u/MiaHasAHardName08

note, i don't fully beleive this theory, but it was something interesting to think about, that could potentially maybe hold some weight??

summer of the thirteenth primo always stuck out to me as a very transgender episode. i remember when i first watched it, i immediately knew that the twist was that the thirteenth primo was lita, but i was shocked to find out that the problem was that she got embarrassed on stage (and online), and not that she was transgender.

i made a post about the episode and it's trans undertones on youtube, and someone commented that it should have been a tere episode. and that got me thinking...

now, this might sound far fetched, but stick with me here.

what if it was originally a tere episode?

based on two of the cut segments of primos (summer of inhairitance and summer of maribossa), we know there was a lot the crew wanted to explore with tere, and the t-sisters character sheet tells us that her being trans was something they wanted to cover as well. (i know some people think trans tabi is canon because of her va, and that any plans for tere were moved to her, but until i find any solid confirmation, i'm sticking with trans tere as canon)

if you've watched the show (including the axed parts of it), you'll know that they never got to do that, though. considering what they said they wanted to do with cousin bud (but also didn't get to), we can safely assume disney shot down any of their ideas, not even letting them add implications for the primos being trans, let alone giving them episodes for it. the only trans confirmation we have in the show is alex, and they only have focus in one episodes, and many dubs censor their identity. ...but that's me getting a bit sidetracked. point is, disney wouldn't let natasha confirm tere as trans within the show.

she seemed pretty eager to do it, though. the character sheets do give a pretty strong idea that natasha wanted to do a lot for queer rep, and what we got of lita and alex shows she cared about doing it well. so summer of the thirteenth primo originally being a trans tere episode makes some sense to me.

but we all know what disney is like. the censors would most likely have pushed back on this episode, rework it into something different. so natasha and the other writers overhauled it. switched out the character of focus to one that was not originally stated as trans, changed the ending/motivation to hide the photo and throw off the investigation to give plausible deniability of it not being a trans episode, but still made it so there were some implications there/an allegory was present.

now, it may seem odd to switch out tere for someone else rather than just change the ending, and it makes the theory seem a lot more flimsy than it already does, but i think it makes sense — if they wanted to keep the episode's trans themes/undertones, they would have to replace the character with one that was completely divorced from the trans character (so that puts tabi off the table — if she were the focus, the plot would go too similarly to if they had just kept tere (plus her having nomi as her va wouldn’t help)) that could also fit into the narrative (be an older primo, have something they could hide that they would be self conscious about that can actually work in this context). of all the older primos, lita makes the most sense to play tere's role to me. there's a little more to my thought process behind it all, but i can't really find the words to explain it.

plus, the character sheet mentioned they could show tere was trans through old photos. the whole plot of this episode happens because tater finds an old photo scribbled out. plus, we don't see any other old photos of the t-sisters, nor do we see flashbacks involving them, so that supports the theory a little.

i dunno. this almost definitely isn't true, but it does make me curious if old drafts of the episodes exist anywhere, and if tere played a bigger role in this episode originally...

(also, about tabi's va nomi ruiz, i did also have a theory that the crew were originally looking for a trans va to voice tere, but decided a deeper voice didn't suit her (and she would be on hormone blockers anyways), so they changed her role.... but that theory is even less likely lmao.)

tl;dr, summer of the thirteenth primo was originally an episode about tere, but they had to change it early on in the writing phase because of censorship