Best Mates: ‘Dead Boy Detectives’ Champions the Power of Charles & Edwin’s Platonic Love
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Within the first seven minutes, Netflix’s Dead Boy Detectives tells you exactly what its greatest love story is going to be.
Hanging onto the ledge outside the London offices of their supernatural detective agency, Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri) are waiting out a visit from Death. Kirby reprises her casually cool and soothingly collected version of the reaper from Netflix’s other Neil Gaiman adaptation The Sandman. If Death catches them, it would mean being carted off to the afterlife and separated.
For 30 years, the two eternal teenagers have walked just behind the veil of our world as an unbreakable pair and two pretty damn-good detectives. In a tragic sense of irony, they were each other’s first real friend –– they just didn’t meet until after they died.
Edwin met his fate in 1916 after being sacrificed to a demon by the bullies of his English boarding school in the worst prank ever, while Charles met a similar fate (minus the satanic ritual) at the same school in 1989. In Charles’ final moments, Edwin was there to help ease him into the painful reality of his death, an act of kindness that imprints on your soul. They have been inseparable ever since, and they aren’t going to let a little thing like Death change that.
While clinging to the bricks, Edwin reaffirms to Charles he’ll never let them be torn apart, a declaration he delivers before audiences even have a chance to experience the delightful kooky opening credits for the first time. But it is important that the story of the Dead Boys begins here, roaring right out of the gate with a resounding acknowledgement of a deep, devoted, platonic love that these two guys aren’t afraid to speak out loud.
Edwin and Charles are hardly the first best mates on TV, but the affection-forward friendship they share is one that will likely resonate differently with queer audiences. Over the course of the first season, Edwin goes through a personal journey of acceptance as he begins to embrace the sexual identity for which his own time ostracized him.
It’s scary to come out, especially when the things that make you different are the very things that make you a target for sacrifice to a demon and a one-way ticket to Hell. Talk about a metaphor! When all Edwin has ever known is people identifying him as something before he even knows it himself, it makes that first step out of the closet feel like a decades-long journey to plant your feet on solid ground. In his case, it is.
But waiting on the other side of that step is Charles, someone who undoubtedly recognizes his friend’s internal struggle but never shows him anything but acceptance. The Dead Boys have a love language all their own. It lives in the little comments when Charles calls Edwin his “best mate” to anyone who will listen (or rather anyone who can hear him). It is also in their habit of physically touching each other to show comfort and strength. When who you are puts distance between you and the rest of the world, that effortless closeness and affirmation from someone can feel like a lifeline –– and it does for Edwin.
Ed Araquel / Netflix
For gay men specifically, to be embraced –– physically and emotionally –– by a straight male best friend is a special kind of affection. It just is. Inherently, being gay comes with this pesky little voice in your head that you won’t be accepted by straight men because there is suddenly the fear of one-sided attraction lingering in the air. So when male friends defy those fears, it does wonders in closing that confusing chasm of uncertainty and hesitation in connecting with someone of the same sex. Dead Boy Detectives understands how to bottle the satisfying defiance that comes from platonic male love between gay and straight men, and Rexstrew and Revri are remarkably good at distilling it into their life-challenged duo.
But this friendship is so overwhelmingly important to Edwin that he actually falls in love with Charles, another recognizably queer minefield that many gay men have delicately navigated with their straight friends at one time or another. When Charles rescues him from Hell in Episode 7, Edwin can’t physically bear to keep this secret any longer and confesses his feelings. But he does so with a disclaimer, as if he is tacking a verbal asterisk onto his honesty. He says Charles doesn’t have to love him back, a real-time attempt at softening the blow of whatever Charles may say next.
While he doesn’t share those same romantic feelings, Charles instead gives Edwin something even more eternal to hold onto. He grasps Edwin’s shoulders, locks in on his gaze, and says the exact thing that he and any person who has ever identified with someone like Edwin needs to hear: “You are the most important person in the world to me. And I can’t really say that I am in love with you back. But there is no one else, no one else, I would go to Hell for.”
Even people deep in the throes of romantic love still struggle to find the right words for their significant other. It is heartening to know that when it matters, whether in the depths of Hell or on a windy ledge, Charles and Edwin will always find the right words for each other.
For all the wild misadventures this show finds itself in during Season 1, there is something very tangible and human about two dead boys who love each other — to Hell and back. For now, it might carry different meanings for each of them, but it is important how willing they are to voice their feelings. How willing they are to wield it as a shield against the much darker forces present in their day jobs.
After all, no one knows better than Edwin and Charles that life is too short not to tell your best friend you love them.
Dead Boy Detectives, Season 1, Streaming Now, Netflix
