Barber Westchester is a film within a larger series, “The Blindfold.”

Peppers is currently working on the concluding film related to this series, The Cone Layer, slated for a 2026 or 2027 release. You can support the upcoming feature by joining her Patreon or purchasing a bundle of the previously completed works on Gumroad, including the recently completed Take Off the Blindfold, Adjust Your Eyes, Look in the Mirror, See The Face Of Your Mother (2025) (see Goodbye Forever Party and The Final Exit of the Disciples of Ascensia). 

The incorporation of the creature coming out of an egg is significant in queer and particularly trans culture. When an egg “cracks,” it symbolizes a person realizing they are trans. To learn more about this history, I recommend the 2024 Them article by Evelyn Bauer “Cracking The History of The Trans ‘Egg.'”

Another short that includes imagery of the egg cracking in this database is Me and The Matrix (Áine, 2021).

Originally intended to have a festival run in 2022, the film faced a setback when, before a midnight screening at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Drew received a letter from Warner Bros. Discovery. The letter impacted the film's release, as the Wired article "The Best Queer Batman Parody You Almost Never Saw" by Angela Watercutter notes how multiple news outlets misreported it as a much more serious cease-and-desist letter. As a result, the film faced difficulty obtaining a distributor, and led to a period of secret, theatrical screenings.

In 2024, the film gained a distributor, Altered Innocence, and received a larger, limited theatrical run, concluding with both streaming and physical media releases.

Wade’s younger sibling, Lake, is credited as the first nonbinary character in a Pixar film, and is voiced by nonbinary voice actor Kai Ava Hauser. In the film, Lake’s nonbinary identity is not stated explicitly, and she is addressed with she/her pronouns. However, Lake is canonically nonbinary in some of Elemental’s related media. In the book Unlikely Friends (Rusu, 2023), their role is expanded further throughout the story, and their pronouns are exclusively they/them. 

Additionally, due to the characters being elementals there is an ambiguity in the character design. I have included androgyny and queer to reflect this aspect. If anyone who worked on the film can confirm whether there were supposed to be additional queer background characters (in particular the couples seen dancing in the park), please feel free to reach out, and I will adjust the categorization accordingly.