Gay action
Home / gay topics / Gay action
Think “The Craft” filtered through “Buffy” reruns and contemporary young adult doom. The being he now calls his friend is a spirit that has taken his form — with Yoshiki’s voice, too — and one that will kill him if he tells anyone the truth. Over the summer, Pride marketing declined across major movie brands, and by the fall, streaming services had announced several cancellations of well-loved queer TV shows.
The revelation sends Yoshiki into a spiral of grief and guilt, but he also can’t bear the thought of losing Hikaru even more than he already has.
For Carol Sturka, the misanthropic survivor played by a pitch-perfect Rhea Seehorn, the Joining brings back horrific childhood memories of surviving conversion therapy her mother put her through as a child, a process designed to rob her of all that made her human. The dazzling competition that emerged from that moment is a sparkling reminder that drag has always thrived under pressure.
But there’s more to “Heated Rivalry,” an adaptation of a romance novel by author Rachel Reid, that helped propel this low-budget Canadian production into a sleeper hit. —WC
“Wayward”
In the ever-expanding ocean of middling cult dramas, Netflix’s “Wayward” doesn’t really stand out.
—AF
“The Summer Hikaru Died”
Horror as a metaphor for queerness is a subject often relegated to subtext or academic discussions, which makes a show like “The Summer Hikaru Died,” which uses Lovecraftian horror conventions in service of a gay coming-of-age story, so radical and strange.
Navigating ovarian cancer alongside their partner, Megan Falley, Gibson anchors the project as a tender beacon of humor and romance, battling to accept their illness as part of the world’s beauty. Most importantly, Tierney found two perfect stars in Hudson Williams and Connor Storie, who are individually great — Williams as the submissive and socially awkward Shane, Storie as the dominant and hot-headed Ilya — and together have the type of electric onscreen chemistry that has made thousands of viewers fall in love with their characters almost as hard as they fall for each other.
—AF
“Lurker”
There’ve been a lot of homoerotic thrillers in recent memory about men ingratiating themselves into the life of someone more beautiful and fortunate than they are: see the recent “Saltburn” for the most famous example. If the gay community’s visibility didn’t outright decline across film and TV (a statistic we won’t know for sure until studies on the subject come out next year), representation at least grew more cautious.
But as the titular firecracker, Tessa Thompson portrays Heddas as a blistering object of affection whose scintillating love interest (Nina Hoss) isn’t a fantasy or a burden. In fact, only 22 of the 1,600 in my personal collection meet IMDb’s criteria – and a handful of those films actually fit better under a different genre, even though they were clearly action films.
That’s a personal hangup Vince Gilligan gradually drops into the show, not the entire metaphor the show wraps itself around, but “Pluribus” does investigate the relationship between the individual and the collective in a way that feels decidedly queer. Written by “Letterkenny” creator Jacob Tierney, the show takes a cheesy premise — a decade-long love affair between two superstar hockey players — and makes it compelling, offering a look at the sacrifices queer people must make to survive in the sports world’s closet that’s neither cloying nor dismissive.
From awards honorees defending trans people at the podium to musical acts designing their live performances as tributes to their gay and genderqueer fans, entertainers of all kinds came together to remind audiences that Hollywood is still mostly run by allies.
However well-intentioned, that political contrast made LGBTQ representation on screen feel more dire than celebratory.
Set against a backdrop of crumbling Republican power and culture-war posturing, its queerness isn’t White House-decorative, so much as it is West Wing-structural… and you haven’t lived until you watched Malin Akerman teach Brittany Snow to hold a rifle. In 2025, identity is treated as a declaration and silence is regarded as assumed erasure.
Erotically and supernaturally charged, Trương Minh Quý’s war-torn romance is elusive to the touch, but with breathtaking cinematography that’s plain as day in front of our eyes.
“Blue Moon”
Ethan Hawke isn’t the first choice you would think of to play an embittered, messy bisexual — one who is several inches shorter than his lanky build, nonetheless — but somehow the actor nails it in “Blue Moon,” a biopic of acclaimed lyricist Lorenzo Hart from Hawke’s frequent collaborator Richard Linklater.
That attention crystallizes in Peter McVries (David Jonsson), a gay character delivered with exceptional warmth and clarity. Trying to find her way in this brave new world, Carol emerges as one of the most complicated and dynamic queer characters in recent TV memory, at turns deeply relatable and wildly unpleasant, equally grieving the death of her partner as she is lusting after the member of the hive mind that becomes her guide.
There’s more lurking behind the surface though, and “Twinless” smartly lets you figure it out early on to supply the buddy duo story with an inherent tension as you wait for the shoe to drop. The 12-episode anime follows Yoshiki, a young and morose teen living in a rural and close-minded Japanese village, as he discovers his best friend Hikaru died six months ago.