Hmm…Īnother character coming into play is Anubis. I wonder what this one will be able to do. As she said, he already had the sun (presumably Sweeney’s coin), so she gave him the moon. She plucks the moon from the night sky and gives it to Shadow, another token with mystical properties. We meet the third Zorya sister: Zorya Polunochnaya, who keeps watch over the constellations in the event that the beasts chained among the stars are released to devour the earth. Having already seen next week’s episode, I can say many of your questions, including one from the premiere, will be answered. Laura’s back from the dead! But how? Why? Mad Sweeney’s lucky coin has something to do with it after Shadow left the trinket on her grave. Given the hatred towards Muslims felt across America, they are disenfranchised members of a disenfranchised community. But for Salim and the Jinn, it’s often not a matter of choice. Then there are those like Easter and Vulcan, who we’ll meet later on and have done quite well for themselves because they have progressed with the times. Shadow is able to win their second round of checkers because the Slavic god keeps playing the game in the same way instead of adapting to Shadow’s tactics. Learning, as Vechernyaya mentioned in the previous episode, is beneath her, and the same is true of Czernobog. For most of the Old Gods, it’s not that they can’t adapt, it’s that they won’t. Now she’s just a fortune teller and the world has forgotten about her. Wednesday, Zorya Vechernyaya recalls her glory days as a goddess opening the heavenly gates for her father and closing them upon his return.
Racism, persecution, and homophobia are all elements of this larger story about politics in America, about the old ways fighting to remain relative in a world that’s moved on to the next thing.Įlsewhere, while reminiscing about her younger and friskier self with Mr. LGBTQ viewers have had to sit through God knows how many Skinemax-bordering sex scenes on television, so these folks are throwing us a bone (rather literally)įrom Shadow’s lynching by Technical Boy’s minions to Bilquis’ love suite to now Salim and the Jinn, American Gods continues to push the boundaries of what is acceptable to show on television, but it’s always with a larger purpose. By showing the scene on screen, Fuller and his co-creator Michael Green are also informing the audience that this is okay.
This moment is the Jinn telling Salim it’s okay and offering him a new life. Both men are gay and hail from a region where homosexuals are in danger of being executed by extremists. “They think all we do is grant wishes,” the Jinn says of the stereotype his own people, who’ve forgotten the old ways, believe in now.īut he does grant Salim’s wish to find acceptance.
When he gets into the Jinn’s car, he meets a kindred spirit, someone who also came from a Muslim-led culture to America, where he’s now a taxi driver. Salim’s brother-in-law hates him, but he’s doing his best to stay afloat. Salim is a salesman, who forces a fake smile for a customer showing him nothing but disrespect, and another who doesn’t show him anything at all, as a matter of fact, because he won’t even show up to their meeting. It is, as Fuller explained, meant to capture a religious experience and the feeling of taking a god inside of you. Perhaps it’s due to Neil Gaiman’s involvement in the show or showrunner Bryan Fuller, who is himself openly gay, but it’s meant to be provocative - even more so for those cringing and decrying the scene. Without going as far as to place the camera between their legs, Salim and the Jinn left very little to the imagination. Even with the Americanized Queer as Folk, which couldn’t go an episode without a sexual scenario of some kind, had plenty of rear-end shots but mostly shied away from full-frontal nudity. Calling this the most explicit gay sex scene to ever be aired for a mainstream television audience may seem like a stretch, but I can’t think of anything that comes close. More explicit than any “exclusively gay moment” on HBO, Salim takes the Jinn (whom you’ll recognize from his brief appearance in Episode 2) back to his hotel room for a godly, pornographic experience with a variety of coital shots before a fiery (*clears throat*) finish. The moment where the goddess of sex swallows a lover inside of her vagina made it to the final cut, but when it comes to LGBTQ content, the stories are typically diluted for mainstream audiences - especially in America. Much like Bilquis’ introduction, there was that lingering question as to whether the show’s creative minds would remain faithful to the source material.