I think you're misinterpreting my point here. Or maybe just going on a side tangent, which is all fine, but I feel i should reaffirm my central idea here, cuz turns out I have strong opinions on something pixal related (who could have guessed):
This is not at all about the sets for me- this is 100% about the show, and because it hasn't been flatly stated outside of the tags, the problem is very specifically that damned hairpiece that's shared between nya and pixal. Regardless of everything else- that piece has snowballed into a massive issue and a symbol of something larger.
The ninja have had headbands in the sets for ages now, and I don't think that's changing for all the reasons listed above. They knew ninjago was a forever brand, and so dedicating 'ninja' specific hair for all the mains was a long term investment worth putting some money into. That all makes sense.
But the show has never been run on this same meta. The headbands, until recently, were fun once and while style choices which fit the more rugged feeling installments, and revert back to normal every time they show up. They've had the option to do this since like the island, and it's only happened a handful of times across everyone. Dragons rising had the perfect opportunity to revamp their 'signature show look' to match with the sets and be the ones with headbands, but chose to launch with their hair as normal. They bring in the headband looks for the back half of season 2, before going back and forth on it through season 3. This is why I don't see the show keeping the headbands long term- because if we're taking the sets as any sort of an indication, headbands would be standard in show for half a decade now, but they're not. We just barely had our first two installment consecutive run with them. And to me this makes sense. The headbands feel special, they feel a bit extra, and they feel like a very POINTED fashion statement. All things which make sense for a set where you want the coolest looking minifigs, but not so much in a show where that much fancy visual clutter on half your characters 24/7 is a bit much.
All of this is fine, all of this makes sense, but it then raises the question why not just change the non-headband hair for either Nya or Pixal in show?
For the longest time after they ended up with the same hair, they were it. They were THE two female characters in the show. Full stop. And they shared the same hairpiece. A key part of any woman's expression of her personal identity, and ninjago took the two most front facing women in the cast and decided it was perfectly acceptable for them to just be the same. The girls both get their boyfriends the same way, and they both get to be samurai x, and they both get to be the smart mature builders.... and they both get the same hair. It's a massive visual representation of all these lingering effects of years of subtly bias writing against the women in the show.
I don't care what brought you to that point, once you get there, you HAVE to realize that's something that needs changing ASAP. So why not?
Clearly continuity with the sets is not a big deal, since the sets have had incongruent hair for ages now BECAUSE of the headband thing. If they wanted to change the hair in show, they could. End of. The cost of changing a hairpiece in show is SO MUCH more minimal- either creating a new digital asset, or simply color swapping an existing one currently utilized purely for background/side characters. So really, once you get yourself into a position where the show has its two most well known female characters with the same default hairpiece THERE IS NO EXCUSE NOT TO CHANGE ONE OF THEM. Once the sets quit lining up all together THERE'S REALLY NO EXCUSE NOT THE CHANGE ONE OF THEM.
'Pixal has to have her original because we want her to match the sets'. Okay fine. We've already established that doesn't really matter, but fine. Then change Nya's. We are no longer making sets without her headband, so there is no tether which holds you to her non headband design in show. That one can be literally whatever you want without affecting sets. It's just laziness at this point. And don't tell me that it's a branding recognizability thing, if putting her in a slightly different ponytail broke her show image, we wouldn't be getting the headband one, now would we?
The sets saw it important enough to make Nya her own 2 color hair mold because they saw the value giving her a unique look of her own which conveyed her character would have in the long run. This happened back in 2021. Meaning that this makes for one of the few occasions where the SETS were (accidentally) more progressive than the show was. By bothering to make Nya something unique of her own as a new default, they meaningfully put effort and money behind defining nya and (indirectly) differentiating between her and Pixal, in a context where these two characters rarely even interact. The show on the other hand has these two in the same space together not infrequently, as they do live in the same house, and work on the same team, etc, etc... And yet are fine with keeping a core part of their design identity exactly the same, despite the barrier for changing it being SO much lower.
This shouldn't have been a problem to begin with when it started 8 years ago. Nya's design was copied from the movie which used Pixal's hair because she wasn't in it. Fine. But there was no reason the show had to keep that decision. Not all the movie hair made it over to the show characters. They could have chosen something different for Nya, they could have meaningfully altered it, but they didn't. Pixal was completely rebuilt with a new design season 8 as well (with no set hair to bother you I might add), could have given her some new hair then- but they didn't. Once the soft reboot of the wildbrain era came around, maybe then, when updating all their character models and textures they might decide to differentiate between Nya and Pixal, especially with Pixal officially becoming a main character in this version of the show. But no, they didn't do it. Maybe in the Nya focus season, a celebration of the show finally giving us some proper female focus? No. Once Nya has to be reformed into a new person in season 15, one of the most Pixal prominent seasons of the show? No. Once we start a whole new show in Dragons Rising, either of these women might be afforded new character designs in order to finally visually separate them in a context which the writers KNOW they will inevitably be living together and interreacting again. No. Not even with Pixal's top to bottom cosmetic overhaul can we bother to give her a slightly different in show hair design. We are still stuck with scenes like this reminding us that it is too much logistical effort to commit to a change as big as... having different digital hair for a bit:
Despite the sets LONG moving on, the show has dragged Nya's pixpony kicking and screaming all the way through at least season 3 of Dragons Rising, and I predict will continue to hold onto it for long after, even if the set hair gets mixed in for flavor. Because at this point, she has probably spent more time with it on screen than pixal has-- it's hers now.
Maybe the Lloyd and Cole comparison is a bit much for dragons rising, but I think it's certainly apt for the 11 minute era. The show actually pushed Pixal as an equal main character back then, (even if they didn't always follow through on it the best) and any insistence otherwise is just Pixal erasure. She had large plotlines and interactions with all the team and character posters and solo episodes. We were supposed to think of her the way we thought of Nya in season 1. The way we thought of Wu. Even prior in season 10 they had started giving her real character plots outshining some of the actual ninja. And the reason her hair never got changed is the same reason they couldn't keep up with her main character status: the show is fundamentally uninterested in its second choice of female protagonist. She can be nothing but an extension of Zane and Nya, and so that's what her plots are, that's what her dialogue is, that's what her character design is.
I don't even think Dareth is an apt comparison for Dragons Rising Pixal. Pixal is considered part of the team, lives with them, and we must confirm her whereabouts each installment, even if she's going to be off screen. That means something. But even if that's the case, even if that's the level she's at, even if Nya has taken ownership of the pixpony-- what an insult to her to have to share the look with a side character like that! Has there EVER been a side character of meaningful prominence that shared a hairpiece with a ninja, on screen, simultaneously, let alone for an extended multi-season stretch? NO! Because that's THAT NINJA'S HAIRPIECE! Kids catch on immediately, and it's distracting! But not so for our female characters. Because Pixal is in this weird main character/side character limbo, because of the sets and the movie and the redesigns and whatever all else. There is an endless list of excuses to throw at the thing, but that doesn't make it any less of a problem.
Fact remains, if strange outside circumstances contrived Wu into getting Cole's hairpiece for all of the eleven minute era and beyond, you'd better bet that would've been straightened out in a heartbeat. Messily? Maybe. Incongruently? Maybe. But it would have happened. And it takes the show like 7 years to give in to the design pressure of the sets and accidentally give the women the same level of respect if the nya headband design actually sticks this time around.
This is an issue that the team is fundamentally uninterested in addressing, probably because they don't even clock it's a problem. And if it's true that it's finally being addressed this time, it will have been by happenstance for set synergy reasons nearly a decade too late. Even if nya never appears in the show with Pixal's hair again, the damage has already been done, so the bare minimum is no longer enough to repair my trust in their awareness of these issues. Fixing this is going to take effort.
Yes, I understand the logistics of how we got here, but when you look at the bigger picture, there is no possible non sexist justification for this choice. If the logistics are to blame, then your logistics are part of the problem.
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