With The Acolyte being the subject of intense attacks by the toxic Star Wars fandom, a lot of fans are expecting the same kind of reaction from Marvel fans with the all-woman cast of Agatha All Along. Joe Locke is one of the stars that have been cast in the show, and he’s expected to play Wanda Maximoff’s gay son Billy a.k.a. Wiccan.
While nothing has officially been confirmed, there are already some expecting that Locke could be subjected to harsh bullying online, to which he tells Variety, “I’m fully aware that the Marvel fandom is far less nice than the ‘Heartstopper’ fandom. There’s going to be a lot of people that just hate everything about the character and everything about what I’ve done with it, and I just have to be OK with that.”
Marvel fans are very open with their opinions. But they’re not in a Marvel show, so *blows raspberry* I’m doing the one thing that they really wish they could be doing. Sorry!”
While some people can expect a lot of the anti-woke members of the fandom to be negative toward the series, Locke has also experienced that there are members of the LGBTQ+ community that have also been critical of his role as Wiccan which some have been calling a ‘gay stereotype.’ To that, Locke says, “It really annoyed me because I was like, ‘You can’t ask for authentic casting and then be upset if you have a camp character.’”
Though there have been gay characters in Marvel before (like Bryan Tyree Henry’s Phastos in Eternals), Billy would be the first ‘camp’ gay character to get the spotlight in a Marvel property. We don’t know exactly how the character is going to evolve through the series, but fingers crossed he makes it to a Young Avengers crossover film.
Agatha All Along premieres on Disney+ on Sept. 18.
