Sonic the Hedgehog: The queer coding of Agent Stone is brilliant

This article contains major spoilers for Sonic the Hedgehog 3.

The live action Sonic the Hedgehog films have no right being as good as they are. This franchise is an excellent blueprint for creating a successful adaptation while giving plenty of love to the original source material. One of the biggest reasons for Sonic’s success is thanks to its world-building with memorable characters introduced alongside the animated juggernauts of Sonic, Knuckles, Tails, and Shadow. There is, of course, the villainous Dr. Robotnik, played by the larger-than-life Jim Carrey.

One fan-favorite character who has emerged is Lee Majdoub's Agent Stone. Instantly from movie one, fans have shipped the delightful, latte-making underling with his boss Robotnik, something that Majdoub and Carrey have vocally supported fans. While shipping is normal in fandom, there is so much textual content in the film to support that Stone is a queer coded gay man. It was Sonic the Hedgehog 3 that the writing of Stone suddenly clicked with me how and why it worked so well:

Despite being a live action character, Agent Stone is written like an animated character under The Hayes Code and The Television Code of 1952. And his writing is brilliant for this.

A very brief summary is that The Hayes Code was a series of guidelines implemented for Hollywood in the 1930s when media transitioned from radio to film. One of the more harmful rules was no "Sex Perversion," AKA queer content. This went into overdrive when TV came around with The Television Code of 1952, where networks were not allowed to show anything other than the portrayal of nuclear families on screen. This is where we get our Leave It to Beaver era and parents sleeping into separate beds. These guidelines would be in effect and slowly break down until the 80s, but the harm was already done as it would take decades before more queer content would be seen on screen (read more about all of this here in another piece where I went into more detail).

The truth is queer people have always existed, and people who tell you otherwise don't know or are ignoring science and history. Thanks to these regulations, queer creators working in animation and media had to get creative to skirt around censorship to portray themselves on screen.

All this is where the term "queer coding" comes from. Pride.com says that queer coding is "using LGBTQIA tropes and stereotypes to allude to a character's sexuality without explicitly confirming it in the text." To see themselves on screen, these creators would use hints to tell the audience a character was queer. One of the ways to get around censors is when queer coded characters were played for comedy. The go-to example is Bugs Bunny, who dresses in drag and kisses men. Because this is played for laughs, then the censors didn't flag it. Animator Andreas Deja, an openly gay man who worked for Disney, designed many queer coded characters like Scar and Jafar being effeminate. However, because they are villains, they created some harmful stereotypes, but it was the best the creators could do at the time. Thankfully, these stereotypes have broken down in the 2000s with much better representation on screen.

The other way that creators would get around censors was to put as much textual support in the media to get 99% there without the character ever coming right out and saying they're queer. Do the characters have special romantic music? What's in the scenery around them, like the transgender pride flag in Gwen Stacy's room or her entire color palette in Across the Spider-Verse? Are the words they say written a particular way? For example, DuckTales (2017) director Sam King got creative with some character dialogue to scootch by censors to confirm that Penny is a lesbian. Another is the frankly sad hoops that Alex Hirsch had to jump through with Disney to get any kind of queer content in Gravity Falls, where he got called into S&P's office in person so there wouldn't be a paper trail for their censorship. Regardless, creators have prevailed time and again since the creation of media to have queer content.

Which brings us back to Agent Stone in the Sonic franchise.

While he is a live action character running around with cartoon animals, it hit me after watching Sonic the Hedgehog 3 that Agent Stone is written like an animated character under The Hayes Code. His queer coding has been carefully crafted to circumvent any censors, which does matter. Putting aside the one grossly homophobic scene in Sonic 2 where Stone is called a freak (I discuss that at length here), there is plenty of textual support for Stone being a gay man, even if it's never confirmed on screen.

Many of the scenes between Stone and Robtonik are played for comedy, especially in their physical slapstick-like villain antics. I argue that Stone is an antagonist, not a villain, as we do not know his motivations. He doesn't seem to want to rule the world; he only believes in Robotnik. Regardless, we can put him in the "villain" category, which makes it easier to create comedy and skirt around the censors like the Disney villain and Bugs Bunny examples. Like how in a deleted scene, Stone is sending numerous hearts at Robotnik's livestream, it's crafted to be laughed at.

We also see throughout the franchise the scenery around Stone being used to subtly shout at the audience he is a gay man. In Sonic 2, during a scene where he is crafting latte artwork of Robotnik's face, the song "Don't Know Why" by Norah Jones plays in the background. You know, the song about someone who has lost the love of their life in a scene where Stone thinks Robotnik is still missing or dead.

Probably my personal favorite example is from Sonic 3, which is about to be a major spoiler for the film. When Robotnik, who just wants to rule the world, realizes that his grandfather is about to destroy the Earth, Robotnik chooses to save humanity with Sonic and the gang. He gives a final callout to Stone, saying that Stone was always his friend. During this entire scene, Stone is in London in front of the statue of Anteros, the God of Requited Love. He stays in front of that statue for a good amount of time, having watched Robotnik supposedly die (which is still unclear at this time since Shadow survived, confirmed in the post-credit sequence).

There is also a debate to be had about Robotnik's queer coding. I am an Asexual person, and I can clearly see that Robotnik could also be read as Ace and/or Aromantic. However, that, along with whether or not it's a harmful portrayal of Asexual people, is an argument for another article. I just wanted to at least note where Robotnik is as Stone's possible romantic partner because ace people can have relationships, get married, have kids, etc. too.

These are just a few examples of the masterful writing of Agent Stone's queer coding. As a queer person myself, I often get frustrated with media when they don't clearly confirm when a character is gay. However, I think Stone is a very important exception.

Minus the one very homophobic joke in Sonic 2, Stone has been written in a way that's a very positive portrayal of a gay man. Yes, he's technically a villain, but he has his own autonomy and makes his own choices. He clearly loves Robotnik. But in Sonic 3, he draws a line in the sand to protect his boundaries against Robotnik's harsh treatment. The character is incredibly likable and will do what's right when necessary. Gay men are often negatively characterized and have the hurtful stereotype in media as predators, something that is still being broken down today. Having a fan-favorite, likable gay man written in an all-ages movie franchise? Excellent.

We are also moving into a very scary time under a new administration, and I would not be surprised if we see another kind of Hayes Code. Because of how Stone's story is already set up, he can continue to keep skirting around censors. The harsh truth is that, at this time, it could cause a (stupid) controversy if Stone was confirmed on screen as gay. We've seen other companies like Disney tossing their queer content into the garbage because they care more about saving pennies and not having a spine than making media that saves the lives of children who need it. Even though it sucks, not confirming Stone is gay on screen, at least during the current administration, means that we can keep on getting more Stone in future Sonic properties. Any backlash raises the chances of Stone getting axed out of the franchise, and that's just the reality of the situation.

But it's also why Stone's writing is so masterful. Anyone with eyeballs and a brain knows Agent Stone is gay. It's 99.9% confirmed in all ways except a confession of love.

Again, the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has no right to be this good.