My First Asexual Representation Experience

If you ask someone their favorite asexual representation in books, TV shows, or movies, there’s a fairly standard list of characters you might expect to hear — Todd Chavez, Alastor, Isaac Henderson, Georgia Warr, Tori Spring… and yes, the last three were all Alice Oseman characters. I’ll certainly admit, she can write fantastic ace characters! And in the case of many aspec individuals, they’ll say many of those same names as the first ace representation they saw.

Now, many of these characters resonate with me as well. Georgia especially means a lot to me. I’ve often said that I’d never experienced a book that reads like how my own brain speaks, but Loveless by Alice Oseman did that exact thing in my case. But there’s another character that is often overlooked because her story never got far off the ground. Her name is Esperanza “Spooner” Cruz.

Spooner was played by actor Lisseth Chavez in the series DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, a part of the “Arrowverse” which was a connected universe of shows that began with Arrow and continued with spin-offs or later integrated shows like The Flash (a direct spinoff) and Supergirl (initially a separate universe but connected through crossovers and eventually a united universe). Introduced in season 6, Spooner was born at some point prior to 1925 when she is rescued by Captain Sara Lance and the Legends from the aliens who abducted her. The Legends are a collective of heroes and anti-heroes who travel through time correcting temporal disruptions. Think of it like Loki but in a group of heroes and anti-heroes you wouldn’t expect together and most of the team is LBGTQIA+.

Since the abduction, Spooner has developed the ability to sense and communicate with aliens, which comes in handy for the Legends, leading to her recruitment to the team. Unlike some of her teammates like “Heatwave” Mick Rory and “Citizen Steel” Nate Haywood, she was uniquely created for the show, having no DC Comics print counterpart. This makes what the show decided to do with her character all the more interesting.

In the tenth episode of season 7 titled “The Fixed Point”, the team is stuck in a point in time unable to be changed by any time traveler and must find a way to escape. As the team had split up, the unlikely duo of Spooner and Zari await at the bar trying to pass the time. Zari tries to keep them entertained by inviting Spooner to play “smash, marry, kill” with their male teammates, but she tells Zari she doesn’t get those feelings for them. Zari then tries with their female teammates, but again Spooner says she doesn’t feel it for any of them either. She then admits she feels those things for no one and starts to question if that was something that the aliens who abducted her had messed up about her.

But Zari won’t hear any of it. Not because she isn’t listening, but because she won’t allow Spooner to think that about herself. She says that maybe Spooner’s ace, leading her to explain to Spooner what asexuality is. After a moment of contemplation, Spooner accepts this new knowledge and comes out.

Unfortunately, Spooner’s identity was not able to be explored further as after a seven year run, the show was cancelled just three episodes later. Still, Spooner’s scene will always hold a special place in my heart, as well as in the history of comic book stories brought to screen. She was the first instance of an asexual character on-screen in any form and on any scale for DC Comics, a feat that Marvel still has yet to make happen themselves at the time of the writing of this post. Moreso, it was the first time I ever heard the word “asexual” in TV or movie.

There’s some incredible little things that make this scene special while also making it pull at your feels. The most notable thing to me is what Spooner said about the aliens messing her up. To me, that’s her version of the brokenness many of us have felt before finding meaning in asexuality. That brief recognition from within the absurdity of time travelers in a world where they’re trapped at the moment of Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination in the same timeline where Barry Allen zooms around Central City feels oddly relatable. Many of us have felt like something got screwed up in us too. We’ve felt alien ourselves. This scene that’s just two minutes of television hits so sudden, and while it’s a shame we never got to dive deeper with Spooner, I’m forever grateful for that two minutes.

Comic books have always been a way for me to escape into another world. But here, it was that world escaping to meet me. I’ve watched that scene many times over, and no matter how many times I see it, it’s special to me. I hope everyone has an opportunity to see themselves in media forms that they love like I did with Spooner.

To me, she’s not just an asexual icon. She’s an asexual Legend.