The creator of the Minions has explained why there still aren’t any female Minions, and it’s wild

For over a decade, people have wondered why every Minion looks… well, like a Minion. More specifically, why there’s no obvious girls. Now the man who created them has revealed why that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.

Pierre Coffin, who co-created the Minions and has also voiced every single one since they first appeared, said introducing female Minions could actually hurt the franchise.

Speaking to The Guardian, he said: “I think a female Minion would be the beginning of the end.”

His reasoning isn’t because female Minions would have to look completely different. In fact, he said he’d imagine them looking exactly the same.

“In my head, female Minions would look exactly the same as male ones.”

Instead, Coffin suggested the decision could come across as something done to tick a box rather than because the story needed it.

He said: “Universal would want to do it because they’d think it would please all the women out there. But I’m not convinced.”

He added: “If I were a woman, I’d think it was tokenistic. I’m not saying we’re not gonna do it or not try, but maybe it’s not meant to be. Or maybe it is! Who knows.”

It’s not the first time the idea has been discussed behind the scenes, either. Coffin revealed the creative team once came up with a storyline involving another tribe of Minions who appeared to all be female, but the concept never made it into a film.

“We did play around with the idea of having the Minions land on this island where there was another tribe who were all, apparently, female. But it didn’t go further than that.”

The interview also answered another oddly persistent question about the little yellow creatures: Where do they actually come from?

According to Coffin, there’s no elaborate explanation.

“And in terms of how they breed: they don’t. They just are.”

The first Despicable Me film came out back in 2010, while the latest Minions spin-off was released in 2022. Fifteen years later, people are apparently still trying to work out the logistics of Minion life.

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Featured image credit: Netflix