Every Parent of a Queer Kid Needs to Watch ‘Love, Victor’ Season 2

Love, Victor Season 2 is rough. Not quality-wise, not at all. Season 2 is sweeter, richer, and soapier than Season 1; Love, Victor really comes into its own this year with a batch of episodes that explores this lovable cast—and has them play romantic musical chairs, leading to binge-worthy drama. What’s rough about Season 2, though, is how visceral Ana Ortiz’s storyline is. In the middle of a fun and extremely flirty high school romcom melodrama is Victor’s mother Isabel, a deeply devoted Catholic going through an existential crisis of faith and family that feels too real—and that’s why it works.

Season 1 showed that Victor (Michael Cimino) had it way rougher than his predecessor Simon, a conventionally attractive high schooler with super liberal parents and a bright future with a side gig as an Insta-gay influencer ahead of him. I loved Love, Simon and I loved that it gave us a coming out story that didn’t focus so much on pain and angst as it did on, y’know, crushes and kissing. The gays need their fun stories, too. Love, Victor established itself as its own thing right from the start, giving us a lead who is Latinx, new in town, and in low-key denial of his sexuality. Victor unquestionably had it rougher than Simon… but he did still end up with Benji (George Sear), the high school’s most gorgeous and confident gay.

After a season finale that ended with Victor coming out to his parents after they revealed that they are separating, Season 2 comes out swinging. The show tackles a storyline that, to be honest, feels impossible to get right.

Isabel is not cool with her son being gay.

This is rough to watch, because this is still the experience of too many queer people—and it’s an experience that TV has, for better and for worse, moved past. In depicting coming out stories on screen, a lot of recent ones feature parents who are immediately accepting of their anxious child—Love, Simon and Schitt’s Creek being two big examples. That is great, don’t get me wrong. It’s wonderful that pop culture, which can be a barometer of either where our culture is or where the culture is immediately headed, showcases parents providing the unconditional support and love and understanding that comes with the gig. And if those depictions show real parents of questioning kids how to act, or makes those questioning kids feel a little better about themselves, then yes. Werk. Great! But the flip side is, those easy coming out stories can be salt in the wounds of viewers whose personal coming out experiences didn’t go so well.

To be clear—that doesn’t make what Love, Victor puts mother and son through any easier to watch for those of us whose outings didn’t have a happily ever after! It is tough to live through that experience and then watch it play out in front of you—but at least it makes you and your experience feel seen. That’s something.

So yeah, Isabel’s journey is rough—and Love, Victor really commits to showing a previously likable character played by the fantastic Ana Ortiz doing something very wrong. The one thing a parent has to do—the one thing!—is love their kid. Big “you had one job” energy here. And Isabel, because of her devout Catholic upbringing, just can’t wrap her head around this twist. And to make it even rougher for her and us, she knows she’s wrong. She knows this is religious propaganda, but we watch Isabel time and time again unable to shake free from it. She agrees with her faith in every other way, so how does she reconcile this? And while she’s grappling with this, her estranged husband Armando (James Martinez, doing a total 180 from his homophobic dad on One Day at a Time) is bringing snacks to PFLAG meetings!

Isabel’s storyarc is likely to alienate a lot of viewers because, again, one job. Season 2 shows Isabel making all the very worst, and very accurate, decisions that a scared parent makes. She is cold towards Benji, she runs to religion for answers, she tells Victor that he cannot come out to his little brother because he’s too young to understand—just typing the words makes my blood sizzle. But all of this is very true to life, and the show wisely depicts Isabel struggling with every one of her steps down this wrong path.

And then—SPOILERS if you haven’t finished Season 2—the show pulls off what I fully believed to be impossible for 90% of the season. They… bring Isabel Salazar back to the light, and they actually earn it. They actually make her coming around feel earned, and Ortiz—again, fantastic—plays Isabel’s pain and acceptance and shame and love all at once. She sees that Victor’s little brother is old enough to understand—so why can’t she? The very church that she’s been turning to for guidance damns her son—so why does she listen to them? Her son has his heart broken into pieces—so why is she prioritizing her confusion over his pain? After a season getting everything wrong, she finally comes up with the right answers.

The turnaround Isabel does in the final episodes of the season isn’t something I saw coming, because TV shows rarely commit to doing this much work over this many episodes for a main character. Shows generally don’t want to make characters you love unlikable, and actors probably don’t want to play them. That means we tend to get the “everything is awesome!” parents of Love, Simon, or the mostly off-screen disapproving parents whose arcs just don’t happen.

Love, Victor, a TV romcom for teens, did the hard work of showing a lead character really going through it for a long time. It was hard to watch, but it proved that these kinds of tough stories have to be told too. If the parents of Love, Simon show parents of queer kids how to be supportive, then Isabel Salazar on Love, Victor shows the parents who’ve royally messed up how they can start to make amends.

Stream Love, Victor on Hulu