getting to choose who you are in spite of the circumstances of your upbringing, would be the best franchise to have an explicitly trans main character.”
What other explanations could there be?
either they gave her brown contacts or that’s actually shrek’s trans daughter pic.twitter.com/9l3i2w19zI
— stormy ⛈ (@wysps) February 27, 2025
Many people debunked this theory by saying that “a lot of babies who are born with blue eyes end up with brown eyes as they age”.
This is true, as Burton Kushner, professor of ophthalmology at the School of Medicine and Public Health, states in his research.
“Melanin […] can make the iris brown as well,” he said. “Melanin is not fully developed in newborn babies, so the iris is relatively devoid of whatever melanin pigment it will have, and that gives the eye its baby-blue eye color.”
But by nine or 12 months, “the iris of a child destined to be brown-eyed has finished producing melanin, which causes the eye to turn brown”.
And considering we see the babies celebrating their first birthdays in Shrek Forever After – the fourth movie in the franchise – this means they will just have reached the top end of that timescale in the film.
Of course, the simplest explanation is that the studio forgot that they had previously given Felicia blue eyes – after all, it has been a whopping 15 years since the last Shrek movie hit our screens.
We suppose we’ll just have to wait for the movie to come out to officially know what’s happening…
