The ‘Heated Rivalry’ Mystique Reference Is Extra Than Only a Film Gag

It’s not fairly often the prospect to write down a few homosexual hockey romance sensation pops up at an internet site that covers sci-fi, fantasy, and style popular culture, however one thing caught my eye just lately watching one of many final TV present sensations of 2025, Heated Rivalry, and it wasn’t simply the steamy, sentimental love story between Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov.

In episode 5 of the sequence, a quick telephone dialog between the aforementioned Hollander and his former romantic companion, Rose Landry, sees Rose—an actress and one of many few people who is aware of that Shane is definitely homosexual—take the decision mid-makeup session from a film trailer. She’s apparently filming for a superhero blockbuster and is presently being painted head-to-toe in darkish blue physique paint, as she laments to Shane about doing reshoots. “I miss being kidnapped,” she says. “I remorse shapeshifting.”

If the blue physique paint and the scarlet wig within the background of the make-up trailer weren’t apparent hints sufficient, that line ought to be the second you notice that that is, in fact, a nod to Mystique and the Fox X-Males movies—a reference sequence showrunner Jacob Tierney confirmed in press interviews because the Canadian sequence’ tribute to Montreal’s superhero moviemaking legacy (and Jennifer Lawrence’s portrayal of the character particularly). It’s maybe oddly becoming that Rose additionally briefly complains that the film is mindless, contemplating unique Fox X-Males Mystique actress Rebecca Romijn recently discussed how she was filming her return to the character in Avengers: Doomsday whereas the script was nonetheless being completed, however that’s neither right here nor there.

It’s a pleasant nod, particularly contemplating that, in a roundabout approach, Rachel Reid’s Recreation Changers ebook sequence, which serves because the present’s supply materials, had a brush with Marvel film fanfic in its own origin story. There have been loads of feminine mutants Tierney might’ve thrown a nod to in Heated Rivalry to make that gag, however as transient as it’s, there’s one thing extremely becoming about Mystique being the one the present selected to offer to Rose on this second, contemplating the character’s personal lengthy stint within the glass closet in Marvel’s comics.

Whereas Mystique was launched by her creators Chris Claremont and David Cockrum within the pages of Ms. Marvel within the late Nineteen Seventies, her transition to an everyday mainstay of Claremont’s legendary run on Uncanny X-Males shortly after quickly intertwined Raven’s private life with that of Irene Adler, the precognitive mutant Future, when the latter was launched as a member of Mystique’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in 1981. From the get-go, whereas by no means explicitly said, it was clear that Raven and Irene had a deep bond collectively that went past merely comrades in arms.

The one different feminine member of Mystique’s brotherhood on the time—and the one different member Mystique really even remotely obtained together with, not to mention was as pleasant with as they have been—over the subsequent almost-decade earlier than Future’s demise (haven’t any worry, it’s X-Males comics; she obtained higher, a number of occasions even), Raven and Irene have been depicted with about as a lot intimacy as may very well be gotten away with on the time with out explicitly describing them as lovers, to borrow a time period that Shane hates. The 2 lived collectively and helped elevate Rogue as adoptive moms; upon Future’s demise, she left a message for Mystique after she scattered her ashes, predicting that the latter would discover romance and solace after her demise with Forge (which she did, for a quick time).

Claremont stated multiple times over time that it was all the time his intent that Mystique and Future have been in a queer relationship collectively—and that Marvel editorial hesitance and the lingering menace of the conservative censorship of the Comics Code Authority prohibited them from being introduced as such throughout his run time on X-Males. It might take one other 30 years, properly after Marvel had began slowly incorporating an increasing number of queer characters into its comics, for Mystique and Future’s relationship to turn out to be express through the Krakoan Age of X-Males comics, when Mystique demanded that she needed her spouse to be resurrected from the grave in 2020’s X-Men #6. It might take one other three years, on the twilight of the Krakoan Age, to verify one other of Claremont’s long-held plans for the duo: that Mystique’s vastly highly effective shapeshifting powers allowed her to alter her genetic materials so she might impregnate Future, making them each the biological parents of their different mutant baby, Nightcrawler.

Even earlier than it grew to become express in Marvel continuity that they have been lovers and had been for many years (they’re even married now, renewing their vows in Marvel Comics’ first on-page same-sex feminine marriage ceremony in 2024), Mystique had lengthy been an influential and enduring ingredient of queer readings of the X-Males comics and the mutant metaphor’s parallel to gender and sexual id. Not only for what was nonetheless apparent within the textual content—that she was a queer particular person herself current exterior of the gender binary—however for what she represented as a queer character who couldn’t be recognized as such as a result of years of homophobic requirements and perceptions. She represented not simply queerness in herself, however what occurs when folks attempt to sweep that id beneath the rug and deny what has all the time been there.

So it’s becoming, then, that Heated Rivalry provides Rose the function of Mystique—and fittingly leaves it immediately unsaid, little question for authorized causes as a lot as dramatic ones—in a second the place she is likely one of the solely folks Shane has been in a position to open up to about his personal id as a homosexual man and is encouraging him to start out sharing that id with the folks he loves. Heated Rivalry‘s artistic staff could have solely supposed the second to be a nod to Canada’s superhero film previous, however in selecting Mystique, it added a beautiful comedian ebook layer to the present’s queer storytelling too.

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