Come for the nostalgia, stay for the steamy alien-human same-sex action.
The CW network's reboot of '90s sci-fi high school drama Roswell premiered yesterday to vocal praise and criticism. Now titled Roswell, New Mexico, the series reintroduces alien siblings Max (Nathan Parsons), Isobel (Lily Cowles) and Michael (Michael Vlamis), who are living undercover as humans in a remote desert town.
One notable difference in the reboot, however, is that Max reveals himself to be bisexual - passionately kissing former lover, Alex (Tyler Blackburn), at the first episode's conclusion.
“The Alex and Michael relationship is really important to me, because I feel a big responsibility to viewers to sort of make them feel safe," showrunner Carina Adly MacKenzie told The Hollywood Reporter.
"I know that LGBT audiences have felt burned a lot in the past, by the whole 'bury your gays' trope."
She continued: “I wanted to tell a story that doesn’t necessarily have a happy ending — I can’t make any promises — but that certainly avoids stepping into tropes. Their relationship is very fraught, and it’s going to be a really long journey for the two of them.”
Describing “a real lack of bisexual representation on TV,” MacKenzie added that Michael would have relationships with women too.
“It also felt like a good opportunity to explore having a gay relationship in a part of the country that’s not New York or L.A. A part of the country where you’re still facing very real and very loud hatred,” she said.
“That sort of small town, country, cowboy mentality was incongruous with the life that Alex planned on living, and that’s the story that we’re telling—a guy who fell into conforming to what he thought he was supposed to be, and can’t sustain that because it’s not his truth.”
