How "Teen Wolf" Missed the Mark for Bisexuality Representation

In this piece, writer Krutika Mallikarjuna looks at the finale of Teen Wolf and how the return of a fan favorite didn't do bisexualitly representation justice.

The genius of Teen Wolf is nearly inexplicable. On one hand, it’s an MTV reboot of an ‘80s movie about a teen who turns into a wolf. On the other, it’s a show that consistently debunked old-school tropes surrounding toxic masculinity and mean girls, and challenged the performance of sexual identity over and over again. Perfectly reverse engineered for Tumblr, Teen Wolf came to a bittersweet end this past Sunday after six uneven but beloved seasons. The finale was a lovely ode to what made the series so addictive, except for one key moment: The erasure of Jackson Whittemore’s bisexuality, which pushed the show firmly into queerbaiting territory that’s rampant in pop culture today.

That’s not the first time Teen Wolf’s been accused of queerbaiting. Generally, any storyline that refuses to define characters’ sexualities while teasing the idea of representation is queerbaiting. The previous controversy was of the traditional variety, where a same-sex pairing is written with same romantic beats as any other canon couple, but without any fruition because they are both canonically straight. So while Sterek (the ship of Derek Hale and Stiles Stilinski) fans have plenty of reasons to be heated, Jackson’s bi-erasure is a much more insidious type of queerbaiting, especially considering that there’s foreshadowing as early as Season 2 that Jackson’s sexuality was more complex than it seemed.

Jackson (played by Colton Hayes) started his journey on Teen Wolf as the archetypical hot jock teen bully. His accessories included a Porsche, a tight fade, and a gorgeous girlfriend who evolved into so much more. In one scene that has become an iconic Tumblr GIF he confidently proclaimed, “Oh, and FYI: I'm everyone's type.”

Even in Season 2, after he was finally indoctrinated into the supernatural, the character’s biggest growth was a six-foot poisonous tail that nearly killed half of Beacon Hills (again). Unfortunately, Beacon Hills’ second most loveable jerk (hi Derek) departed for London before the beginning of Season 3, meaning fans hadn’t seen a single hair, or hide, or scale of Jackson until his brief return in Teen Wolf’s final season.

Jackson’s return delighted fans, because he brought with him another Tumblr fave: Ethan Steiner (played by Charlie Carver), the queer half of the Alpha twins. Very obviously part of a committed couple deeply in love, Jackson’s journey evolved from the fiercely intense lacrosse player he was in high school into someone more compassionate and kind, seemingly because he could finally accept a part of himself he had denied. That’s a narrative familiar to a vast portion of the queer community.

When the new couple was teased prior to the final season, Jackson immediately became a bi icon. Fans celebrated his current love, and his former love, the mind-blowing Lydia Martin (Holland Roden) with the same breathless adoration. After all, the power of Jackson’s love for Lydia saved all of Beacon Hills in Season 2 and brought him back from a supernatural transformation that would have basically killed him. If that’s not real love, what is?

Jackson’s bisexuality seemed canonically cemented in the penultimate episode of Season 6 as he and Ethan cruised through the hallways of their alma mater and Jackson eyed two underclassmen — first a girl and then a boy. Though the word bisexuality was never uttered, bi fans immediately saw themselves represented in those literal nods to and from Jackson.

The series finale however, took that small victory for the bi community and walked it back into queerbaiting territory. Lydia (once again) rescues Jackson from the clutches of hunters devoted to eradicating the supernatural and their reunion is as tender and emotional as that serious relationship deserved. Two people who might not be in love anymore, but still love each other, rushed into an embrace that melted fans hearts. Then, as Jackson announced his relationship with Ethan, Lydia’s key reaction was, “Oh, thank god you figured it out”. This twist on the classic formula arguably pushed Jackson to the other end of the binary, implying gayness instead of straightness.

Although completely accepting of his identity, Lydia implied in a single sentence that she knew he was attracted to men in high school with a flippancy that read as beard-worthy, throwing into question the entire plot of Season 2. While Lydia is certainly smart enough to sense that Jackson might be on the Kinsey scale, there’s nothing about that fact that rewrites or changes Jackson’s feelings for her while they were together. With that single sentence, the show refused to allow Jackson to claim a much more complex identity than the binary of gay or straight.

“A while back we'd been talking about bringing Colton back into the show, and I said if he comes back on, he's coming back with a guy, whether it’s bisexual or gay, he's coming back a changed man,” showrunner Jeff Davis said in an earlier interview with Entertainment Weekly first teasing the comeback. But if Jeff was truly open to the idea of a bisexual character, it wasn’t apparent in the series finale.

In letting go labels and refusing to allow Jackson to define himself, Teen Wolf missed a huge opportunity to shine a light on less understood parts of the LGBTQIA+ community, an acronym that’s built to remind people of the diversity we hold within us. Jeff, an openly gay man who can and has written his identity across six seasons of Teen Wolf through multiple multifaceted characters, can afford to ignore labels and let some of his gay characters be undefined because there’s so many of them. Ignoring Jackson’s bisexuality leaves the bi community stuck in the same place where we were decades ago: watching Willow’s transition on Buffy in the late '90s to a capital L and wondering why we couldn’t just get over the confusion and pick a side. From remakes of classics like Ben-Hur, to TV adaptations of gritty comic books like Constantine, bi erasure, especially of men, has been prevalent in Hollywood since before the B became part of LGBT.

That’s not to say every queer person needs a definition for themselves, but the power of claiming an identity that society teaches you to deny yourself is unmatched. There was no of naming names and claiming claims. A piece of dialogue was written that while couldhave alluded to Jackson’s bisexuality, serves more as a tool for straight and gay people alike to flatten a significantly less mainstream queer identity into a digestible binary. (And frankly, if bi people wanted that, we’d stick to watching shows written by straight people desperate to commodify us.)

Being bi is about the possibilities of attraction and love, and we are frequently denied our right to this identity if we don’t date an exact 50/50 ratio of same/different genders. But the reality is that there are many bi people in the world who are rarely attracted to similar or different genders. What makes us bi isn’t the frequency or quantity of genders we date, but rather the potential of doing so. In leaving Jackson’s story enough wiggle room to be read as retconning of his love for Lydia, Teen Wolf’s bi fans were left with a bittersweet ending. A show so fearless in writing and evolving rich, complex characters who often pushed the audience to redefine what they thought they knew, chose the easy way out at the exact moment it should have doubled down.

Teen Wolf deserves many a rewatch, for many a reason. But unfortunately, bi representation isn’t one of them.

Related: How Teen Wolf Came Full Circle In the Series Finale

Check this out: