Disney+ is celebrating Pride Month 2026 by highlighting Marvel movies and shows that helped queer characters find a place in the superhero world. Marvel was slow to bring openly LGBTQIA+ heroes to the screen during its early run, often relying on a passing reference or a blink-and-you-miss-it moment. The studio's films and series look different today, and the streamer is using June to point fans toward the titles that helped drive that change.
For Pride Month 2026, the Disney+ Pride collection shines a light on four Marvel projects with meaningful LGBTQIA+ stories. Each title pushed queer representation forward in its own way, and the lineup gives fans a clear look at how Marvel grew more open to these stories over the past decade. Their impact is what led these four projects to earn a place in this year's celebration.
The Pride collection returns to Disney+ each June as a curated row of films and series that center LGBTQIA+ characters and themes. Earlier editions, such as from 2022, leaned on family titles and musicals, with picks like West Side Story, The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder, and a few Marvel projects. The number of MCU projects in the 2026 lineup noticeably increased, making the collection more appealing to mainstream superhero fans.
Marvel Movies & Shows Spotlighted by Disney+ for Pride Month
Eternals
Eternals introduced the Marvel Cinematic Universe's first openly gay superhero. Brian Tyree Henry played Phastos, a brilliant Eternal and inventor who lives a quiet family life with his husband Ben, played by Haaz Sleiman, and their young son. Director Chloé Zhao showed the household as warm and ordinary, never treating Phastos' identity as a shock or a side note.
The film also delivered the MCU's first big-screen same-sex kiss, a tender moment between Phastos and Ben before Phastos leaves to help save the planet. Sleiman, who is openly gay, described the scene as life-saving during a conversation with Variety. He spoke about how rare it felt to show a loving queer family on this scale.
That commitment came at a cost overseas, though. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar blocked Eternals from theaters after Disney declined to cut the film's same-sex content, pulling it from release across the Gulf region. Angelina Jolie, who played the warrior Thena, praised the studio for keeping the scenes in and said she felt sad for the fans who would miss them.
The New Mutants
The New Mutants put a same-sex romance at the heart of its story. The horror-tinged X-Men film follows five young mutants held in a secretive hospital, and two of them, Danielle Moonstar and Rahne Sinclair, slowly fall for each other. Blu Hunt plays Dani, also known as Mirage, while Maisie Williams plays Rahne, the shape-shifting mutant called Wolfsbane.
Director Josh Boone drew on the characters' long history in Marvel Comics, where Dani and Rahne share a deep psychic bond. The two grow close at the institution, share a kiss, and hold hands in the film's closing scene, hinting at a future together as a couple.
Released in 2020 as the last X-Men movie of the Fox era before Disney took over the franchise, The New Mutants featured one of the series' few openly queer leads.
Agatha All Along
Agatha All Along earned a reputation as "the gayest" MCU project to date, and the cast happily embraced the label. The WandaVision follow-up follows Agatha Harkness, played by Kathryn Hahn, as she gathers a coven of witches to walk the dangerous Witches' Road. Queer identity runs throughout the series rather than appearing in a single scene.
The show finally introduced Billy Maximoff, also known as Wiccan, one of the most anticipated queer heroes in Marvel Comics. Joe Locke plays Billy, the son of Wanda Maximoff, and the series confirmed he is gay early on through a phone call with his boyfriend. A later episode dug into Billy's past and showed him kissing his boyfriend Eddie, played by Miles Gutierrez-Riley.
Agatha and Rio Vidal, the latter played by Aubrey Plaza, form the other major queer thread, with flashbacks to their long, complicated romance dating back to the Salem Witch Trials era. Between Billy's story and Agatha's history with Rio, the series treats its queer characters as central figures, which added to its appeal. It's no surprise that Disney+ spotlighted it in celebration of Pride Month.
Jessica Jones
Jessica Jones brought the first openly lesbian character to Marvel Television in 2015. Carrie-Anne Moss plays Jeri Hogarth, a sharp and ruthless lawyer who often works with the show's hard-drinking private eye, Jessica Jones, played by Krysten Ritter. The writers changed the character from the comics, where Jeryn Hogarth is originally a man.
The series put Jeri's personal life in plain view. She begins an affair with her secretary, Pam, played by Susie Abromeit, while pushing through a messy divorce from her wife, Wendy, played by Robin Weigert. The show treated her relationships with the same seriousness it gave its straight couples.
Jessica Jones kept expanding its queer cast as it went along. By its third and final season, the series added Gillian, played by Aneesh Sheth, the MCU's first transgender character. The show streamed on Netflix before moving to Disney+, where new audiences can find one of Marvel's earliest steps toward queer representation.
Why These Marvel Stories Are Important for Pride
Bringing these four projects into one collection tells a small story about Marvel's journey with queer representation. Jessica Jones arrived first in 2015 and kept its LGBTQIA+ characters on television, where the audience was smaller, and the risk felt lower. The New Mutants then moved that effort onto the big screen, and Eternals took the bigger swing by giving a lead superhero a husband and a young family.
Agatha All Along feels like the payoff of that slow climb. Wiccan is a named hero with a boyfriend and a full backstory, and the franchise seems set on keeping him around, putting him in rare company among Marvel's queer characters. The cast's open pride in the show, rather than nervous defensiveness, shows Marvel is more at ease with this material than it was 10 years ago.
The Pride collection, containing this many Marvel titles, is a breath of fresh air and a great way to support the LGBTQIA+ community.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
