Let me start by saying this: when I first saw the teaser trailer for Netflix’s Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, my initial reaction was, “Really? This again? Are we that out of ideas?”
I don’t remember when I first read the Scott Pilgrim comic books, though based on where I was living at the time and the fact that all volumes of the book were already released, I’m going to guess that it was some time between 2010 – 2012. At the time, I really loved the story, so much so that I devoured all seven volumes in a single evening (the fact that it was easy to just download them, one after the other, onto my iPad on Comixology made binging impossible to resist).
And I feel like I probably enjoyed the movie the first time I saw it (which, from what I remember, was when I downloaded it onto that very same iPad for a flight to — fittingly — Toronto, probably in 2011 or 2012). I used to be a big time Edgar Wright fan girl*, and the film had all fun stylistic choices and humor I had long loved about his films, so there was really no reason not to like it.
But at some point — and I truly don’t know when, but maybe it was after I read Seconds and came away feeling like the “happy ending” was just a woman winding up getting back with her abusive ex — I started to reevaluate the series. There was something that just felt, well, let’s be blunt, sexist about the books and movies. The story of a 23-year-old failson who falls in love with a Manic Pixie Dream Girl** while he’s also kind of but not really dating a wide-eyed teenager just sort of seemed a little more icky with the passing of the years. And while Ramona’s bisexuality — or bicuriousity? I think it gets couched as “a phase” — felt exciting to me the first time around (representation!), the older I got, the more it felt, well, like a “cool” detail to make her seem “edgy” and mysterious rather than an integrated part of her character and personality.
So. That’s why it took me a while to check out Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. Well, that and the fact that I didn’t have Netflix for a while, on account of having been booted from my mom’s account during The Great Password Sharing Crackdown.
But this weekend, while I was taking a break from watching She-Ra and the Princesses of Power dubbed into Hebrew***, I figured… why the fuck not, you know? And while the first episode is rough — I think they literally just took the voice track from parts of the movie and set it to animation, ignoring the fact that a voice track from a live action movie is not the same as voice acting, which is its own unique skill — and makes it seem like the whole thing is just going to be a rehash of the comic books and movie just as anime (it’s not), the series as a whole is… guys, it’s surprisingly good.
And it also… I don’t know if I would say that it completely atones for some of the sins of the properties, but I do think it attempts to make amends. And one of the ways it does that is through a, shall we say, more nuanced and maybe even more chill approach to bisexuality, which gets explored through two different plot lines.
(We are going to get into spoiler territory now, but I think you knew that.)
The first and most obvious one: Ramona Flowers, the quirky love object of one Scott Pilgrim who gets to take on the role of protagonist for most of this series. Unlike the books and movie, which largely revisited Ramona’s romantic history through the POV of Scott, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off puts Ramona in the driver’s seat here. When we’re connecting with each of her exes, it’s not because Scott needs to fight them, it’s because she needs to talk to them — and boy, does she ever need to talk to her ex-girlfriend, Roxie (who you may know as Mae Whitman, the voice of Amity in The Owl House).
Instead of a “phase” and a joke about the “l-word” being “lesbians,” here we get a more honest and reflective take on a bi girl’s sapphism. Roxie and Ramona were college roommates who became more than roommates, but Ramona couldn’t handle their burgeoning romance — whether because of the queerness of it all or because Ramona just bails on everyone is never fully made clear, though it’s easy to interpret it as the latter — and abandoned Roxie without even saying goodbye.
I feel like, as a bi woman myself, I’m supposed to have a lot to say about this, but to be honest, I don’t. It’s nice that Ramona gets to be the one leading the action; it’s nice that her relationship with Roxie gets to exist on its own terms, without any “hur hur… lesbians… sexy phase” commentary from dudes on the sidelines.
But if that had been the only episode of bisexuality in the series, I probably wouldn’t have felt compelled to write about the show here. No, the thing that really made me want to open up my laptop and process some thoughts was Todd.
If you need a reminder (or have never consumed any Scott Pilgrim-related media at all), Todd is the ex of Ramona who’s dating Scott’s ex Envy; the two of them are in a super successful band together and Todd is vegan (which, in the sci-fi/fantasy world of Scott Pilgrim, means he has magic powers. Don’t think about it too hard.). In the original series, he’s basically just… a dude who is full of himself and sucks, and that’s kind of all there is to him. But this time around —
Through a series of hijinks that aren’t worth going into, Todd ends up playing Scott in a movie within the TV series that seems like it’s basically supposed to be the original Scott Pilgrim movie (again, don’t think about it too hard). Scott’s gay roommate Wallace manages to finagle a role for himself in the film, and manages to get a romantic storyline between himself and Todd wedged into the movie, and then suddenly Todd the obnoxious vegan bro with the rock star girlfriend is having an off camera romance with Wallace, who he ends up declaring is the first person he’s ever really loved?
I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be reading Todd as a latent gay — does the fact that he decides he’s never been in love before after having a heady few days of making out with Wallace mean he wasn’t really into the women he dated? — or if it’s supposed to be something more complicated, but I kind of like that it’s never fully spoken one way or another. If you wanted, you could read Todd as the guy who has suddenly realized that while sex with women is nice he only really feels that emotional spark with other men (I, personally, am always here for the homoromantic bisexual representation, we don’t get nearly enough of it). Or you could read it some other way entirely.
(I think it’s also possible to impose a reading where Roxie and Todd get together in the end — they seem to be hanging out? — and I kind of like the idea of two bi characters who’ve had their heart broken by same-gender partners having a fun little rebound with one another. But that is just some extreme head canon.)
I’m not going to say that Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is “perfect bisexual representation” (not least because I don’t believe that exists), but I have to admit it felt like growth. If the past decade and a half has taught people that the characters of Scott Pilgrim deserve something better than a sensationalized bi phase, then that gives me hope. Let’s cross our fingers that it bodes well for bisexuals in media more broadly.
PS There are other, non-bisexual reasons why Scott Pilgrim Takes Off outstrips its predecessors but you’ll have to watch the show to find out what they are. I’ve given you enough spoilers!
* The bloom fell off that rose with Baby Driver, but that’s a story for a different essay and a different publication
** I know that phrase has fallen out of fashion but when a woman dyes her hair with Manic Panic and literally rollerskates through the dreamscape I think it’s fitting
*** שי-רה ונסיכות הכוח
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