The final installment of Fox’s X-Men movies franchise, The New Mutants, is coming to theaters against all odds. After several delays, revisions, and rumors of even greater troubles, X-Men fans are at long last about to get New Mutants – albeit with some very big changes to the Marvel Comics mythos. In trying to combine a supernatural horror story, coming-of-age drama, and superhero action into one mix, director Josh Boone was also forced to address the realities of youth culture today. To cover the topic of LGBTQ awareness, New Mutants is forging a same-sex relationship between two female characters in the film!
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Warning – MILD STORY SPOILERS Follow!
EW has the exclusive confirmation from Josh Boone himself that his New Mutants movie will feature a subplot about a same-sex relationship between Rahne Sinclair / Wolfsbane (Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams) and Danielle Moonstar (The Originals star Blu Hunt).
As Boone describes it, that relationship between Wolfsbane and Moonstar is “a beautiful love story… sort of the spin and focus of some of the character-driven stuff in the film.”
Maisie Williams elaborates on New Mutants‘ LGBTQ relationship, saying that the same-sex bond between Moonstar and Rahne wasn’t just an invention for a modern movie, but is rather, “a real extension of what is touched on in the comics. As Williams explains:
“Rahne and Dani have a telepathic connection in the comics, and so we just wanted to extend that in the film and put that within reality. If they really could understand each other on that level, then you’d probably end up falling in love with that person.”
A modern take on New Mutants is going to have to address more issues than the comic series did back in the 1980s, and LGBTQ culture is definitely something that modern youth are much more aware of and comfortable with – but that doesn’t make the issues of sexuality and identity any less difficult for young people to deal with. Rahne Sinclair and Dani Moonstar are particularly ripe characters for this subplot: Rahne comes from an Irish Catholic background in which she was harshly abused over any small hint of sin. Dani comes from a Native American background and suffers the curse of demonic visions. Both young girls have have cultural ties that wouldn’t necessarily be ideal to come-out in – be it as mutants, or LGBTQ.
…All the more reason they’re probably able to forge such a deep bond.
New Mutants hits theaters on April 3rd.
