Seriously. Was the last Animorphs episode a case of “we’re already cancelled, so let’s openly queer the protagonists”? (See: Legend of Korra, The 100, Supernatural, Being Human, Gotham, The Owl House, Angel, etc.)
I was rewatching AniTV, and I’m starting to think they made Ax/Marco canon. Most of that last episode is about the kids getting ready for a school dance. There’s a whole sequence where Marco convinces Ax to morph a rabbit, so that he can have a cute pet to attract girls — only as soon as a girl starts talking to Marco, Ax starts freaking out and scares her away. Later, lizard-morphed-Marco gets grabbed by a teacher and stuck in a cage, and starts yelling for his friends in thought-speak, but only Ax hears his cries. He rushes out of the dance to rescue Marco, the school gym gets destroyed by yeerks (off-screen), and they relocate the dance to the mall. The last shot of the show is all six of them slow-dancing: Tobias with Rachel, Jake with Cassie — and Marco with Ax.
[Image ID: Screenshot from AniTV showing 6 couples dancing in a room with a green floor, green tables, and gray chairs. There are two couples of extras dancing in the background and one in the foreground, but the camera is focused on Tobias and Rachel (in a white jacket and a pink dress, respectively) while Jake and Cassie (in a black tuxedo and red dress) and Marco and Ax (in jeans and in a blue suit) dance on either side of them. Marco and Ax are indicated with an orange circle.]
I’d always kind of dismissed that moment as being some combination of “pair the spares” and “lol so funniez when 2 boys together” (it is the 1990s, after all.) However, on rewatching, several things stood out to me.
This is the last-ever episode of AniTV. The one with yeerks in cell phones aired after, but was filmed before, and this ep was meant to be the finale.
It’s not just that Marco and Ax dance together; it’s that Marco sits down next to Ax (so close they’re touching), looks him in the eye, invites him to dance, holds his hand, and pulls their bodies together. Not quite a silly friend dynamic.
They’re dancing in the same pose and manner as Rachel/Tobias and Cassie/Jake, both of whom are confirmed romantic couples.
The whole episode kinda has Ax/Marco undertones. “Friend 1 tries to get various dates with Friend 2 as support, doesn’t realize until late in the story that Friend 2 was their love all along” is a classic teen-romance setup, and that’s basically Ax and Marco’s plot this episode.
It’s a weird choice to end the show on this note, given that this is Part 3 of a 3-part finale and yet the other two parts are about an animal-testing cosmetics company and a secret ex-controller group. However, if the writers chose to have this be the focus of the last episode because it’s the last episode, arguably that makes more sense.
Just… this is more-romantic framing than I initially realized.
[Image ID: Screenshot from AniTV Marco (in a gray shirt) leaning close to Ax, who wears a powder-blue suit jacket and bright blue bow tie. Marco is holding Ax’s hand in the foreground, and Ax’s other arm is wrapped around Marco’s shoulders.]
Anyway, I’ve never seen any of the creators comment to confirm or deny it, so I have no idea if that was authorial intent or not. But this is more than Beauty and the Beast or Legend of Korra ever gave us, in scenes known to have the intent of depicting a canonical queer romance. And it’s more than I ever realized we got, from an undeniably crappy show that might still have this little spark of bisexual hope at the end.
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