While promoting Ant-Man and the Wasp, Marvel Studios’ first new film since the game-changing Avengers: Infinity War, head honcho Kevin Feige promised that future installments would feature openly LGBTQ characters. Speaking with The Playlist, Marvel’s president answered the interviewer’s “When are we getting a Gay, Bi, LGBTQ, out character in the MCU?” question with an emphatic “yes.” And when asked if said characters would be “someone we’ve seen yet,” Feige said “both.” Specifically, he continued, the promised LGBTQ characters would be old and new, “ones you’ve seen and ones you haven’t seen.”
As for who these characters might be, Feige offered no details. They may pop up in the forthcoming Captain Marvel movie, the untitled Avengers 4 or the recently titled Spider-Man: Homecoming sequel. Who knows? Maybe Ant-Man and the Wasp will feature an openly LGBTQ character who hasn’t been identified as such beforehand. Either way, it’s great news for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and those who’ve been demanding representation in recent years. It also suggests Marvel has been listening to criticism regarding past instances of such characters traits being left on the cutting room floor.
An early Black Panther scene glimpsed by Vanity Fair‘s Joanna Robinson suggested a romantic relationship between Okoye (Danai Gurira) and Ayo (Florence Kasumba). Co-writer Joe Robert Cole later told ScreenCrush they ultimately decided to remove the scene and its story arc in favor of another. Meanwhile, actress Tessa Thompson exclaimed on Twitter that her Thor: Ragnarok character, Valkyrie was indeed bisexual, but again, the final film contained no concrete representation of this. Speaking with Uproxx, director Taika Waititi chalked it up to timing. “It just felt like there’s so much going on in the film and there’s so much to get through, sometimes I feel like adding more of that stuff makes it kind of complicated,” he explained.
(Via The Playlist)