Pop Culture Fix: Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie Is Marvel’s First Bisexual Character and More Gay Superhero News

Hello, I have returned to you! Thank you for all your well wishes for my surgery and recovery!

Movies

+ Tessa Thompson’s portrayal of Valkyrie in the upcoming Thor: Ragnarok has critics talking. It also has Twitter talking because she stepped out into some sexist, homophobic butthole tweets over the weekend to say that her Valkyrie is bisexual (and also maybe a little bit of a misandrist!).

This makes her the first bi character in the MCU and the first queer character in a Marvel movie. (Jessica Jones’ Jeri Hogarth is the first queer character in the whole MCU.) There’s no word on exactly how Valkyrie’s bisexuality will play out on screen but I sure am going to pay $15 to find out!

+ “Women like looking sexy, but it doesn’t mean we want to fuck you. No one says to Steve Bannon, ‘You look like a bag of trash. Do you want me to throw you out?’” is a thing Cate Blanchett said in her speech when she was accepting InStyle’s Style Icon Award this year.

Teevee

+ Ryan Hansen Solves Crimes on Television, which stars Patron Saint of Perfect Smiles Samira Wiley, lands on YouTube Red today. It’s eight episodes and also you can sign up for a free three-month trial to watch it. I sure did. Samira is perfect, as always. The show is hit or miss but she’s a marvel.

+ Boooo Jodie Whitiker’s companion on Doctor Who is gonna be a dude.

+ Demi Lovato’s YouTube Documentary Of Bisexual Bisexuality has racked up 7 million views.

+ Is Shay Mitchell gonna be in that Pretty Little Liars spin-off with Mona and Alison? That’s one secret she’ll never tell, xoxo.

+ Everything old is still new again, etc.

+ Traci Thirteen is getting a CW series produced by Elizabeth Banks maybe! Traci Thirteen is very queer! She works with Supergirl! Her girlfriend is Natasha Irons!

+ Excuse me, Gina Rodriguez is EPing a new series called Femme about four women who meet in a secret feminist social media group?!??!!!!! If there are four women at least one of them’s gonna be gay. #math #science

Queer Humans, Out and About

+ Lady Gaga’s Joanne is now officially her fourth platinum album. Did y’all watch her new documentary? I actually really enjoyed it.

+ Looks like Jane Lynch is getting her own talk show from Telepictures, the folks behind Ellen. Talk shows almost always fail. Maybe the key to success is lesbians?

+ Your bisexual gal pal Anna Paquin is back with a new murder-mystery series called Bellevue and the trailer is here.

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Heather Hogan

Heather Hogan is an Autostraddle senior editor who lives in New York City with her wife, Stacy, and their cackle of rescued pets. She's a member of the Television Critics Association, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and a Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer critic. You can also find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Heather has written 1718 articles for us.

28 Comments

  4. I think that Doctor Who story is a tad misleading, because the BBC is pitching it as three new companions in their article http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41716877

    I mean, I was disappointed they still felt the need to have the token white male, but at least we are getting two PoC as well, one of whom is female, and the lead is female.

    And I will forever be disappointed we don’t get more awesome!Bill

  7. Wait, they have both Beckys. How’s that going to work? And there’s a small black girl next to DJ. Is/Was he in an interracial marriage?

    • According to Wikipedia Lecy will be playing Becky and Sara will have a different role. They may end up doing gags like the did the last 2-3 seasons of the show where Becky kept being switched due to scheduling conflicts.

  11. Heather! Hope everything’s going splendidly! I’m assuming that Sara Ramirez sped up your recovery by thirds yesterday.

  13. Welcome back Heather!!! <3 <3

    And you said the magic word that might get me to pay to see the next Thor movie. (insert bi pun here)

  14. Can’t say I’m at all excited about Roseanne returning, knowing that she’s a vocal transphobe.

    • I was going to say the same thing. Has she at the very least apologized for her transphobia/comments she made?

    • It’s unclear in the comics is Valkyrie is actually bisexual, or if she has run into both men and women who are attracted to her. The exact line she says is something like “you are not the first man or woman I’ve saved to regale me with a kiss” and then the lesbian character dies before any further kissing can occur.

      And because it’s a comic and not a TV show, Valkyrie feels guilty that her evil past got Annabelle killed and saves her from the afterlife but they end up sharing a body so only one can be present at any one time and Annabelle goes on to date an inhuman called Ren and because Marvel (and male comic fans) hate female characters the series ended after 13 issues and none of the characters have appeared since.

  17. Tessa Thompson goes on to say in another tweet that while Valkyrie is canon bi in the comics, her sexuality not explicitly stated in the film but that’s the way she chose to portray her anyway.

    Tessa has had to deal with a lot of racist dudebros complaining about her being black since the casting was announced. It’s only gotten louder since they started releasing trailers for the film. They are even bold enough to @ her directly. This happens literally every time an actor of color gets in any sort of genre film.

  18. Welcome back Heather.

    The PLL spinoff was not going to be on my radar no matter if Shay Mitchell would be on it or not.

    I can’t wait for Roseanne and they have both Becky’s back, how funny.

  20. Welcome back Heather!!

    I’m going to need a time turner to manage all the CW shows I need to be watching

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