Fans are really, really angry about this baby appearing on Girls.

The final episode of HBO’s Girls aired on the 16th of April of this year, but three weeks on there is one thing critics can’t let go of.

The central plot line of season six was Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham) falling pregnant, after sleeping with Paul Louis (Riz Ahmed), a Pakistani-American surf instructor she met while on location for an article she was writing.

Horvath decides to keep the baby, even though Louis declined to participate in the child’s upbringing.

Laura Brodnik and Tiffany Dunk discuss why Hannah’s baby has caused such a stir on the latest episode of The Binge. Post continues below. 

But once she has the baby, and nurses it in her arms, one thing becomes painstakingly clear: The baby is black.

Not brown in a way that is consistent with Pakistani descent – but black. According to a number of viewers, the baby has been very badly miscast.

Y’all no one can convince me that that beautiful black baby was Hannah’s and that racially ambiguous surf instructor. #GirlsHBO #Girls pic.twitter.com/6IBEpvCUz7

— Fallon Atta-Mensah (@Fallonam) 17 April 2017

I really honestly need to how Hannah got a black child w a light-skinned Pakistani baby daddy. Also, his name is grover. #GirlsHBO

— Rebecca Carroll (@rebel19) 17 April 2017

Is anyone gonna talk about how Hannah had a Black baby by a Pakastani dude? #GirlsHBO, I just can’t express what a bummer this season was. pic.twitter.com/T33fewm5El

— Eva Knievel (@that_bird) 17 April 2017

Grover, played by a set of twins, is Puerto Rican and Haitian. His mother, Jaclyn Nichole, responded to the widespread outrage with a since deleted tweet that read, “1st off my baby who plays Grover isn’t black! He’s Puerto Rican & His Dad is Haitian, does it matter? He fit the role to a T & he’s gorgeous! [sic]”

What she failed to address is that, either way, her babies are not Pakistani.

Director Jenny Konner addressed the criticism at a Lenny Letter event, telling the Associated Press, “I’m going to gracefully bow out of the last controversy hopefully we will ever have about Girls.”

“It’s really nice after all these years of, you know, being pretty divisive, that the general consensus has been pretty positive,” Konner said, “and that’s made us feel really good.”

“I’m not even going to dignify this baby talk with a comment it is ridiculous,” she added.

Dunham is yet to comment.

Girls has long been criticised for it's lack of ethnic diversity, focusing instead on four white, privileged, young women, and their (mostly) white love interests.

Dunham has previously acknowledged the inherent whiteness of the series, and has made deliberate attempts to be more racially diverse, her half-Pakistani love interest being a prime example.

But by casting a baby who is not at all consistent with the race of either of his parents, Girls can be seen as declaring "race doesn't matter".

But race does matter.

It matters to have actors from a myriad of races on our screens.

It matters that black roles are given to black actors.

And it matters that a baby who is meant to have a Pakistani father, is of Pakistani descent.

David Kaufman for the New York Post wrotes, "Perhaps Dunham, like so many in Medialand, simply thinks that all black and brown people are interchangeable."

Perhaps she does. Or perhaps the makers are attempting to declare themselves colourblind.

But that baby is black - and three weeks on it's still the question on everyone's lips: Why? 

You can listen to the full episode of The Binge, here.