Weapons buried its gays but that might be okay

This is a repost of something I original posted on Medium because I can't think of a blog today okay thanks.

me and who

BIG BIG SPOILERS FOR THE MOVIE

Weapons is a good movie and I liked it a lot. It made me laugh, it made me tense, I thought the performances were great, I wish some of the night scenes were better lit even though they were very well directed otherwise. The main theme that stuck with me was how, in a society that claims to do everything it can to protect the children, many people have difficulty seeing those children as independent, smart human beings whose thoughts and feelings should be taken seriously. I spent 2024 working as an after-school teacher, so that’s something that’s been on my mind a lot, and I really love how Weapons tackled the subject. I also get why people didn’t like the movie. The structure of the movie can throw off the pacing for some, it’s tonally inconsistent, and let’s be frank, the scary old lady horror trope is annoying, and Zach Cregger’s used it in both his movies. And there’s one complaint I’ve seen a few times now that I want to dive into a little bit, which involves another trope, Bury Your Gays.

According to TV Tropes, “This trope is the presentation of deaths of LGBT characters where these characters are nominally able to be viewed as more expendable than their heterosexual counterparts. In this way, the death is treated as exceptional in its circumstances. In aggregate, queer characters are more likely to die than straight characters. Indeed, it may be because they seem to have less purpose compared to straight characters, or that the supposed natural conclusion of their story is an early death.” Now, I have complicated feelings about TV Tropes as a website, and sometimes I feel like it’s done more harm than good for media literacy online, but that’s a pretty succinct, straightforward definition. But here’s the thing. Part of the reason I’m still so bitter about Tara’s death in Buffy the Vampire slayer is because I think that whole storyline kinda sucked. Her death felt unnecessary because the build-up was poorly written.

For so many people, including myself, Willow and Tara were one of their first examples of a complicated, interesting, and loving queer couple in any media. If Willow had been straight, and her boyfriend had been killed, I’d still think that was a frustrating and annoying plot decision, but it wouldn’t have been nearly as upsetting as what we got.

In an interview with the LA Times about the ending of his show “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power,” Nate Stevenson said, “I can’t see another gay character die on TV for the moment. Maybe one day we can have a tragic gay romance again, but that has been, like, the only norm for so long. So for a little while, you do have to kind of accept more of a limited set of tools.” Now, it’s been five years since that interview. Has enough time passed? Maybe for some, but not for others. Which is why the fate of the gay couple in Weapons struck such a bad chord.

On one hand, there are some very positive aspects to the portrayal of Marcus and Terry’s relationship. They’re the only healthy couple in the film. Their home is bright and sunny, a relief from everyone else’s depressing lives. They spend their free time sharing seven hot dogs and watching gross nature documentaries. This is very good. Then Marcus gets possessed and brutally beats Terry to death. This is not good. In a way, it’s similar to my previous example about a hypothetical straight Willow. Weapons is a horror movie. It’s gonna get grim, and it would be extremely upsetting to see anyone forced to murder their partner. They’re gay, though. So it’s worse.

But why are they gay? Was it a thoughtless desire for representation that Zach Cregger didn’t consider the implications of? I don’t think it’s that simple. When Gladys showed up on Marcus’ doorstep, knowing Justine is suspicious of her, there was no logical reason for her to do what she did. It actually made her own situation worse. After months of going radio silent, she makes a perfectly normal guy kill his husband and go on a rampage through town in the exact same pose as the missing children. Gladys could’ve just had Justine killed in the car, but she’s spiteful, she’s dramatic, she’s camp like that. Also, she’s a bit homophobic.

Maybe not homophobic exactly, but I think Gladys has a particular bias against them. She could’ve chosen anyone in town as her energy source, but she specifically chose Alex’s parents, in order to gain full control of him, and then the rest of his class. She loves to take advantage of the heteronormative nuclear family. A couple that not only doesn’t have children, but is biologically incapable of producing them, is completely useless to her. This felt purposefully written, to me, and I liked it. It still sucked to see a man bash his husband’s head in.

There seems to be an almost even split between queer fans of Weapons who could and couldn’t get past this plot point. And I think that’s a really, really good thing. It means we’re getting closer to that future Nate Stevenson was talking about. We’re not there yet, but I hope one day, there‘ll be so much queer representation on our screens that gay people will die and it won’t mean anything at all. That’s awesome.