in the maze runner, james dashner confirmed that newt is gay, but the emotional center of newt’s world in the books is alby, not thomas. i'm bringing this up because ever since the movies came out, every time there's an edit of queer characters – all i see is newmas.
newt & alby (books)
alby is consistently written as soft, protective, and emotionally attuned only with newt.
with everyone else, alby is rigid, authoritative, and distant because he has to be.
newt isn’t just alby’s second-in-command; he’s his anchor, the one person alby allows himself to be human with.
their bond reads as deeply intimate, whether readers interpret it as romantic or not. it’s mutual trust forged over years, not weeks.
when alby dies, it breaks newt in a way the movies don’t have time to explore.
newt & thomas (books)
what often gets missed:
newt’s relationship with thomas is conflicted, not purely affectionate.
thomas represents change, disruption and the chain of events that leads to alby’s death.
newt wants to trust thomas. he tries to like him. but there’s resentment underneath that never fully goes away.
that tension is intentional. newt’s kindness toward thomas is real, but it’s layered with grief, guilt, and anger he doesn’t know how to place that gets worse with the flare.
so when people frame newt/thomas as some inevitable tragic romance based mostly on:
the movies
newt’s later death
emotional scenes stripped of context
…it ignores what the books actually say about newt’s inner world.
why the movies shifted the narrative
the films:
kill alby early and deliberately alter his death to take fault away from thomas and the tragedy of newt's attempt in the past, removing newt's complete breakdown that happened in the books and thomas' lack of empathy surrounding it
compress relationships so thomas becomes the emotional stand-in for everyone.
lean into visible chemistry + tragedy, which fandom often equates with romance.
that doesn’t make the ship “wrong” as a headcanon—but it does make it inaccurate to present it as replacing alby’s importance.
thomas was honestly not that likeable in the books so they had to take from other character's to improve him as the main character for the movies (which honestly was the right move because i love him in the movies) as well as retcon his past because he originally never betrayed wicked and was not the leak for the right arm. he originally just refused to take his memories back because he was afraid he'd choose to side with wicked again if he did.
james dashner said there would be no more books but after the first movie came out, he wrote another prequel to make the movie version of thomas more canon.
bottom line
alby was newt’s constant.
thomas was a catalyst—and a wound that never fully healed.
if anything, the tragedy of newt’s arc is that the person he loved most was gone long before he died, and thomas was a reminder of that loss as much as a comfort.
he promised a happily ever after with alby, lost him then had to be the glue that held everyone together and he suffered silently with that grief until he could no more and in his last moments, he told thomas he blamed him for alby’s death and while i don't think he fully meant it and he was just losing the composure he was known for because of the part of the disease that makes you angry and irrational, it's still important to note that he had been carrying those feelings all that time.
i just hate the alby erasure and how important he was to newt. he was such a deep character that could have been explored and he deserved so much more.
