With The Walking Dead: Season 4 premier only a week away its once again time for me to ask the same question that I have for the past three seasons.  Why is there not one LGBT character on the hit television show and will this season FINALLY be the one where an LGBT character is introduced?

Since the show began there has been a veritable United Nations of characters that have been seen on The Walking Dead,  every nationality and type of person you can imagine which in the end makes the lack of an LGBT character even more glaring and jarring.  Add to this the fact that in the Season 3 Prison storyline two gay characters were actually removed from  the comics transition from page to screen and later in the same season when the LGBT community was finally mentioned it was so in a stereotype way with the character of Axel thinking  that Carol was a lesbian because she had “short hair”. At this point you really have to begin to wonder if creator and writer of TWD Robert Kirkland is he afraid that he might upset his loyal GFB (Greasy Fan Boy) core audience, finds LGBT characters too hard to write or just simply doesn’t like gay people.

So as TWD: Season 4 is about to begin once again the question is will there be an LGBT character this season?

Well if Kirkland follows the comic book story-line, no.  After the introduction of the gay storyline in the prison arc the next gay charters don’t appear in the comic until the group of survivors reach the Alexandria Free Zone where we meet Eric  and his partner Aaron.  But that’s not until issue #68, and at the snails pace speed the television show is going would be about Season 100.   But Kirkman and TWD does not stick to the comics story line verbatim, if it did Dale, and Sophia would be still alive and The Governor and Woodbury storyline would have been a helluva lot more exciting.

Recently in an interview at San Diego Comic Con Kirkman did mention that in the comic’s story-line the Woodbury character of Cesar Martinez (played in the television series by the humpy Jose Pablo Cantillo) was meant to be homosexual  but Kirkman never got around to it. (Shocking).  On the television show Martinez is still alive and well and at the end of last season rode off into the sunset with the Governor.  TWD  has been confirmed that the Governor as well  Martinez will return in season 4, but  Kirkland has already written the character as straight (Kirkland did get around to that though) by having Martinez state on the Season 3 episode Arrow on the Doorpost that he hates the walkers, after what they did to his wife and kids.

Invisibility on television is a major problem for the LGBT Community and both TV and movies need to learn that a characters sexuality is an aside, a trait like being left-handed or having blue eyes and should be presented as such, a passing comment, a bit of back-story and not something to fear presenting. Its just who they are.  It doesn’t need to be a main story but it does need to be included.

LGBT viewers of The Walking Dead and television and movies in general deserve much better.  Better characters, better representation, and better advocating for such by concerned individuals and organizations.

So once again this season it seems that there will be no representation of the LGBT community in The Walking Dead.  Unless of course Daryl Dixon, who has been fending off the advances of Carol for the past few seasons, turns out to be a shit-kicking, sexually confused, redneck.

But I wouldn’t hold my breath.