‘This kinda healed me tbh’: Fans are over the moon about how queer the ‘Agatha All Along’ finale was
It’s not a secret that the Marvel Cinematic Universe hasn’t been the best at queer representation. Even Agatha All Along star Joe Locke thought so. In September, he told Digital Spy, “Marvel has been behind the times in bringing in queer characters.”
No kidding. Thor: Love and Thunder, to give just one example, was hyped up as “so gay” and then disappointed everybody. Fan-favorite Valkyrie was supposed to be openly bisexual in the film, but that amounted to one hand kiss and little else. Everyone was likewise excited when Loki was revealed to be bisexual in Loki, but that didn’t really go anywhere beyond a throwaway line.
Spoilers ahead for the Agatha All Along finale.
Understandably, fans were very doubtful when Aubrey Plaza claimed the show was the “gayest Marvel project yet.” It wasn’t that fans didn’t very much want it to be, they’d just been burned before. But then the show got started and it was gay! Joe Locke’s character, who turned out to be (spoiler alert!) Billy Maximoff, the son of the Scarlet Witch, was openly gay and in a romance with his boyfriend, Eddie (Miles Gutierrez-Riley). The two kissed on screen, the second gay kiss for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The first was between the Eternal Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) and his husband Ben (Haaz Sleiman) in Eternals—but because Eternals flopped, not everyone remembers it.
But Agatha All Along marked a different first for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. A kiss between women! Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha gave herself up to Aubrey Plaza’s Death and did so with a big passionate kiss. It was a sad situation of course, but Agatha didn’t actually really completely die, since she got to come back as a ghost.
Fans went WILD for the first major sapphic relationship in the MCU.
There was one other thing that got LGBTQ+ fans excited as well. In Billy’s room, there was a prominently displayed “Trans Lives Matter” flag. It could be seen in the background as Billy spoke to Ghost Agatha. Trans rights are under threat right now, and fans were really pleased to see the show taking a stand for them.
The trans flag was actually Joe Locke’s idea! In an interview with TheWrap, Locke said:
“There were a few film posters [in Billy’s room] that I didn’t necessarily think he would have watched. I’m not going to name the films of those film. Like, very good representation for that time, but we’ve moved on from that sort of thing. And so we replaced one of them with the “Trans Lives Matter” flag.”
Obviously, there should have been more LGBTQ+ representation in the MCU before now. A lot more. But it’s great to see Marvel listening to their queer actors and creating more queer storylines. With Agatha, Billy, and Sasheer Zamata’s Jen Kale all still active in the witchy side of the MCU, hopefully, we’ll get more and more as time goes on.
Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com
