‘The 100’s Alycia Debnam-Carey Reflects on Lexa’s Impact on LGBTQ+ Representation a Decade Later

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Whether you were a fan of The 100 or simply a casual television enjoyer in 2016, you likely witnessed the fallout of “Thirteen.” In the third season of the hit sci-fi apocalypse series, the show’s only lesbian character was murdered mere moments after consummating her relationship with the show’s bisexual lead, sparking discussion about the damaging “Bury Your Gays” trope and marking a turning point in LGBTQ+ representation on television. Stopping by Collider Ladies Night with Perri Nemiroff for a deep dive into her now-vast career, Alycia Debnam-Carey spoke about her experience in the immediate aftermath of her The 100 exit, and how it’s been to watch the landscape of LGBTQ+ representation change over the last decade.

“I think you can see it, right? You can see the results of that movement,” she explained. “It was a trope that had been replayed forever, and it’s unfortunate that, obviously, this was the catalyst to change it.” Despite the devastation of that loss, Debnam-Carey pointed out that, “there will always be something that has to be that break to change things.” She went on to say:

“Going through it obviously was really intimidating. It was really intense. I’d never been a part of something that had so much success, so I was on a really different platform, but I also hadn’t been exposed to the world in that way yet. I was receiving it, and trying to translate and process a
lot
of different experiences and emotions at the same time.
Obviously, feeling so much of that pain from so many people, what they’d experienced was so heartbreaking, and trying to be a source of support and comfort and reassurance or encouragement to push it in a positive direction, but then the fans were the ones who took it there and moved it into a place that had real results.
So, how extraordinary to see something that was really painful be turned into healing and growing and real change.”

She went on to praise the changes that have been made over the last decade, saying, “So, as much as it was a devastating loss for so many people, you see the results now, 10 years later, that there are fully-realized characters that are leading shows that are queer, that are LGBTQ+, that have dynamic stories and representation. That is powerful. So, it’s a two-fold kind of situation.”

Alycia Debnam-Carey Celebrates the “Purity” of Convention Spaces

As any fan will tell you, a good television show or movie can change your life, and the stories we see on screen can have an impact far beyond our imaginations. When Nemiroff asked Debnam-Carey about her experience witnessing how her work has affected audiences firsthand, she said she’s “been really lucky to experience the true purity of fans who love a character in a show in a convention-type space because there’s nothing like it.” She went on to share her gratitude for those fan interactions, pointing out how wildly different the convention space is from the world of online fandom. She said:

“You’ve got the internet, but it is terrifying. Being in a convention space, you are seeing the truest passion and purity of what that means to someone. And for something like Lexa or
The 100
,
the amount of stories that I heard that were just very personal, very intimate, that were incredibly impactful for these people to find comfort, safety, reassurance, there’s nothing like it
. The feeling that you have of, like, ‘I’m so glad that this helped, and I’m so happy that I could be a vessel for that.’ I couldn’t just pick one. It’s created communities for people. People have found friendships over that. People have bonded because of it. They found people who are like-minded, who have commonalities, and can really feel safe in them. I mean,
what a
beautiful
thing. And so, what a lucky thing to be a part of
. And conventions, for me, it’s just been seeing that kind of community that’s been created.”

As a fan, Lexa’s death was heartbreaking to watch. However, nearly a decade later, one can’t help but be grateful for the movement that followed. While there’s certainly still a long way to go in terms of LGBTQ+ representation, it’s interesting to see how far we’ve come since that pivotal moment.

You can rewatch Debnam-Carey’s influential performance on The 100 on Netflix. Check out her full episode of Collider Ladies Night below.