Sense8 Episode 6: ‘Demons’

Plot things:

Riley and Will crush on each other. Wolfgang and Kala also crush on each other, although she’s convinced he’s a demon because he’s always naked and tempting her to not get married. Sun tries to hold on to her iron dignity as her life crashes around her. Nomi decides it’s time for payback after her apartment is trashed and her journals stolen. The bad guys have finally caught up with Riley (content warning for violence, specifically asphyxiation). Capheus discovers the purpose of the dangerous errand, Lito and his lovers take in a wrestling match.

Nomi continues to be one of the only characters who seems curious about experiencing the minds of other people, but maybe this is because she’s being hunted for her brain.

FEMINIST MOMENTS THAT MAKE THE EPISODE

• Amanita’s mom the professor, you guys, who just rolls with her daughter showing up on her doorstep with her fugitive girlfriend and hilariously compares Nomi’s Sensate experiences with menopause. This character is inherently feminist and wonderful, with her open-armed acceptance of her daughter and Nomi and Nomi’s new weird brain problems.
• “Back then it must have been hard for a woman with her obvious talents; even today she would have a hard time getting the same recognition your father gets just because he’s a man,” says Rajan, Kala’s fiancee, and it’s almost a tiny bit sad that she has no desire to marry him because he’s pretty progressive. Sigh.
• This. Sex. Scene. Is. Everything. There has never been a scene like this on television before. What differentiates this scene is that it’s not just an orgy, it’s the absence of the heterosexual male gaze and a radical celebration of queer sexuality. Identity dissolves in a sensual tangle of naked bodies, pure, frank pleasure is unapologetically, joyously expressed. The scene is as matter of fact about being polyamorous as it is in its sexual fluidity. As Nomi and Lito have physical sex with their lovers, their arousal spills out to some other members of their cluster. Just as the previous episode allowed a male character to experience menstruation, this episode further dismantles gender norms when its “straight” characters become willing participants in queer sex. While Wolfgang seems interested but remains, ahem, ‘unmoved’ by the experience, Will is surprised but definitely aroused. Neither character, who have been presented until now as heterosexual, react with shame or disgust.

Sense8 never tokenizes its gay characters, they are presented with the same complexity as straight characters, although those distinctions rapidly become meaningless when the Sensates share each others experiences and emotions. Brian J. Smith (Will Gorski) said on Twitter that show creator Lana Wachowski “thinks all of the characters are pansexual” which makes sense now that each Sensate can feel the arousal of the others. In one scene, Sense8 packed in enough complex content to need its own queer theory thesis.

More glorious male full-frontal nudity!