#ik didney wasn't gonna do any actual representation in loki but it was hard not to let my hopes get up... this is different though

[undeniablycandycane]

Ok I keep seeing that same post over and over again "owen wilson queerbaited in natm" and it irks me every time. First of all I really don't see NATM as queerbaiting, I see it as censorship. I really and truly believe that the actors played them with the full intention to follow through, and that's why they held hands at the end, as the best form of delivery they were allowed to provide.

Moreso, I think Shawn might be to blame for part of the censorship; when Owen says in an interview that Jed and Oct's relationship develops into "almost a love, although they'd never admit it" he is corrected by Shawn, saying "a brotherly love." To be fair, Owen does say "yes" to this, but I don't think he means it. Call me whatever, if I'm wrong I'm wrong, (and I know being a fan of him is obviously gonna give me some bias, I acknowledge that) but knowing that Owen isn't very outspoken in interviews/more of a shy dude when it comes to them, I don't see him agreeing genuinely, especially knowing that he and Steve were intentional in their portrayal in the third movie. I don't know what happened behind the scenes, but the fact that there could have been a spinoff about the two characters... upsets me. They say it's because of Robin's death, but I don't know. There's a part of me that thinks it was probably censorship. Plus, the actors both have stated how homo it is, but especially Steve. He absolutely sells it.

Anyway, the actors genuinely had a blast with Jed and Oct and improvised literally all of their gay-sounding lines. I can understand since Jedediah asks why Octavius wants to hold his hand in the third movie (and gives him weird looks when Oct says stuff about Lance) some people see it as homophobia, I guess? But I see it as a dense cowboy who doesn't realize that Oct has fallen for him, and think his feelings are unreciprocated, and I think that's what the actors might have wanted to portray.

Plus, Jedediah took his hand at the end, so it couldn't be baiting because it actually happened. And he took it right when they were dying, which tells me that Jedediah knew they would be frozen like that forever and wanted to take the chance (and also finally realizes, omg, Oct really means it)

I think the studio and execs wanted to go the route of "this means however the viewer wants to interpret it but also don't let them do anything crazy like, i dunno, kiss" because they didn't want to upset their huge fanbase.

I know a lot of this is speculation, but that's just my take on it and how I currently feel about it all.