Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie Will Finally And Canonically Be Queer In The ‘Thor’ Sequel
"As new king, she needs to find her queen," Thompson announced recently.
The Marvel cinematic universe has a reputation of making vague gestures towards LGBTIQ representation without actually committing to the kind of change that would have a real impact in the industry.
After all, the much touted ‘first queer character’ of the franchise turned out to be a cameo by director Joe Russo in Avengers: Endgame. The character didn’t even have a name; in the credits, he’s merely listed as ‘Grieving man’, and his time onscreen is spent mumbling a few lines and staring mournfully into space.
More than that, the company has actually been straightwashing queer characters — the comic book incarnation of Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie, the hero of Thor: Ragnarok, has a longstanding relationship with a woman named Annabelle Riggs.
In fact, Thompson managed to convince Ragnarok‘s director Taika Waititi to include a brief shot of a woman leaving Valkyrie’s bedroom to pay service to true representation, but the moment was left on the cutting room floor before the film’s release.
Tessa Thompson on Valkyrie: “First of all, as king, she needs to find her queen.” #MarvelSDCC pic.twitter.com/XR1I2wsUNR
— Ryan Gajewski (@_RyanGajewski) July 21, 2019
Now, however, Thompson is finally getting her wish fulfilled for the character. Yep, over the weekend, Marvel head Kevin Feige confirmed that in the upcoming Thor: Love And Thunder, Valkyrie will be openly, uncomplicatedly queer.
“The answer is yes,” Feige said, as reported by The Advocate. “How that impacts the story remains to be seen, with that level of representation you’ll see across all our films, not in just Thor 4.”
It’s easy to get overexcited when Marvel makes such proclamations. After all, these are big movies, made and released by one of the biggest entertainment conglomerates in the world. And at this stage, it’s pretty clear Disney use craven, headline-generating diversity hires to drum up hype for their increasingly tired franchises.
But, by the same token, it’s also important not to get too cynical. Queer representation in blockbusters was pretty much non-existent as little as a decade ago. Fewer straight people onscreen is only a good thing.