Joe Locke's superhero role in the upcoming Disney+ series Agatha All Along puts him in a club that few MCU actors belong to.
Agatha All Along continues the story of Kathryn Hahn's Agatha Harkness from WandaVision as the witch gathers a group of unlikely allies on a quest to restore her powers.
Locke has a mysterious, unnamed role in the new Marvel series. One of the only confirmed facts about the character is that he will be LGBTQIA+.
Joe Locke Joins Exclusive MCU Actors Club
While details on Joe Locke's character in Agatha All Along are scarce, the actor confirmed to Variety that the show "never shies away from his queerness."
As an out and proud member of the LGBTQIA+ community himself, this makes Locke one of the few queer actors also to be portraying a queer character in the MCU.
Also in this group is Tessa Thompson, a queer actress who stars as the canonically bisexual Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok and Thor: Love and Thunder.
Another openly LGBTQIA+ actor, Brianna Hildebrand, starred as the queer Negasonic Teenage Warhead in the Deadpool movies who, after appearing in Deadpool & Wolverine, also forms a part of this exclusive MCU club.
It's worth noting that the MCU has more than three LGBTQIA+ characters, including Phastos, played by Brian Tyree Henry in Eternals, Tom Hiddleston's Loki and Sophia Di Martino's Sylvie, and Taika Waititi as Korg. However, none of these actors have publicly come out as queer.
Is Queer Representation Growing in the MCU?
While this club of openly queer actors playing canonically queer characters in the MCU is small, it is growing.
After significantly lacking in LGBTQIA+ representation throughout the Infinity Saga, the Multiverse Saga of the MCU has seen more queer actors being cast and more queer characters being introduced on-screen.
RuPaul's Drag Race star Shea Couleé is set to appear as the first non-binary MCU actor in the upcoming Ironheart series. Michaela Coel joined Black Panther: Wakanda Forever primarily to play queer hero Aneka, and The Marvels even hinted at a relationship between main heroes Captain Marvel and Valkyrie.
While the MCU is taking steps toward better representation, one downside to this is the vitriol and hate these steps continue to attract.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness star Xochitl Gomez received ongoing harassment after her character was revealed to have two moms (and is also canonically queer in the comics). Similarly, Eternals was review-bombed following its inclusion of a prominent gay superhero in Phastos.
In preparing for the world to meet his queer character in Agatha All Along, Joe Locke acknowledged it wouldn't be easy during his interview with Variety, saying, "There’s going to be a lot of people that just hate everything about the character and everything about what I’ve done with it, and I just have to be OK with that."
It's unfortunate that any form of LGBTQIA+ storytelling in Marvel encounters these hurdles, but clubs like this one need to keep growing for Marvel Studios to continue making strides toward better representation.
