Inside Out 2 - Frustration (according to Vulture)

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Val is great. We’d all go gay for Val

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In the text of the film, this is merely because she really, really wants to be just like Val. But you don’t have to squint too hard to see a subtext where Riley is so obsessed with her beautiful, accomplished teammate because she has romantic feelings for her . . .

By this point, a discerning viewer has put the pieces together: Riley’s secret is that she’s gay. (Or she’s bi, or pansexual, or just generally queer. Happy Pride!) Except, after Joy and the gang escape from the vault, the Deep Dark Secret never appears again in the main narrative. If you’re the type of person who gets out of there as soon as the credits start to roll, Riley’s secret is a Chekhov’s gun that never goes off. Frustrating!

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However, years of experience with Disney and Pixar led me to believe that the movie would not leave us hanging. These companies never let an Easter egg go un-hatched. There must be some resolution, and I was determined to see it out. Surely the question would be answered in a mid-credits interstitial? No such thing — there was a mid-credits scene, but it was just a jokey little bit about the character Ennui. Quelle surprise. But by this point I simply had to know. So I took a leap of faith, which is to say I stayed sitting as the rest of the credits rolled. My persistence paid off. After the MPA seal, there was Joy, coaxing the Deep Dark Secret to come out from the vault, which one might note is not unlike a closet. After some hemming and hawing, it finally did, upon which we learned that Riley’s secret was … she once burned a hole in a rug.

I’ll admit: A tiny, terrible part of me was prepared to roll my eyes at a gay revelation. A pointedly inclusive Pixar movie? Groundbreaking. But what we got instead is just baffling. Now, there is nothing personally at stake for me in an animated character’s sexuality one way or another. But I hate feeling like a weirdo, and this made me feel a weirdo! The film’s queer coding is so blatant that I thought we were all on the same page — only for the movie to pull the rug out and say, “Why are you even thinking about this fake tween’s possible gayness?”

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