“Dead Boy Detectives” explores queer friends and aromantic dynamics

June 24, 2024

Being in love with your friends is one of the most common queer experiences of all. Whether it’s a familial type of love, a situational relationship, or simply having someone who is “your person,” queer friendships tend to blur the lines of a stereotypical friendship. It’s also a nuance that’s often left out in media—stories use tropes, and tropes create careful delineations in character dynamics.

“Dead Boy Detectives” is a beautifully edited, spectacularly acted, and wonderfully quirky show that has captured my heart and mind over the past few weeks. The titular dead boys, Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew, “Findhorn Case 8/31/18”) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri, “The Lodge”), are two ghosts who find each other post-mortem and spend their afterlife solving mysteries to help other ghosts pass on to the afterlife. After they become stranded in a coastal 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 inducted into the group after they extracted two elves from her body. While trying to find a way back to London, the group encounters witches, demons, and the worst enemy of all: their past trauma.

It’s also a queer show in its simplest parts. The show is extremely cheesy and contains several gay storylines, with Edwin spending the season coming to terms with being simultaneously gay and from Edwardian-era London. However, Dead Boy Detectives is first and foremost a show about loving your friends, and it’s through that lens that the writers queer the story most effectively.

The friendship between Edwin and Niko is a highlight of the series. On the surface, they seem to be complete opposites, with Edwin being very reserved and Niko expressing every thought and feeling she has, but they find common ground in their loneliness and comfort in each other’s differences. Niko is also the first of the main friend group to encourage Edwin to explore his interest in men, even if he continues to deny it. Although they only met a few days earlier, it is mainly Niko who convinces Edwin to go on his first date with a boy named Monty (Joshua Colley, “Les Misérables: the Broadway Musical”) by dismissing Edwin’s claim that Monty isn’t really gay and is “probably just into ghosts.” Edwin and Niko share a casual openness not seen in other relationships on the show, and the role this level of trust plays is brought into focus as Edwin comes to terms with the idea of being gay.

In the media, homosexuality is often focused on romance – think of Nick from Heartstopper developing feelings for a boy and crying at an “Am I gay?” quiz. While some of us have had the courage to be confused, it’s far more common for others to figure out their queerness by talking about it with friends. 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 to me. It’s refreshing to see this aspect of support finally being acknowledged on screen.

I find Crystal and Charles’ relationship profound in another way. The two become fast friends early in the series and flirt playfully, which eventually leads to the two making out near the middle of the series. After getting together, the two decide it’s a “wrong situation, wrong time, wrong place” since Crystal still has to deal with her violent ex-demon and Charles is a ghost. Although both characters are straight (for now), the dynamic resembles a common one between queer friends. Historically, the division between platonic and romantic expressions of love has been much looser in queer spaces. For one, it’s hard to maintain a monogamous relationship like one with two and a half kids and a dog when it’s often illegal. It’s also ineffective to model our relationships after heterosexual dynamics when they’re not heterosexual. The idea of ”relationship anarchy,” for example, says that relationships shouldn’t be limited to any kind of label and that every relationship should be tailored to the needs of the people in it. In other words, kiss your buddies as long as everyone involved agrees that this is the most fulfilling way forward.

A broader societal disapproval of sex and queerness has led to a condemnation of so-called “hook-up culture” in queer spaces, even though meaningful physical but non-romantic relationships are undeniably and historically queer. In the final episode of the series, Crystal kisses Charles goodbye and it’s hard to say how the audience is supposed to understand that. I don’t think we’re supposed to know; it’s two people who care deeply about each other and the rest is irrelevant.

The heart of the story, however, are the dead boys themselves, Edwin and Charles. They are the central love story of the series and describe themselves as Orpheus and Eurydice. They are married in every way in the afterlife, protect each other and, as the jealousy on both sides makes clear, they were the only person for a while. It all culminates in the season’s penultimate episode, when Edwin is dragged down into Hell and Charles follows him to pull him back out. The entire episode is a multi-layered masterpiece, from the depictions of each circle of Hell in “Inferno” to the deliberate framing of the couple through the lens of Orpheus and Eurydice. My favorite part, perhaps obviously, is the culmination of Edwin’s character development in his declaration of love to Charles on the steps of Hell. It’s a demonstration of Edwin’s newfound emotional vulnerability, and while bringing them together would have been plot-wise satisfying, it was Charles’ reaction that made me cry.

“You, Edwin Payne, are my best buddy. That will never change. You are the most important person in the world to me. And I can’t really say that I love you back, but there is no one else I would go to hell for. And we literally have forever to figure out what the rest means.”

That’s not a denial; honestly, the statement reads very aromantic to me, and I’d be just as happy for that validation as I would be for the two to get together. Aromantics are often misunderstood in both the queer community and the public and seen as less capable of love because romantic relationships are valued above all others. That’s not true. Loving someone is a powerful thing, regardless of how you categorize that love. Talking about exactly how feelings manifest and negotiation are also important components to making any kind of relationship work between someone who is aromantic 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’ll end with them being together, maybe it won’t. As the show says, at the end of the day, Charles is not Orpheus and Edwin is not Eurydice, and that’s why their story can have a happy ending. Either way, there’s no denying that the two characters’ relationship goes beyond “they’re just friends” and “they’re dating” and represents a secret third, very queer thing.

Love your friends this month. Love the people around you, in every way possible, as much as you can. Dead Boy Detectives ends its first season without anyone being romantically involved, and yet it’s an undeniably queer show. It shows the numerous ways queer people have learned to love deeply outside of a heteronormative template, and how that can be just as groundbreaking as a typical romance. The future of the show is currently uncertain, and there’s no news yet on a second season, so celebrate this Pride month by watching a show about love!

Daily Arts writer Lin Yang can be reached at [email protected].