Tessa Thompson feels “really good” about how Valkyrie’s sexuality is portrayed in Thor: Love And Thunder
The character's bisexuality was "a big topic of conversation" with director Taika Waititi, Thompson says
Tessa Thompson has been a champion of Valkyrie’s sexuality from the beginning, but wouldn’t you know, Marvel deemed a scene confirming it too “distracting” in Thor: Ragnarok. But the MCU has gotten a bit more gay since then, so does Thor: Love And Thunder finally let the Asgardian warrior be out and proud?
“We talked about it a lot, it was big topic of conversation,” Thompson explains in an interview with Yahoo! Entertainment. “Because I think rightfully there’s this real want in audiences to see characters be very clearly queer or LGBTQIA+ inside these spaces. And I think it’s hugely important to have representation.”
She continues, “And also, I think as humans I think that we are not defined by our sexuality, and by who we love. And so sometimes I think to hang a narrative completely on that is a way of actually diminishing the humanity of the character. Because you don’t allow them to be anything else. … It becomes the only storyline, particularly in a movie like this where you don’t, frankly, have a lot of room for storyline.”
Okay… not sounding too promising, honestly. But Thompson has a positive spin on how that character was represented in the movie: “[There] was a lot of conversation in terms of how to treat that with Valkyrie. And I feel really good, personally, about where we got to. I hope that she’s a character that fans continue to connect to, that we have a lot of time to explore her, in all of her humanity. But whether or not she finds love in this movie doesn’t mean she’s not still a fabulous queer character that is open to finding love when it makes sense.”
So it sounds like Valkyrie won’t be finding her queen after all. But perhaps her sexuality will be confirmed in some other way (that hopefully won’t be censored for foreign markets).