Young Justice: Outsiders’ Big Gay Reveal: Why it both DOES and DOESN’T Matter

 

Yesterday, Young Justice wrapped its much anticipated third season, made possible through multiple fan campaigns, creator passion, and the platform of DC’s own streaming service. While the overall reception of the season is still cooling, there was something near the end of the season that got major attention: Kaldur’ahm, the Aqualad turned Aquaman, planting a loving kiss on his partner, another male Atlanean known as Wyynde. This seems to be received pretty well for the most part, but there was no way sort of reveal wasn’t going to get some backlash. And most of it seems to be the same or similar complaints you hear whenever something like this shows up in popular media. But I’m going to try to break down a small sample of comments in an attempt to understand and work out where these sorts of ideas come from, as well as how based in reality they really are.

Background (Spoilers!):

First, however, a brief recap of Kaldur’s love life in the series so far. Young Justice was filled to the brim with romantic subplot since the first few episodes of Season 1, most of which happening within The Team. Conner/M’Gann, Wally/Artemis, Robin/Fragmented Words, and combinations thereof. But Kaldur was virtually disconnected from all that, being mostly relegated to the stoic and responsible leader role aside from one episode: “Downtime”, where he returns to Atlantis for some R&R to reconnect with his friends Garth (the original Aqualad in the comics) and Tula. Throughout the episode, Kaldur shows strong indications of his romantic feelings for Tula, but later finds out that she has hooked up (intentional fishing pun) with Garth in Kaldur’s absence. Initially disappointed and hurt, Kaldur accepts this and wishes his friends well after the events of the episode, returning to his role as leader with a clear head.

Despite a brief fling with fellow Team member Rocket, Kaldur’s feelings for Tula would remain after this, persisting after the first season and during the five year timeskip between in and Season 2, as Tula’s (technically) off-screen death would be used as motivation for Kaldur to go undercover with The Light. But after that was resolved, he was pretty much open to love again, which we find him doing by the time we get to his kiss with Wyynde in Season 3.

Okay, now we can get to talking about some of the responses! Here are just a few:

 

Point 1: “They ruined the character/series!”

Reveals like this and comments like these often go hand and hand, often with an assumption that knowing a character isn’t straight will have any discernible difference in how they behave in the show and/or that this new bit of information was merely tacked on for Progressive Points, as opposed to being the plan the whole time. In fact, Kaldur’s bisexuality IS said to have been the plan from the start, according to a recent interview with Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti:

“GW: We viewed him as being bisexual from day one. There were limits, frankly, to what we could objectively show on Cartoon Network, so we tried to write him with some consistency with that in mind, without being able to present it as such on that network. We also, I think, hinted a little bit online maybe that that was the case. It was never our intention for him to be exclusively gay. We planned once we got our third season…to illustrate the fact that he was bisexual. So we’re not taking away the feelings he had for Tula in season one and two, but that doesn’t change the fact that now it’s been years since Tula passed away. And in that interim time, he and Wyynde got together.”

Keep in mind that we’ve heard this sort of talk before when it came to characters like Dumbledore or even Weissman’s own previous series Gargoyles regarding the character of Lexington, but the difference here is that this reveal isn’t retroactive and left for viewers to view after the fact. We’re seeing it play out in the show’s real time, with the writing being willing to dive into portraying Kaldur’s relationship with Wyynde as a natural and regular part of his life. Which, in my opinion, is how these sorts of relationships should be portrayed; as normalized and natural aspects of their respective worlds, just as they should be in ours. Not that there can’t be significance placed on a character coming to terms with their sexuality (or lack thereof going by Bojack Horseman’s Todd coming out as Asexual), but it can be a big deal to not treat it as a big deal, if that makes any sense.

Point 2: Bringing the Outsiders In
As for why others think this would “ruin” a character or a series, the obvious answer would be some sort of deep-seeded homophobia on their part, but part of me wonders if it doesn’t also have something to do with seeing a character with those qualities and feeling a rejection that they can’t identify with that character anymore. As if they had a connection to this character because of the similarities that a viewer thought they shared but, for some reason, feel that having different sexual preferences makes this divide too much and impossible to relate with anymore. Thinking of it that way, that a significant portion of these disgruntled viewers grew up with most if not all characters being similar to them on the aspects of being what was seen as “normal” at the time, it can be a bit understandably jarring to grow up to and feel like those kinds of characters are being written less.

That is, if those types of characters weren’t still the vast majority, especially in kids cartoons like Young Justice was originally meant to be. But the fact remains that animated LGBTQA+ characters are still an infinitesimal minority amongst the rest of the often white, straight, cis male characters (and occasional female). As the world becomes more aware of dimensions to the human experience that were once rejected, demonized, or flat out ignored, it follows that media should start to reflect that, however slowly. Young Justice is far from the first cartoon to dabble with this and will likely not be the last, so if a show like this is meant to show a groups of individuals, amongst them one called The Outsiders, fighting for justice and protecting the innocent, it must be made up of individuals who reflect the world that has come to better tolerate and accept those who were once Outsiders themselves.

Kaldur’ahm’s bisexuality was reportedly met with mostly positive reception, being a drop in the bucket on the increasing flow of representation appearing in animated media as of late. It’s still nowhere near enough and execution can be lacking at times, but this matter is just a taste of what’s to come. There will probably always be some sort of backlash to these sorts of reveals for any number of reasons, but I can tell you right now that it’s not going to stop any time soon, nor should it. Young Justice has been renewed for another season on DC Universe, meaning likely there will be more development for Kaldur and friends to come. And personally, I can’t wait to see more.

 

Written By David Kaldor 

Additional Reporting from Kayla Gleeson