The LGBTQ+ audience is a powerful one, and their opinion often makes or breaks a show’s reputation. As drivers of online discourse and fandom culture, producers seek to appeal to their tastes, though these efforts often lack substance and are highly performative.
Queerbaiting involves the misleading promotion of storylines to entice an LGBTQ+ audience and can take many forms. In some shows, like Wednesday (2022) and Sherlock (2010), same-sex relationships take on qualities and develop chemistries that liken them to romantic ones. Many feel that the failure to explore these dynamics is dismissive and manipulative of their desire for representation. Whereas, in cases such as Killing Eve (2018), even openly LGBTQ+ characters do not engage in meaningful queer relationships. Villanelle (assassin protagonist of Killing Eve), for example, is an openly lesbian character, yet despite this centrality to her characterisation, her pining after Eve is hardly tangible.
Though queerbaiting arises across the media landscape, it has become particularly problematic in the world of TV. Unlike film and music, for example, TV allows viewers to become uniquely connected to a character they see themselves in. Online communities surrounding ‘comfort characters’ and ‘ships’ thrive on dissecting the subtleties of characters that display queer characteristics; having these characteristics ignored is unnecessarily damaging.
The appetite for LGBTQ+ representation has been clear, and its impact overwhelming...
Since the first televised lesbian kiss in Brookside (1994) and the outpouring of support it received from queer viewers, the appetite for LGBTQ+ representation has been clear, and its impact overwhelming. This demand has only grown; HBO’s global sensation Heated Rivalry (2025), which reached an audience of over 9 million per episode and became the topic of conversation, is a perfect example.
It seems that, in a crudely capitalistic sense, appealing to a queer audience is a one-way ticket to making a show an instant hit; beyond the immeasurable positive impact queer stories have on their viewers, the evident demand is almost a financial incentive to platform them. Frustratingly, queerbaiting infiltrates what could be opportunities for diverse voices to appear amongst a landscape still dominated by cishet-centred stories.