‘Starfleet Academy’ Could Be Heading to a Big Queer Love Triangle

Over the past few years in Star Trek‘s streaming era renaissance, the queer representation on display has come leaps and bounds (even if there’s still a long way for the franchise to go in that regard). But Starfleet Academy is already showing that it might want to take things to the next level.

Across the last few episodes of the new show, young Klingon cadet Jay-den has opened up and found himself becoming romantically entangled with one of the cadets at Starfleet Academy’s sister school, the War College, named Kyle. After a couple episodes of awkward YA flirting, this week’s episode, “Ko’Zeineâ€, confirmed that he and the young man were in a relationship… only for poor Jay-den to get caught up in the apparently traditional matrimonial abduction process for another of his academy friends, Darem, who inadvertently found himself being suddenly thrust into an arranged marriage he thought he had a lot more time to prepare for.

A lot of the episode is about Jay-Den, who’s gotten increasingly close to Darem over the course of the show so far, helping him realize the courage to step away from his duty to his people (said arranged marriage was to one of his old friends, Kaira, from his homeworld Khionia, who is now next in line to rule it as queen), and embrace the man he’s become in their time together at Starfleet Academy, who is apparently radically different—and radically happier—from the one that grew up on Khionia.

And it seems the closeness has gotten more mutual between the two in that time as well: Darem helped Jay-den open up and face his anxiety to participate in the academy’s debate classes; he shows a perhaps comical level of apprehension about Jay-den flirting with “the enemy†in Kyle when the academy and the War College’s inter-school rivalry heated up. In “Ko’Zeine†Darem asks Jay-Den to be his best man at the wedding, and comforts him when he’s unsure of how he can play such a meaningful role when he doesn’t actually agree with Darem getting married. After it all falls apart and Darem returns to the academy with Jay-Den—going home, as the young Klingon puts it to him—he even makes a deal of being jokingly begrudging towards Jay-den’s romantic relationship with Kyle.

It’s certainly a lot of hints for the show to be dropping that there might be something more to flourish between Jay-den and Darem, and even Kyle as well now that he and Jay-den are together. And the young star behind Darem, George Hawkins, believes that’s the case too, indicating that there are elements of romance to Darem and Jay-den’s relationship developing on the show.

“The relationship between Jay-Den and Darem is really interesting because Jay-Den plays a mirror to Darem. Jay-Den is a really sobering person and character in Darem’s story because he calls him out. He’s the first person at the Academy to actually tell him the truth about who he is, that he is sort of a coward, really, and he has a mask,†Hawkins told Screenrant of the duo’s relationship on Starfleet Academy. “Jay-Den sees behind that mask, and it’s a really beautiful thing to witness in [episode 7], especially.â€

Hawkins went a step further to note that in many ways for Darem, Jay-den fulfills the kind of safe space for him to be vulnerable that his potential wife-to-be did before Darem left for the academy—including romantically. “Kaira is probably the only person in his Khionian upbringing who has the same effect on Darem. I think both of those people are very sobering,†Hawkins continued. “And I think that’s who Jay-Den plays. Jay-Den’s place in that role is obviously romantic. There’s romantic interest there. But deeper than that, not just attraction, but the reason why these two people sort of get closer and closer, I think, is because they bring something out of each other, and that thing that they bring out is the truth. And I think that’s what we’re all searching for.â€

Hawkins went a step further to TV Insider, describing how he thinks Darem sees Jay-Den’s relationship with Kyle. “I wouldn’t say he hates him. I would say he’s jealous of Kyle because Kyle can say what he wants,†the actor noted, “Kyle is very upfront, and he can say what he wants. He’s living the life that Darem would want to live. I think Kyle is a character that Darem secretly really admires.â€

Now, Starfleet Academy could just do a typical love triangle (but queer), but it’s not like there isn’t a precedent for the show to potentially field a polyamorous relationship with Kyle, Jay-Den, and Darem. After all, we saw Jay-Den himself being raised in a poly Klingon family, with two fathers and a mother, so it’s not like he grew up with the concept being unfamiliar to him. We’ve even had brief dialogue in the background before from Darem alluding to his open sexuality, regardless of gender—and of course, one repeated worldbuilding touch the show has fallen back on so far has been establishing a lot more interspecies hybridization in general by the 32nd century, so it seems clear that by this point in Star Trek‘s timeline, people are just more open and fluid when it comes to relationships of all sorts in general.

It’d be nice to see a Star Trek show that leverages its far-future setting to represent that kind of love, especially as part of its burgeoning queer representation—especially when some of the other Trek shows recently have been very reluctant to deviate from the heteronormative standard.

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