Approaching the portal to the Spirit World, joining hands as background music swells triumphantly, Korra and Asami walk in and gaze into each other’s eyes — and thus, the beloved Nickelodeon cartoon The Legend of Korra ends. It’s an extremely brief romantic moment, only seconds long, but its impact remains deeply felt since the show bowed out in 2014.
It was a long road until Korrasami, as the couple is known among fans, could officially canonize their romance in the critically-acclaimed animated series. Originally in love with the same guy, we watched as Korra and Asami became friends and eventually grew increasingly intimate, ending with the not-kiss in the show’s finale. As Korra co-creator Bryan Konietzko explained in a widely-read blog post about what it took to make their relationship official, Nickelodeon was supportive, but “there was a limit to how far we could go with it,” meaning that the series couldn’t end with something as explicitly queer as a kiss. In fact, Korra’s creators hadn’t even thought to ask if they could have the kiss in the finale. They presumed Nickelodeon would say no, which was “just another assumption based on a paradigm that marginalizes nonheterosexual people,” as Konietzko wrote.
Within children’s animation, queerness has traditionally been seen as taboo; it took until the 2010s for queer characters to make significant inroads into kids’ programming. Korra marked a turning point for mainstream Western animation, a high-profile confirmation that cartoon characters and shows intended for young audiences can be queer — and that’s perfectly ordinary.
“Korra clarified something for me,” Molly Ostertag, a writer for the Disney Channel series The Owl House, told them. “The characters being together at the very end — it’s epic and dramatic, but I also know that I want to tell stories about queer relationships that go beyond that.”
Ostertag wrote a momentous August episode of The Owl House in which a young witch, Amity, confirms she has a crush on another witch, Luz. “Telling someone that you have a crush on them can be really scary, especially when you're afraid it will ruin the friendship,” she said. “Those are universally relatable feelings, but also, I think, intrinsically queer feelings.”
Ostertag, like many queer animators them. spoke with for this story, has experienced pushback when it comes to including queerness in cartoons. “Often it would just be background stuff, like two moms holding a baby,” she said. “It was very frustrating and emotional and hurtful to be told you can’t do these things. The lesson I took from that was that I’m going to be very textual and upfront and bake it into the story.” In her episode of Owl House, for example, the crush storyline suited the characters’ trajectories as moving past their history as one-time rivals, and was “built into the entire plot.”
That drive for “organic storytelling” is something writers have heard for years. As Laura Sreebny, a writer for She-Ra and the Princesses of Power and The Hollow (who also worked on Korra), told them., “The note [from studios] is always that it doesn’t ‘feel organic,’ which was sort of a way of deflecting. That’s the note [Korra] got, that the groundwork wasn’t laid for it. It’s always a little demoralizing.”
Sreebny wrote an episode of The Hollow in which the main character, Adam, tells another character that he’s gay. “I sent in a draft of the script, and I was told: ‘can you do a draft with more of a ‘wink-wink ’to the audience?’ So we had a conversation about how I’d rather not do it at all if we were doing it that way.” Unlike the majority of cartoons that have included queer characters, like She-Ra and Steven Universe, The Hollow does not take place in a fantasy world, so “I tried to explain how important it would be for kids to hear this. It’s not anything to be afraid of, saying those words doesn’t make it an ‘adult’ scene or make it inappropriate for kids.” She eventually got her way.
Sreebny, for one, sees the Korra ending as a decisive turning point for the industry. “Walls were still up. But even as it was, it was so meaningful,” Sreebny said. “It’s all been happening so fast since Korra and Steven Universe — it’s a bit of a tidal wave, even though it’s still only a handful of shows.”
“Creators are feeling like these little nods and references aren’t enough — they want to tell the story in the way they lived it as a kid,” Ostertag notes. Fandoms are similarly tired of settling for winks, and countless online campaigns for more explicit queer representation have raged over the last decade as a result.
Shadi Petosky, a co-creator of the Amazon Video cartoon Danger & Eggs, sees the animation industry’s changes as part of a much larger shift in society. “I don’t think that any specific episode or cartoon is a turning point for the industry. I think it’s an overall queer liberation that’s happened culturally,” she told them. “There’s a lot of solidarity around these intersectional problems against white supremacist patriarchy, led by Black trans women, so I feel like there’s a rising tide of these representations.”
Her perspective, she argued, is going to be inherent in her work, regardless of the age group being targeted. “My whole trans experience is inherently based in pushback. I never saw anyone doing this and when I was younger, I didn’t think it was possible,” she explained. Petosky, who recently optioned a script that Lilly Wachowski is producing, is invested in being more overt about queer sexuality, even if that means writing for teens instead. “The kids' space usually still requires you to be more metaphorical,” she said. “So the age that I’m writing for might be maturing with me.”
“Progress is not linear,” Mia Resella, a storyboard artist on the Cartoon Network series Craig of the Creek and a writer for upcoming Netflix series DeadEndia, told them. “But I do genuinely feel that I wouldn’t be working on these shows even three or four years ago. Those stories give you ammunition when you’re pitching, because everybody loved it when Korra or Steven Universe did this and that, and it didn’t hurt anyone’s numbers.” DeadEndia, based on the comic series by Hamish Steele, will feature a trans protagonist.
There is the damaging assumption that it would be harmful to kids or even — quelle horreur — “turn” them gay to see queer characters in animation. The animators them. spoke to disagree.
“This is a really crucial age to see these characters,” said Resella, who once tried and failed to get a non-binary character included in a preschool-age series. “Sometimes I’m the only queer, POC, or non-male person [in a writer’s room] and that can create pressure to represent stuff I know nothing about. Sometimes when you don’t see things happen for so long you just assume they can’t be done, so seeing how things played out successfully on [DeadEndia] inspired me to start asking for more in my other projects too — not just compromises or allegory.”
With more queer creatives in the room, Ostertag says, it becomes more difficult to shut a queer storyline down. “You can’t tell me to my face that a lesbian relationship is inappropriate, because I’m a lesbian and you hired me, I’m here — so please tell me why who I am is inappropriate for children,” Ostertag said with a chuckle. To wit, the only note she received on her episode of Owl House was concern that two characters teasing Amity for having a crush could come off as making fun of her because she’s gay. “Getting teased for having a crush is a universal experience,” she laughed. “But I appreciated that they were being protective of the viewers and wanted to present it in a positive way.”
Practically speaking, power emerges by simply being in the room. “A huge factor in making sure queer stories get told is to have more queer, but also specifically more QTBIPOC, in positions of power,” said Pearl Low, who is also a storyboard artist on Craig of the Creek and who worked on the Oscar-winning short Hair Love. “We're going to be the ones to see where things aren't inclusive, and we're going to be bringing a perspective to these stories that are so desperately needed.” Low added that Korra definitely made room for more queer storytelling, “but a lot of studios give the response of, ‘Well, they're children, exploring queerness is outside the scope of this show.’ Yet we all know straight characters and their romances are put into stories for kids as early as kindergarten.”
This may be having an impact on animated series for all ages. Simon Lucas Howe, a compositor for Big Mouth and Bless the Harts, suggested that Korra set a standard regardless of the age demographic. “After Korra, we saw a lot of influx of queer characters and stories in adult animation,” he said. Moreover, “what adults have learned is what they teach to their children. So yes, continue to show and share our stories with children, but let's not forget to show their parents and older family members, too.”
Howe, a trans man, said that seeing Korra while he was in college studying to be an animator was a huge motivating factor for him to work in the industry and explore this supposedly taboo terrain. He says he identified as a lesbian at the time, and that watching Korra try to save the world on top of figuring out her identity rang true to Howe. It inspired him to work with people who would be accepting of him — and he says he’s thankfully found that at Netflix.
“[I’ve] been asked for my opinions and personal story regarding my queer and trans-ness to help with character and story development,” he said. “It made me feel more important to the show and to the crew.”
Everyone who them. spoke with agreed that what’s necessary moving forward is solidarity in keeping up the momentum of queer representation on children’s programming, and adding further variability to the sorts of themes and characters portrayed.
Howe noted that we need more queer stories about people of color and people with disabilities, and Sreebny said that there’s a lot to learn when writing trans or non-binary characters. As more of those stories get told, Ostertag said, “we can then worry a bit less about having every queer character be a perfect role model and just let them be weird and specific, with the knowledge that there’s so many others out there.”
Resella referred to this as the “rep sweats,” stressing about the representation your show is bringing, and “hopefully we can subtract some of the growing pains for the people that come next.”
Much has been achieved since Korra and Asami looked longingly into each other’s eyes, but everyone recognizes the work that lies ahead. It’s crucial to add queerness whenever possible, even if it’s just in a background shot, because that helps normalize something that is fundamentally normal.
“One of my strongest beliefs is that art should reflect the world we live in, and leaving out queer folks is like leaving out a huge puzzle piece,” Low said. “We matter and our stories are necessary.”
Whether it’s a protagonist coming out or stepping into a portal with the woman she loves or barely glimpsing a couple of moms, the artists making these queer moments happen are just getting started.
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