Written by Lisha McCurry
Illustration by Jules McCurry
The day will live in my memory forever: The day that the Marvel Cinematic Universe canonized their first queer character.
Now, I know how that might sound. Overdramatic. Romanticized. Perhaps even histrionic. Bear with me.
On top of being a historic day in queer media representation, it was also my son’s 4th birthday and while these two events may seem unrelated, in a very meaningful way, they will always be intrinsically tied together in my mind.
My son calls me Mommy (hi, I’m Lisha, she/her), and he calls my spouse Jules (he/she/they) Mama. She is listed on his birth certificate as his second parent; we were married when I gave birth, having used a donor to conceive. So our kiddo has only ever known his queer family to be “normal,” to be the standard. He’s provided with books that represent families of all shapes, sizes, colors, generations, and abilities, because as a queer family, we want to make sure he understands there’s no such thing as a default family. Representation is available to him in the form of cartoon characters, his parents, our friends.
And now, a Marvel god.
Our son doesn’t actually know what went down on Loki season 1 episode 3, “Lamentis,” and I doubt he’d care at this point (the Disney+ series is far and above beyond the comprehension level of a four-year-old, after all). He was asleep when Jules and I sat down to watch the episode on Wednesday night, as eager as we had been the two weeks prior, and every week before when Disney+ had released an episode of the other two as-of-now fully aired Marvel original series, WandaVision and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. We’re a Marvel household, through and through; from boxes of comics, to collections of action figures, to the three Marvel-related tattoos that I’ve collected over the years.
The episode was moving along just fine; Tom Hiddleston’s ever-charming Loki was in the midst of swapping family background stories with variant Sylvie, played by the wondrous Sophia Di Martino, when suddenly, the topic of romance came up, and my world went topsy-turvy.
In asking after Loki’s romantic history, Sylvia inquires, “How about you? You’re a prince. Must’ve been would-be-princesses—” insert my own eye roll here, because how typical “—or perhaps, another prince.”
My heart caught in my throat. I sat bolt upright and grabbed Jules’ knee. “Oh, my God. I can’t believe she just…”
A pause from Loki, and then his reply: “A bit of both. I suspect the same as you.”
I paused the show. I tightened my grip on my spouse. “Did they really just do that?”
“They did,” she said. “I saw it on social media earlier.” She pulled up an Instagram post showing Loki awash in pink, blue and purple lighting. In capital letters: LOKI IS CANONICALLY BISEXUAL. A quick Google search brought up a Tweet from the show’s director, Kate Herron, in which she stated: “From the moment I joined @LokiOfficial it was very important to me, and my goal, to acknowledge Loki was bisexual. It is a part of who he is and who I am too. I know this is a small step but I’m happy, and heart is so full, to say that this is now Canon in #mcu #Loki 💗💜💙.”
I wept.
As a member of the queer community, I wept out of the sheer joy of having had such a major, well-loved character added to our ranks; the importance of representation cannot be understated, especially bisexual representation given the amount of rampant bisexual erasure in media (and here’s another wonderful fact: MCU Loki has also been confirmed as being canonically gender-fluid, as spotted in his TVA profile in a Twitter post). While Loki has been canonically genderfluid and pansexual in the comic books, bringing this representation to the huge MCU platform helps normalize gender fluidity and bisexuality on a grander scale, and that is worth celebrating.
As a member of queer fandom, I wept out of the simple knowledge that so many others were celebrating with me. The MCU fandom is huge, and queer character shipping in fanart and fanfiction is a decades old means for fans to create representation that has always been lacking. And there is no doubt about it; the MCU lacks representation, and not just LGBTQIA+ representation. The reveal of Loki’s queerness is coming late in the game (sorry Joe Russo, nobody counted your blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to a same-sex date in Endgame as queer representation. Try harder.), but it’s worth noting that now, we’re in the game, and we’re only going to become more adequately portrayed. I have no doubt that my emotions will run just as high when Valkyrie and Phastos bring canon representation to the MCU for queer people of color in the upcoming films “Thor: Love and Thunder” and “The Eternals,” respectively.
As a therapist, I wept for every client in the LGBTQIA+ community I’ve worked with who sat across from me in pain, in shame, experiencing self-doubt or internalized homophobia. Clients who I managed to bond with over superheroes and general nerd-dom, underdog stories and the fantasy worlds they escaped into when our real world was too much. I imagined them in that moment, seeing themselves on that screen, thinking “Loki’s like me? That’s so amazing.”
As a parent, I wept in relief for every young child, including my own, thinking about how likely it is that they won’t feel tempted to pause their movies or TV shows when their favorite characters reflect them or their friends onscreen. About how we’re moving, slowly and far too late, but we are moving in a direction that means that the four-year-olds of today might not blink at a superhero who is a person of color, LGBTQIA+, female, or who has a disability.
And lastly, I wept for myself. In joy, in sadness, and in hope. I got to see myself reflected in an amazing character who I’ve adored for nearly a decade and for a mega-nerd, that’s really cool; that’s joyous. I allowed myself to feel sad for the years during my childhood where I struggled with my sexuality, when I never thought the moment would possibly exist that would find me with my spouse, on our child’s birthday, watching a queer hero on our television. Growing up, I lacked the representation that Loki provided in that moment so easily, with one sentence. What that one moment could have done for me as a depressed, anxious teenager, who knows; that’s sad, that’s bitter-sweet, and that’s okay. And, finally, the feeling of hope.
After last year, and with so much hardship and devastation that is happening in this country and in the world, sometimes hope doesn’t come easy. On June 23, 2021, Loki Laufeyson, the bisexual God of Mischief himself, gave me hope, and that is what I will remember.
Happy Pride y’all: Midgardians, Asgardians, and Jötunn alike!
Lisha McCurry is a Michigan native and licensed therapist who resides in Virginia with her spouse Jules McCurry. The couple are the proud parents of a 4-year-old boy and co-hosts of Screen Tea Podcast. Lisha identifies as pansexual, like comic-canon Loki and Deadpool, which basically means she’s a superhero.
