they should invent a gay that doesn't get buried

the tv lesbian death scenes that ruined my life

the hero’s journey is a narrative archetype used to outline the basic framework of a literary quest. we begin with the status quo, the hero is called to action, declines the call, has a run-in that changes their mind, commits to the adventure, undergoes trials and tribulations, faces a major obstacle which they overcome, are rewarded for their accomplishment, and just when they think they’re in the clear, undergo some sort of ultimate challenge, which they emerge from even stronger, and return home victorious, richer with knowledge and wisdom from their quest. it is the blueprint for almost any traditional story, and one can typically identify these plotpoints in anything if they look hard enough.

i learned about the hero’s journey on march 5th 2016, the day after i tuned into season 3, episode 7 of the 100 live on the cw. my eighth-grade english class had just finished reading the alchemist, and were using paulo coelho’s classic novel to identify the elements of the narrative framework. my paperback book had flopped closed on the table in front of me, my head resting in the palm of my hand, body slumped over the table i shared with three classmates. i looked viscerally ill. i sure as hell wasn’t picking up whatever my english teacher was putting down. i laboriously raised a hand, asking to use the restroom. i started to rise from my seat before i was even granted permission, beelining for the door.

i wasn’t sick. physically, i was just fine. however, i couldn’t stop reeling with nausea lingering from the episode of the 100 the previous night.

most tv-pilled queer women my age are familiar with this episode of television, even if they haven’t watched the show in full, because of its blatant burying-of-gays, the first piece of media within this trope that i remember consuming. clarke, the protagonist of the 100 and a bisexual baddie, had finally made it official with lexa, the lesbian queen of a rival clan. they served up a delicious enemies-to-lovers slow burn, but right after the two shared a love confession and a (very passionate) kiss, lexa jumps in front of a gunshot to protect clarke’s life, instead sacrificing her own. while some may argue that dying to save her lover was the most romantic way for lexa to go out, i (and the other thirteen-year-old viewers i was consorting with online) was profoundly angry at how unnecessary (and unnecessarily violent) the death was. lexa was still vastly undeveloped, but was set up as an excellent foil to clarke, challenging her in ways that demanded she grow as a character and as a leader. the tragedy of lexa’s death was a gutpunch that followed me around for weeks after the finale aired, including into my english class the following day.

i was reminded of the hero’s journey on april 4th, 2025, when van palmer (of yellowjackets fame), cancer-ridden on her deathbed in season 3 episode 9, hallucinates her younger self encouraging her to take a hero’s journey of her own. young van sites the goonies as a blueprint for the hero’s journey, encouraging her older self to go after the buried treasure. x marks the spot, she reminds herself wisely before the dream sequence concludes.

this hallucination is van’s call-to-action, and while she initially doubts her younger self’s prophecy, she’s reminded of how pursuing this quest will benefit her former teammates and love interest, ultimately drawing her in. the trial she undergoes is undoubtedly her terminal metastatic cancer, but she gets a gust of life allowing her to leave the hospital and track down shauna (who abandoned her on her deathbed btw). i’ll save everyone the details of the buildup, but the scene climaxes in a facedown between van and her former teammate melissa, where van stands over melissa with a knife, debating killing her, but she’s unable to pull the metaphorical trigger. however, melissa doesn’t have the same hesitations, plunging that same knife into van’s heart the second she loosens her grip on it. van’s kindness toward melissa is what does her in, and that’s part of what made her death so cruel.

the parallels between van’s and lexa’s death scenes are plentiful, but one that comes to the forefront is that both death sequences follow a heartfelt love confession. similarly to how when someone has a terminal illness they often have a miraculous bounce-back before tragedy strikes, both of these characters had a girl-who’s-going-to-be-okay moment before it all went to hell for them. further, both of these women died saving their love interests, an ultimate sacrifice.

lexa & van

after van’s death, her ghost is confronted by her younger self, who tells her that she is the hero, that her sacrifice saved taissa’s life, and that was the treasure she needed to find all along. now, i haven’t seen the goonies, but after skimming the wikipedia summary of the film, i can say with certainty that none of the protagonists die. see, to me, a critical part of the hero’s journey is the emergence from the quest stronger than the hero began, victorious and wise from their adventure.

the writers of yellowjackets have stated adamantly that van’s death was not a burial of gays, but the similarities between van’s death scene and lexa’s indicate otherwise. i do believe that there would have been a timely and sensitive way to kill van, if it fed the narrative. however, i can’t help but think that van’s death was simply a vehicle for hilary swank to have a purpose on the show, maybe a half-assed grab at a ‘best guest actress’ emmy.

van, as a character, has had a complicated relationship with death from the beginning of the show, which aided yellowjackets in avoiding the bury-your-gays allegations for years. almost rasputin-like, van survived getting stuck in the burning plane, a wolf attack, nearly getting cremated alive, and, in her adulthood, terminal cancer. she was optimistic, lighthearted, and visibly butch, her presence alone proudly detaching queerness from tragedy. for this ultimate survivor to be killed so carelessly and for the other characters to hardly dwell on her death seems like an oversight on behalf of the writers.

if you knew me in college, you knew that i would proudly stand on a soapbox at any opportunity to preach about the sensitivity required when writing queer characters, especially when it comes to killing them off. while sometimes these death scenes are required to tell an overarching story, carelessly killing them just to maintain a high body count or to prove a point that anyone can die at any time pushes the subliminal messaging that queerness is inherently tragic.

liv hewson (teen van) for teen vogue

in response to the image above

watching lexa die on my screen at thirteen ultimately got me dialed in on discovering queer media that pushed joy and complexity, leading me to discover television shows like atypical, everything sucks, and dickinson. in college, i continued to seek out media centered around queer women, eating up seasons of the morning show, a league of their own, hacks, and, yes, yellowjackets. i wrote my senior thesis on outdated tropes in queer media, and wrote an original screenplay featuring a nuanced lesbian relationship. without knowing the outrage i felt from lexa’s death scene, i may not have been so determined to correct the genre.

in a red-carpet interview at the GLAAD awards following season 2, yellowjackets actress jasmin savoy brown notes that it doesn’t go unnoticed that while yellowjackets is a show about trauma, the queerness in yellowjackets is one of “one of the only pockets of joy” in the show. while i do believe that this was once the case with yellowjackets, it saddens me that the writers have lost this edge that makes their show unique and beloved by lesbians everywhere.

moving forward, i would love to see more gay heroes (or, even better, heroines) return home from their quests victorious. in the near future, i look forward to the upcoming season of the last of us (i haven’t played the game, so i’m not sure if ellie gets killed off, but i sure hope not!), which is an excellent use of the hero’s journey formula, and the upcoming season of the morning show, where we can hopefully get a bradley jackson win of some kind. looking further into the future, i hope that my dear yellowjackets is renewed and the tragedy that marked season three can be given more depth and meaning. in the most distant future, i cannot wait to be in charge of making these decisions in a writer’s room someday, and i hope to get revenge for the Lexa Death Scene once and for all.