These ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ Fans Think the End of DEI Will Mean the Return of the ‘Lethal Weapon’ Trilogy

According to the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia subreddit, President Donald Trump needs to put Lethal Weapon 5 and Lethal Weapon 6 back in the library whether Hulu likes it or not.

In mid-2020, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia found itself in the same situation as many comedy shows at the time in re-examining its use of racist imagery — specifically that of the blackface variety — amidst protests and mounting tensions over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Given the political climate at the time, Hulu, while struggling to maintain market-friendly social messaging, made the decision to remove episodes of Always Sunny that contained such intentionally insensitive makeup from their platform as the rest of the streaming giants did the same for other sitcoms like 30 Rock and Community.

Now, as the Trump administration aggressively attacks diversity, equity and inclusion policies both within government bodies and in the private sector, many members of the Always Sunny fandom demand that the anti-DEI orders include an addendum that adds The Gang’s banned Lethal Weapon movies back to streaming — apparently, these fans believe that Black people can’t object to blackface if they don’t have jobs.

The imagined relationship between hiring policies designed to encourage the gainful employment of marginalized people whom certain industries and professions had previously and systematically excluded and the removal of sitcom episodes featuring white actors in Black makeup arose in a mega-viral thread from the Always Sunny subreddit titled, “Now That All These Companies Are Dropping DEI: Can We At Least Get Back Our Lethal Weapon Trilogy Please?!?!??”

Now, it’s important to understand that there is no actual direct link between Hulu’s decision to cut episodes like “Dee Reynolds: Shaping America's Youth” and “The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 6” amidst racially charged protests nationwide and companies like Facebook making a concerted effort to hire Black coders for a few years. However, that didn’t stop Always Sunny fans from celebrating the news that corporations such as the one that’s now known as Meta will ditch their DEI policies following Trump’s inauguration as if Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s conservative conversion is a victory for the pro-blackface crowd. “Make America Hang Dong Again,” one fan declared.

“Reason will prevail!” another echoed.

Another implored, “Lethal weapon me. Lethal weapon now. Me a lethal weapon needing a lot now.”

Despite the Always Sunny fandom’s passionate defense of the show’s use of blackface, when Rob McElhenney and his team made the Season 15 episode “The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 7,” which satirized the removal of the previous Lethal Weapon-focused episodes from streaming and parodied hyper-sensitive media made in the wake of the 2020 protests, McElhenney reflected on the fact that, even when Always Sunny explicitly condemns the actions of its intentionally insensitive main characters, the show walks a fine line when it deals with sensitive subjects.

“I find that my barometer is off for what’s appropriate sometimes in situations because, like, we’ve spent 15 years making a show about the worst people on the planet, and because it’s satire, we lean so heavily into this idea,” McElhenney told Deadline following the release of “The Gang Makes Lethal Weapon 7” in 2021. “And then we are always, like, right on the razor’s edge, but that’s the only way that satire works.”

But while McElhenney himself has thought critically about certain makeup decisions that his character made during the making of the Lethal Weapon sequels, it bears repeating that, for Hulu, the episode ban was a business decision designed to offend as few subscribers as possible during a tense period for race relations in America. Now that our far-right president has launched an all-out war on DEI policies, many companies will make similar economic choices when it comes to their HR programs. The top commenter in the Reddit pointed this out, writing, “OP doesn’t know that these companies are playing both sides, that way they always come out on top.”

As businesses across America reverse course on progressive policies in order to appease the newly reinstated president, it’s strange for Always Sunny fans to argue that the end of America’s short-lived experiment with diverse hiring practices should herald a return of the blackface episodes that Hulu banned for reasons that remain completely unrelated to DEI. But, then again, it’s only natural that a sitcom about stupid, selfish racists would have a few in its following.