Sense8 is a celebration of marginalized eroticism, the cinematic equivalent of "It's Raining Men." The series just wrapped in a climatic finale, and it was delicious. It had me jumping up off my couch, hollering and squealing, scaring my cats.
Sense8's first season debuted on June 5, 2015, just twenty-one days before the landmark Supreme Court same-sex marriage decision in the United States. I was mostly closeted, home for the summer after my first year of college. I vividly remember watching the orgy scene of the first season, alone in my room, afraid my mother or father or brother would walk in because I was deeply turned on.
If you need a refresher before we begin our deep dive, here's a quick summation of Sense8's story and characters: Sense8 follows the lives of eight strangers from around the world that simultaneously become psychically linked and awaken their innate power as people called sensates. The sensates are: Will, a Chicago police officer; Nomi, a trans woman hacker from San Francisco; Lito, a gay actor living in Mexico City; Riley, a DJ in London; Capheus, a matatu driver in Nairobi; Sun, an underground kickboxing sensation in Seoul; Wolfgang, a Berlin man with ties to organized crime; and Kala, a recently engaged pharmacist in Mumbai.
The first orgy
The orgy of the first season doesn't star the entire cast of sensates like future orgy scenes in the series would. It instead features just Lito, Nomi, Will, and Wolfgang, as well as Lito's partner and Nomi's partner. Will and Wolfgang, the two white, ostensibly straight men of the sensates, not only participate in sex with the two most outwardly queer sensates, Nomi and Lito, but Will and Wolfgang enjoy it. Seeing this on-screen was monumentally important to me as a young gay man.
Will and Wolfgang were masculine and sexually fluid, unafraid to kiss and be kissed by a gay man and a trans woman. They showed me a version of masculinity that I hadn't seen before.
And Nomi and Lito were some of the first queer characters I saw in media that had unwavering, unconditional romantic relationships from the outset of the narrative. They showed me that I could have a committed, healthy queer relationship.
This scene was not just a promiscuous orgy; it was incredibly empowering to me as a closeted young adult.
Will and Wolfgang's sexual fluidity was especially powerful because the actors that played them had shown comfort with exploring their sexuality in previous work. When I first saw Sense8, I'd actually seen the actors who play Will and Wolfgang—Brian J. Smith and Max Riemelt respectively—before. Each of them starred in gay indie films, Brian J. Smith in Hate Crime and The War Boys and Max Riemelt in Free Fall. I'd seen their films during my first year of college as I voraciously sought out media that would help me understand my burgeoning queerness. None of their films had happy endings for their queer characters; in Free Fall, Max's character finds himself in a relationship with a closeted partner who repeatedly beats him, and in The War Boys, Brian's character is forced to be the angry, deeply ashamed one. Yet, here these men were in Sense8, unburdened by the repression that existed in their films, instead free to indulge, happily.
Sense8's Finale
Now, almost exactly three years after Sense8's first season debuted, it has come to a close. I'm not closeted anymore, and I haven't been for nearly two and a half years.
Let's talk about the finale. The two hours that precede the last thirty minutes are silly and preposterous. With the show being cancelled, the finale has to spend most of its time tying up the mess of a plot that the show had created. But I eventually got to those last thirty minutes; in them, there's a wedding, a dance scene, and one final orgy.
The wedding ceremony is the show's thesis statement: love unites us; love is love, echoed in the finale's title, Amor Vincit Omnia, translated by the show to "love conquers all things." The wedding is between Nomi and her partner, Amanita. In the show's universe, their wedding represents the potential for love between sensates—a completely different species from homosapians, think mutants in X-men—and humans. But these are also two queer women, one black, one trans. Their love is resoundingly queer and embodied by difference. Their union is the possibility for any two people to find love with one another.
Then comes the reception, basically a rave, and the refrain we hear repeated is, "nothing matters when we're dancing," seemingly a nod to the inessential previous two hours. However, those lyrics are actually powerfully resonant for Sense8 because the show has never been about plot. It's been about moments and scenes and the songs that play over them. Sense8's soundtrack has always been one of the many ways it reinforces its primary theme of connection and shared experiences.
The Orgy to End All Orgies
Throughout the show, one of the sensates, Kala, has struggled to reconcile her arranged marriage to Rajan with her growing feelings for fellow sensate Wolfgang. Prior to the finale, Rajan was never a major player and was, in fact, set up to be a major antagonist. Late in the second season, Kala discovers Rajan is involved in dealings with shady people. However, that plot point was never resolved before the end of the second season and the show's cancellation. So, in the finale, Rajan is quickly cleared of any potential wrongdoing and becomes a large part of the action throughout. In the finale, he learns that Kala is a sensate and about her affair with Wolfgang, and there's tension between he and Wolfgang, but he saves Wolfgang's life, and the two seem to reconcile.
After the wedding reception, the various romantic partnerships depart to different bedrooms and the final orgy scene takes place. In it, this happens.
Wolfgang pulls Rajan's shirt open, smiles across both their faces. The music continues to build, showing the other romantic relationships of the show also fooling around, and as the music climaxes, this happens.
This moment isn’t about bullshit cuckcoldry; it’s about genuine pleasure. Rajan doesn't just let Kala have Wolfgang. He isn't just cool with it. He participates. The show makes this a huge moment, evidenced by the climaxing music, and it was because this is when I scared my cats with squeals of excitement. In this moment, Sense8 not only promotes polyamorous relationships but celebrates all marginalized sexual experiences, as it always has. After Rajan and Wolfgang's kiss, there's a beautiful montage of each romantic relationship's important moments throughout the show.
Why the Orgies Matter
Sense8’s best scenes are of two types: (1) sensual—the orgies or many dance scenes in which music is essential—and (2) when one sensate is in a moment of crisis and another appears to offer guidance. The first set of scenes are the foundation of Sense8’s tone and emotional appeal. The latter set of scenes demonstrate Sense8's driving theme of connection, that very different people from across the world are able to empathize with one another, an idea of increasing importance with our growing networks of global communication. One such scene is in the Christmas special that became the first episode of the second season. In that special, Kala is nervous about having sex with Rajan for the first time, and she comes to fellow sensate Sun—easily my favorite character in the show, portrayed wonderfully by Doona Bae. Sun tells Kala, "We exist because of sex. It's not something to be afraid of. It's something to honor. To enjoy." Sun's words are followed by that Christmas special's orgy. I remember tearing up at her words, because my life has been so full of fearing sex. I desperately wanted it for the longest time but couldn't let myself have it because I wanted to be with a man. Then when I had it, I wanted it to be perfect but found it complicated by jealousy and insecurity. Through its orgy scenes, Sense8 delightfully simplifies sex, displaying countless characters unbound by jealousy and insecurity, bound only by sensation.
Sense8 is a show that, while sometimes mired with awkward writing and silly plot, profoundly impacted my growth as a sexual being. It's optimistic and hopeful in a world where I need it to be.
After the show's final orgy and beautiful montage, its last words are, "for the fans."
Thank you, Sense8. I will miss you.