The Marvel Cinematic Universe has had superheroes with green skin, superheroes played by white guys named Chris, and—as of this Friday—a lead superhero in a solo movie who happens to be a woman. What it doesn’t have, though, is an abundance of gay characters (outside of, you know, that fan theory everyone shares about a certain guy with a shield). By comparison, DC’s superhero shows on The CW have a number of LGBTQ characters, including Legends Of Tomorrow lead Sara Lance and the protagonist of the Batwoman series that’s in development.
Marvel Studios is apparently hoping to address this lack of representation at some point, though, with Marvel production chief Victoria Alonso telling Variety that “the world is ready” for a gay superhero to show up in the MCU. She also noted that Marvel is very committed to representing the fact that its audience is “global, is diverse, [and] is inclusive,” and so she knows the studio won’t have “continued success” if it can’t stay on top of diversity and inclusivity. She didn’t go much further into detail than that on what Marvel wants to do or what it’s planning, since Marvel Studios has been extremely tight with any sort of information like that for the last few years, but this does bring up a separate issue: The Marvel comic book universe doesn’t have a ton of high-profile gay characters who are particularly well-suited for an appearance in the MCU. The X-Men books have plenty, but they’re all still off-limits until Disney finishes bringing the mutants into its loving embrace.
Meanwhile, though, there are rumors that we’ll actually see a gay hero in a Marvel movie relatively soon, even if it’s not someone with a big name. As the same Variety story notes, there have been rumblings that Marvel Studios wants the lead in its Eternals movie to be a gay man. That would be the perfect opportunity to do something like that, since the general public doesn’t know a single thing about The Eternals and so Marvel can do whatever it wants with the movie without having to adhere to an important comic book canon.