Hulu's queer teen drama makes it easy to 'Love, Victor'

Fanfiction can be corny, but it’s also entertaining, corrective, and ingenious in its ability to use recognizable tropes — “fake” relationships, enemies to lovers, and hundreds more — to generate genuine romance and emotion.

This is all to say that Love, Victor on Hulu is a show that captures the feeling of reading great fanfiction.

Part of LV’s fanfic-ness comes from its status as an original spinoff from 2018’s Love, Simon, a film based on Becky Albertalli’s Young Adult novel Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda. In the book and movie, Simon is a closeted gay student at Creekwood High who writes love notes to his crush Bram and earns a romantic ending when the two kiss at a carnival. Love, Victor takes place a few years after the movie, when Simon’s romance has passed into school legend and another young, closeted boy arrives at Creekwood High in the shadow of Simon’s fairy-tale ending.

That student, Victor (Michael Cimono) is jealous of Simon’s legend and writes him a scathing DM accusing him of having a perfect life for a variety of reasons: Simon’s white family members accepted his sexuality, Victor’s are Colombian Catholics with a history of homophobia; Simon led a stable, middle-class life; Victor’s parents are lower income and have marital issues; and so on. Instead of dismissing Victor as a troll, Simon writes him back, and his supportive messages (voiced by Love, Simon actor Nick Robinson) bookend each episode of Victor’s journey.

With Simon as his guide to all things potentially gay, Victor is an ideal TV show (and fanfic) protagonist. Michael Cimino portrays him as adorably confused and well-intentioned, which makes for a dynamic first season as Victor struggles with conflicting desires to fit in and be himself. The remaining cast of characters are easy to recognize — the popular girl whose interest in Victor makes him an overnight sensation at school, the nerdy best friend whose geeky monologues are some of the show’s best moments, the mean jock, and the requisite handsome blond who makes Victor go weak at the knees — but Love, Victor surpasses the expectations of teen dramedy by being sweeter and funnier than shows that rely on murder or other adult-level scandals to keep their plots moving.

Love, Victor also shines when it highlights the reality of being the child of immigrants, an element of queer identity that isn’t often explored in similar shows with gay characters. Victor is Colombian, and his parents and grandparents hold outwardly homophobic beliefs tied to their Catholicism. As the eldest son, Victor’s role is the low-maintenance, put-together kid who no one has to worry about. The pressure he feels to deprioritize his problems is achingly familiar for anyone who’s walked a tightrope between two cultures and gives Victor’s story plausible depth.

Love, Victor's fanfic-y charm also comes from its embrace of all the good things about teen romance. It effortlessly captures the horrifying, ambient horniness of high school and puts its characters in the exact kinds of situations legions of fanfic readers have squeed about for decades. Some of them are telegraphed, like when a motel room turns out to only have one bed, while others, like popular girl Lake (Bebe Wood) finally realizing geeky classmate Felix (Anthony Turpel) is actually kinda hot, but they're all so damn cute it's hard to get mad at the predictability. Love, Victor gets the tropes right in the same way Netflix favorite To All The Boys I've Loved Before does, and will likely be a hit with the same audience.

Before Love, Victor was announced as a Hulu original, it was destined for premiere on Disney+. Assumed reasons for the change include the show's portrayal of alcohol use and discussions of sex, but after watching the unyielding adorableness of the first season, the decision to distance the show from Disney+'s more family friendly library seems shortsighted. Love, Victor has the precise blend of sweetness, weight, and demonstrative progressiveness that Disney+'s young audience should be exposed to; it's difficult to imagine a show about a gay Colombian teen being any more delightful or palatable to a younger audience.

Categories aside, Hulu has a treasure in Love, Victor. It is both lovely and about love, without discounting the lived experience of thousands of Victors, Mias, Felixes, Pilars, and Lakes across the world. It exists to make people feel good and seen, which is —not coincidentally —the sane reason fanfiction is celebrated in the better, way more fun corners of the internet.

Love, Victor is now streaming on Hulu.