The second season of Big Mouth, Netflix’s cartoon about the trials and tribulations of adolescence, is fixated on the same issues as the first: uncomfortably and entirely relatable gags about boobs, stray pubes and “rubbing fronts.” But this season includes an unexpected gem: one of the 13-year-old characters came out as pansexual.
In Big Mouth, the heartaches and desires of the characters are personified by hairy, horned “hormone monsters” that serve as emotional, hilarious joke-cracking guides through the land of sexual maturation.
Spoilers for season 2 ahead:
Although Jay is a side-character, he’s also a close friend to the show’s main characters and is surprisingly complex. In the first season, we learn that his father is a shady divorce lawyer who regularly cheats on his mom. He also has two older abusive brothers and a curiously self-aware and depressed pet pit bull.
In the second season’s ninth episode, Jay makes out with Matthew, the show’s only openly gay character (voiced by gay actor Andrew Rannells), during a spin-the-bottle game called “Smooch or Share.” While their initial kiss (with tongue) at first comes off as the two literally kissing and making up from a fight they had earlier in the show, the two meet up later on for more flirting and kissing during a debaucherous lock-in in the school gymnasium.
Previous to Season Two, Jay had only expressed interest in girls and a female pillow named Pam. The show could have left his kiss with Matthew at that, giving its gay fans an unexpected moment of same-sex smooching. But then, in Season Two’s final episode, Jay struggles with feeling attracted to both a male and female pillow.
The female pillow, Suzette, initially tells him that he has to decide which one he feels more attracted to. But by the episode’s end, Jay has a threesome with both of the pillows, pretty much establishing himself as attracted to more than just one gender.
While it’s great to see Big Mouth feature a pansexual teen, the show proved itself to be quite progressive in its queer and sexual views long before its final episodes. Season Two features an entire episode on how sexually transmitted infections aren’t moral failings and Season One had a coming out episode in which a young character questions his sexuality — during the episode, the show made no homophobic jokes at his expense.