Being in love with your friends is one of the most prevalent Queer experiences out there. Whether it’s a familial type of love, a situationship or simply having someone that’s “your person,” Queer friendship tends to blur the lines of a stereotypical friendship. It’s also a nuance often left out of media — stories employ tropes, and tropes create careful demarcations in character dynamics.
“Dead Boy Detectives” is a beautifully edited, spectacularly acted and wonderfully whimsical show that has captured my heart and mind for the last few weeks. The titular dead boys, Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew, “Findhorn Case 31.08.18”) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri, “The Lodge”), are two ghosts who find each other post-mortem and spend their afterlives solving mysteries to help other ghosts pass on into the afterlife. After being stranded in a seaside town in Washington state, the boys’ agency sees living recruits in the form of psychic Crystal Palace (Kassius Nelson, “Out of Body”) and a seemingly normal girl named Niko Sasaki (Yuyu Kitamura, “Invited in”), who was brought into the group after they pull two sprites out of her body. As they work to find a way back home to London, the group encounters witches, demons and the worst enemy of all: their past trauma.
It’s also, in its simplest parts, a Queer show. The show is extremely campy and features several gay storylines, with Edwin spending the season coming to terms with being simultaneously gay and from Edwardian London. However, “Dead Boy Detectives” is first and foremost a show about loving your friends, and it’s through that lens that the writers most effectively queer the story.
The friendship between Edwin and Niko is a highlight of the show. On the surface they seem like total opposites, with Edwin being very reserved and Niko expressing every thought and emotion she has, but they find common ground in their loneliness and solace in each other’s differences. Niko is also the first of the main friend group who encourages Edwin to explore his interest in men even when he remains in denial. Despite meeting only a few days prior, it’s mainly Niko that convinces Edwin to go on his first date ever with a boy named Monty (Joshua Colley, “Les Miserables: the Broadway Musical”), rebuking Edwin’s insistence that Monty’s not actually Queer and “probably just into ghosts.” Edwin and Niko share an easy openness that isn’t seen in other relationships throughout the show, and the role this level of trust plays is placed front and center as Edwin becomes comfortable with the idea of being gay.
Gay realization in media is typically focused on romance — think Nick from Heartstopper developing feelings for a boy and crying while doing an “Am I Gay?” quiz. While some of us had the rizz to pull while confused, others figuring out their Queerness by talking it through with friends is a far more common story. It was my friends who helped me try out new pronouns and took me to pride events. It was my friends who I talked to about pretty girls or pretty boys and what that meant for me. It’s refreshing to see that aspect of support finally acknowledged on screen.
I find the relationship between Crystal and Charles profound in another way. The two quickly become friends in the beginning of the series and have a playful flirtation that eventually culminates in the two making out towards the middle of it. After getting together, the two decide that it’s a “wrong place, wrong time” situation, with Crystal still dealing with her abusive demon ex and Charles being a ghost. Although both characters are straight (for now), the dynamic echoes a common one between Queer friends. Historically, the division between platonic and romantic expressions of affection has been a lot looser in Queer spaces. For one, it’s difficult to maintain a monogamous, two-and-a-half-kids-and-a-dog-type relationship when doing so is often illegal. It’s also ineffective to model our relationships after heterosexual dynamics when they’re not heterosexual. The idea of “relationship anarchy,” for instance, argues that relationships shouldn’t be confined to any sort of label and that each relationship should be tailored to the needs of the people in them. In other words, kiss your homies, as long as everyone involved agrees it’s the most fulfilling way forward.
A wider social disapproval towards both sex and Queerness has led to a condemnation of so-called “hook-up culture” in Queer spaces, though having meaningful physical but non-romantic relationships is undeniably and historically Queer. In the final episode of the series, Crystal kisses Charles as a goodbye and it’s hard to say how the audience is supposed to read it. I don’t think we’re supposed to know; they’re two people who care about each other deeply and the rest is irrelevant.
The heart of the story, though, is the dead boys themselves, Edwin and Charles. They are the core love story of the show, self-described as Orpheus and Eurydice. They’re essentially married in the afterlife in every way that matters, fiercely protective of one another and as made clear via jealousy on both sides, they’ve been each other’s only person for a while. This all comes to a head in the penultimate episode of the season, when Edwin gets pulled down to Hell and Charles follows to pull him back out. The entire episode is a layered masterpiece, from the representations of each circle of Hell in “Inferno” to the deliberate framing of the pair through the lens of Orpheus and Eurydice. My favorite part is, perhaps obviously, the climax of Edwin’s character arc in his confession of love to Charles on the stairs of Hell. It is a demonstration of Edwin’s newfound emotional vulnerability and while it would’ve been satisfying story-wise to have them get together, Charles’ reaction is what made me cry.
“You, Edwin Payne, are my best mate. That will never change. You are the most important person in the world to me. And I can’t really say that I’m in love with you back, but there’s no one else that I would go to Hell for. And we’ve got literally forever to figure out what the rest means.”
This isn’t rejection; to be honest, the statement reads as very aromantic to me, and I’d be equally as thrilled about that confirmation as the two getting together. Aromantics are often misunderstood within both the Queer community and the general public as being less capable of love due to the elevation of romantic relationships above all others. This is not true. Loving someone is a powerful thing regardless of how you choose to categorize that love. Talking out the exact ways feelings manifest and negotiation are also key parts of making any kind of relationship work between someone who’s aro and someone who isn’t (AKA alloromantic), so I’m excited to see what “figuring out the rest” will entail in the future. Maybe it ends with them together, maybe not. As the show says, at the end of the day, Charles is not Orpheus and Edwin is not Eurydice, and because of that, their story can have a happy ending. Either way, it’s undeniable that the two characters’ relationship transcends both “they’re just friends” and “dating” to a secret third, very Queer thing.
This month, love your friends. Love the people around you, in every way you can, the most you can. “Dead Boy Detectives” ends its first season with no one in a romantic relationship and even so, it is an undeniably Queer show. It centralized the numerous ways Queer people have learned to love deeply outside of a heteronormative template and how that can be just as game-changing as your typical romance. The future of the show is currently in question, with no news yet of a second season. So, this pride month, celebrate by watching a series about love!
Daily Arts Writer Lin Yang can be reached at yanglinj@umich.edu.
