TV

“The Shannara Chronicles” teases Eretria’s bisexuality

Have you been watching MTV’s The Shannara Chronicles? Maybe you should be watching The Shannara Chronicles. I’m going to spoil you a little in this post, so you can either stop reading now and just trust me, go watch the six episodes that have aired so far, and come back, or you can keep reading and let me convince you.

I started watching The Shannara Chronicles because I’ll give pretty much any fantasy series a chance. Plus the poster had two beautiful girls and what almost looked like a girl but ended up being a Taylor Hanson/Chord Overstreet mashup man standing in the foreground of a post-apocalyptic magical forest land.

That’s really all it takes to get me to watch a pilot.

And then, in said pilot, within the first five minutes, I was hooked. Because the main character is a girl named Amberle, an elven princess, who trained to run in a traditional gauntlet to decide who will be the Chosen, a race that has historically only been run by men.

She not only became one of the Chosen but also ended up being the best one, the Chosen Chosen, while being strong and sassy and seriously one of the most beautiful creatures I’ve ever seen. She genuinely cares about the people around her, and her people as a whole, but isn’t afraid to kick someone’s ass if they need it-physically or verbally.

She also is VERY close with her handmaiden, Catania.

So obviously, I was rooting for Amberle to be queer right off the bat. Enter: Rover girl.

The first time we meet Eretria, she saved the male lead, Wil, from a troll. She then seduced the crap out of him and stole everything he owned. I liked her immediately. And then when she and Amberle met, sparks flew. In my head, at least. They were two strong women who were very different in many ways. But as much as they felt they were too different to get along, when it came right down to it, they saved each other. More than once.

I won’t get into the details because I want you to watch the show, but when the two of them are less than a foot away from each other, and you can’t tell if they want to slap each other or make out, it’s a real thrill.

They look at each other with part hatred, part jealousy. Their lives are diametrically opposed, but they also each has something the other wants. And they both think each other more free than they are. Amberle is a princess, she’s had duties and guards her whole life, playing a role; she sees Eretria as this free spirit, someone who never had any expectations placed down on her. While Eretria, in reality, is someone who has never been free; she’s been owned by one person or another, enslaved, sometimes literally, forced to steal to survive. To her, Amberle’s life is the free one.

And they go back and forth between fighting each other and working together, but every once in a while they exchange these LOOKS like maybe they know how alike they are after all.

And maybe they like being in each other’s company.

At one point, they all get separated and go on with their lives, but Eretria breaks into the castle to steal something from Wil. She seduces him again, but this time, it almost seems like it’s meant to make Amberle jealous. Especially because she brings it up later. Of course, I assumed I was projecting this, as I’m wont to do, until last night’s episode.

On a mission, Amberle, Eretria, Wil (and characters that are unimportant to what I’m about to tell you) find themselves in a snowy mountaintop castle. The two inhabitants offer them food and hot water, so Amberle goes to take a bath in their gigantic pool-sized bathtub. Soon after, Eretria joins her, sassing her about her life of privilege and talking jealously about handmaidens and shoulder rubs. To sass her back, Amberle jokes that rover girls jump into bed with every man they meet. Eretria holds her gaze and tells Amberle it’s not just guys. She makes her way across the bathtub-pool and gets right up in Amberle’s space, practically pressed right against her. When Amberle doesn’t seem particularly receptive, she asks, and I quote, “Afraid you’ll like it?”

Okay wait I think this one needs a gif or two:

Unfortunately, chaos ensues and Amberle ends up kissing Wil, but Eretria looks so sad about it. And another character says to her later, “He’ll never choose you,” but the way she says, “So be it,” makes me think that she doesn’t want him to choose her.

Anyway, there’s a teeeeeny chance that Eretria was just messing with Amberle, but based on this official tweet:

And also based on the fact that it’s MTV, and they have a history of having at least one queer character on most (if not all) of their original shows lately, I think we’ve got ourselves a proper love triangle. Or at the very least, a bisexual rover girl!

What do you think, will you be watching The Shannara Chronicles? Have you already been watching, and do you ship PrincessRover?

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button