While the Star Trek franchise has long drawn members of the LGBTQ community, and prompted speculation that a number of characters throughout its long history fit somewhere under the LGBTQ umbrella themselves, the actual representation has been slow coming.
The very first openly gay Star Trek character didn’t come until 2017, when Star Trek: Discovery introduced married couple Paul Stamets (Anthony Rapp) and Hugh Culber (Wilson Cruz).
But now, Star Trek: Picard has given fans a new gift, seemingly revealing that a classic character has been queer all along.
Jeri Ryan’s Seven of Nine was first introduced back in Star Trek: Voyager, and while that series didn’t explicitly portray her character as queer, Picard has been hinting at as much throughout the first season.
In the finale, Seven is shown holding hands with Raffi (Michelle Hurd) in a way that seriously cannot be construed as anything but romantic. And Ryan herself seemed to confirm the implication on Twitter after the episode aired.
Seven has changed dramatically since Voyager, and part of her life experience has presumably been having intimate relationships with all sorts of people.
“It almost seems unnatural that she wouldn’t have had partners of other genders,” said showrunner Michael Chabon in a recent interview with Queerty. “It seems clear she would have. So even if we didn’t see that on Voyager, years have passed. In that time, she’s continued to explore the spectrum of human relationships in a broader way. So in our show, there are echoes and implications of that.”
But this isn’t a non-canonical, after-the-fact reveal a la “Dumbledore was gay all along.”
Chabon has expressed concern that “echoes and implications” aren’t enough, and that in order to have Star Trek “present a vision of the future that truly does live up to that edict of a more perfect future,” there needs to be more explicit representation — which leads us to hope that whatever is happening with Seven of Nine and Raffi will be explored more openly in season two.
