Let’s be honest. Lola Bunny was created for the wrong reason. If they wanted to add another girl to the cast, this time one of the mains instead of a supporting character like Granny or an antagonist like Witch Hazel, that would have been fine. I wouldn’t have had a problem with it and probably neither would anyone else. I still treat the Tiny Toons characters as Looney Tunes whether it’s official or not, and I haven’t heard either way. Instead, Warner Brothers wanted to prove Bugs Bunny was straight. As the rise of the current extremist perspectives in culture would try to claim every character and the studios were still staffed by people who believed in tradition and honesty, looking at Bugs putting on a dress to escape “certain” death (despite everyone else getting shot and blown up only to be a minor inconvenience via the comedy “gag reflex”) as anything other than a defense mechanism was not something they were willing to let stand.

And so Space Jam introduced Lola. To be fair she was a good character and addition to the team in their fight to protect their homes and freedom from aliens via a basketball game. The problem is what happened after that. It seems like Warner Brothers never really knew what to do with her, and each incarnation of her seems to be different, some more than others if you watched today’s Daily Video I found doing research for this commentary, that unlike the others she can’t seem to find a distinct identity of her own. Bugs is the snarky problem solver out to to protect, get payback, or occasionally mess with someone out of sheer boredom. Daffy himself acknowledged being a “greedy little coward” out for fame and fortune by entertaining others. Porky…had the stutter. By now you know the personalities of everyone from Yosemite Sam to Silvester, Speedy Gonzales to the Road Runner. What about Lola? Think you know who she is? Because there are versions of her that bear no real resemblance to the previous. Let’s look at her various incarnations.

When Lola first debuted in Space Jam there were a few reasons for her creation. Like I said, making Bugs looks straight was one of them. In various shorts, Bugs would dress up as a woman to get past the dumber characters out to kill him. It was a defense plan, not being a drag queen. I’ve never heard of a straight drag queen, but it’s not like I’ve ever cared to look into it, so we’ll go with the stereotype. He’s not the only character to have ever done this. The funniest one that comes to mind is John Candy in Armed & Dangerous, although he could have been pretending to be a drag queen given their situation. The joke of a “manly” man (or who thinks he’s one) having to dress up as a girl to rescue someone or avoid bad guys happens quite often. G.I. Joe did it with Snake Eyes. The Final Fantasy franchise did this with Cloud Strife in both versions of Final Fantasy 7  to rescue Tifa, while the gag character of the online MMORPG Final Fantasy 14, the gentleman detective Hildibrand Manderville, did it as a necessity to stop the villains of that story. It’s always a necessity, not a lifestyle. We’ve even seen Bugs pursue women in other shorts, though they were always one-time characters. Two were robots. Insert the “two nickels” meme here.

The second reason was the limited female membership in the main Looney Tune gang. Before Lola there were only four who made any recurring impact: Granny, the only woman, Witch Hazel, the…witch, Petunia Pig, occasional companion of Porky, and the cat Pepe Le Pew always chases who never seemed to have a name. One short named her Barbarette but when she showed up in the Looney Tunes graham crackers they called her Penelope, a name that we would finally see used in Carrotblanca, the Casablanca parody. There’s apparently a girl duck, but darned if I know what her name is. I don’t even know if it’s the same one that appeared in Baby Looney Tunes showing up in The Looney Tunes Show and those would be the only times I’ve seen one.

Even if we add in the Tiny Toons, you only have a few more because nobody remembers Mary Melody and Honey was a one-time return in a story that saw Babs without a mentor like her friends because there were so few girl toons and they ran out of rabbits. That would also give us Sweetie Pie, who at least had Tweety to look up to, Fefe Le Fume, who was only shown tied to Pepe once but chased boys like he chased girls, Shirley The Loon, who never seemed to have a mentor, and Elmyra, who was less into hunting like Elmer and more into loving animals to death. Literally. Girl’s got a body count and she ain’t even out of high school. If you really want to stretch you could toss in Animaniacs but outside of the lame attempt of shoving Elmyra into Pinky & The Brain and a one-off gag they’ve never interacted, so I usually don’t. Oh, God! Imagine Babs being mentored by Slappy Squirrel! Forget Halloween, there’s your nightmare fuel!

In story, the excuse is the Tune Squad needs someone who can actually play basketball. While Bugs has played baseball in a few short nobody’s even been shown to play basketball. Even the Tiny Toons favored football in Adventures and a made-up game in Looniversity. Lola would actually be able to play, and with the help of Michael Jordan and tricks the Harlem Globetrotters would be jealous of they managed to win mostly because of her. She was a great addition in that movie…and that’s where the problems start, unfortunately. She was great for that movie.

Okay, so Lola is into sports. I have seen very little of Baby Looney Tunes, but I did just watch an episode prior to writing this where Lola simps for her favorite baseball player, and she’s shown to have an interest in sports. A future tomboy? That fits with Lola in Space Jam and this didn’t come out very far after. There’s a story where she gets bossy so the others show her by demonstration that not everyone needs to be exactly like her, but I only saw a couple of clips trying to find something of her to show. I’m that disconnected from this show because it lacks the Looney Tune style most of the time, like comparing the Marvel Productions Muppet Babies to the Disney Junior version.

Or compare it to Bugs Bunny Builders, another Looney Tunes For Preschoolers show that follows the trend of Pupstruction or Rubble & Crew. There were a couple of episodes I saw in my investigation where Lola, the design engineer for the Builders, was so obsessed with games that it got in the way of their construction. One was creating a game for her friends but having the wrong teams when it came to the actual construction, and the other had her so hyped for an obstacle course that she didn’t listen to the rest of the team, which almost ruined the games because her mind was on racing rather than building. That’s the theme of the show: teamwork and doing the job right the first time. I actually kind of liked it, and I plan to go back and watch the rest of them, unlike Baby Looney Tunes. If this was the trend, there might not be an article here. However, this version happened.

It’s like a totally different character, but The Looney Tunes Show, what happens when you give the Looney Tunes a sitcom, still calls her Lola. Being a tomboy is not her character at all here. Instead she’s…I mean, is the video still up? Did you watch it? How do you even describe her? She’s kind of nuts. If anything she’s a better match with this version of Daffy, and this is the other appearance of that girl duck I’m aware of. For quite a few fans she’s actually the prefered Lola, but she’s nothing like the one we’ve seen previous. Bugs Bunny Builders came out well after this, so despite this character having enough fans that she got her own direct-to-video movie, apparently it didn’t stick. As it is Builders Lola is only shown to be into sports those two times thus far. It’s like someone remembered where she came from. Then there’s this.

I’m not sure if she shows up in more than one episode, but while being the girls gym coach might have been better, Tiny Toons Looniversity decided to make her the cafeteria lady. I don’t know anything about college food, either, so I don’t know if the food is any good. What I do know is that while she does the skateboard trick and talks about going surfing earlier in this clip, she’s basically someone who can do anything. We do learn that she studied to be able to do all the cool things she does, but even then it sounds like she picked up on it super easy while Babs has to learn how to cook properly. It’s not a bad episode, though it does include the big mistake of making Buster and Babs siblings, thus ruining the “no relation” gag from Adventures as well as their romantic relationship. (Oh, kids who watch this show first are going to be so confuuuuuuuuused!) It does feel like a combination of two Lolas, the athlete from Space Jam and the high-energy crazy girl from The Looney Tunes Show. Might end up being the best incarnation, though I don’t see this one dating Bugs. A college series WITHOUT romance? The hell? I didn’t go to college and even I know better than that.

I haven’t seen Space Jam: The New Legacy. I heard Lola’s arc involved not wanting to be a toon or something…I don’t know. Early marketing and not being into basketball, plus distrust in current Hollywood to get characters right have admittedly soured me on it, but who knows? Someday I might check it out and like it. Some later ads seemed okay…but when did Lola ever show an ego like this? On the other hand, this showcases the biggest issue with Lola versus the other Tunes. They’re writing a character. An inconsistent character. No, I make total sense when you think about how the Looney Tunes, and even the Tiny Toons in their first show, are treated: as performers. This is why Daffy had so many roles while still being Daffy.

I may be mistaken, but I look at the Looney Tunes as being inspired by Charlie Chaplin and Abbott & Costello in that they play the same character in every story, like Jackie Chan later. (Most of Jackie’s characters are even named Jackie, at least in the US and English dubs.) Unlike Will Farrell or Jim Carrey, who often play the same character type, the Looney Tunes are just themselves, and not themselves. Daffy plays roles in other names, most famously Duck Dodgers, but most of the time he plays himself with the same personality even in those roles. The same for all the others. It’s just their situations are different. When Bugs does Superrabbit he’s just Bugs with Superman’s powers for a time. When Daffy does Superduck (or rather Stuporduck), he’s Cluck Trent. He’s also been the Scarlet Pumpernickel in a story where Daffy is pitching a story idea to Warner Brothers, Sherlock Holmes, and a futuristic parody of Joe Friday from Dragnet. Sometimes Sylvester is an alley cat, sometimes he’s Granny’s pet cat, sometimes he’s a father. Bugs occasionally messes with people with fun but usually it’s payback or protection. That’s because they’re actors, not characters. There are even shorts, specials, and compilation movies where we see them as actors who just happen to live in a cartoon world because they’re cartoon characters. We see their “backstage” lives, especially Bugs. The Looney Tunes are characters on a show. They’re actors playing a part, and that’s how they’re treated by Warner Animation.

Lola? She’s just a character, one they can mold anyway they need. The most consistent thing about her is her love of sports and tomboy attitude, and even that’s gone from the sitcom version. Her fur color, tuff of blond hair, and wearing her ears like ponytails are her only defining model traits outside of being the only animal Looney Tune who wears clothing regularly outside of Porky and Petunia. Even then, Porky doesn’t wear pants…okay, this feels like a good time to mention one detail:

Lola Bunny NEVER had breasts!

None of the Looney Tunes animals have any kind of genitals. Presumably the humans do, but Granny’s are old, Witch Hazel…looks like Witch Hazel, Elmyra and Mary are at most about 13 (at least in the original show), and that’s it. The animals never have private parts, which shows in outfit choices only there for character design reasons rather than modesty. There was outrage when Lola’s body type was altered in the second Space Jam movie to not appear to have boobs, except she never had boobs outside of…that kind of fanart. Her design was so that we could understand why Bugs lost his carrots when she first appeared. And I’m calling both sides out here. The ones who were upset were mad at something that didn’t matter because of current Hollywood’s treatment of attractive women with…I mean, look at Sydney Sweeney’s’ treatment right now. On the other hand, changing her design to avert the “evil male gaze” was equally stupid because again…no bunny boobies! None of the other one-shot female rabbits we’ve seen in previous shorts had them, either. Why is the baby version of Lola the only one to go without clothing then? I don’t know. I just know she’s as flat as she was then because she’s a rabbit and both Looney Tunes AND Merry Melodies never had animals with actual privates. Not even the…

…yeah. That. I don’t care what the censored box says.

Back on topic. Even the Tiny Toons in Adventures would come out of “character” and do skits that were roles rather than them, something else Looniversity is lacking. Lola,on the other hand, hasn’t had that kind of moment outside of the Space Jam: The New Legacy promo interview, and it’s not a great look given the ego she shows, lacking the fun of Daffy’s ego issues. Otherwise, she’s not an actor, she’s a character. She might have been created to protect Bugs’ image and check a few boxes, and it’s not like they aren’t trying to make her into a good character, even if they don’t seem to agree on how, but there’s no set persona like the others and she doesn’t feel like an actor playing a part. She’s just a name and vague design they can slap into “girl bunny Looney Tune/Bugs’ love interest” that maybe is a sports-loving tomboy (which are not even straight in modern Hollywood, even in kids shows), maybe not. She’s sassy or she’s crazy. Lola Bunny has an identity crisis. They need to really pick a persona and stick with it, and give us more time away from the “set” where we see the “real” Lola, which will just be her acting persona because that’s how it works for the others.

I originally titled this article “Why Lola Bunny Is The Worst Looney Tunes Character”, but that’s not quite accurate. Of the main cast she’s the least thought out because she’s new and wasn’t created for the same reasons. Petunia and Granny were created for different reasons but both were made for the story first, even if Petunia’s role was love interest. Notice that she’s also one of the least utilized characters. With the treatment of Pepe lately, Penelope’s biggest appearance was as Silvester’s girl (wife?), formerly Bugs’ old flame, in Carrotblanca. Witch Hazel is brought out when they need a magical villain or a Halloween story. The Martian Queen only appeared in the Duck Dodgers TV series as Marvin’s boss, a parody of the hot girl antagonist from the serials and comics Dodgers is parodying, and hasn’t shown up since. Lexi Bunny is only on Loonatics Unleashed and that show’s ties to the Looney Tunes are up for debate more often than not. (I will get to it someday, but let’s just say I don’t share the internet’s view.)

So if you want to say the female representation among the Looney Tunes has issues without drawing in the Tiny Toons, the case has some merit. It’s not going to help unless you finally decide on which personality traits should define Lola Bunny. Bugs, Daffy, and others had years before the personas we’ve accepted for decades developed, and there was some changes. Maybe Lola just needs the same amount of time, but it doesn’t look like they’re trying hard enough to make the definitive Lola Bunny, and that’s what’s really hurting a character that deserves better.