Henry Selick and Jordan Peele’s Wendell & Wild is a triumph of animation. From its themes to its art style, the film is a unique love letter to animated movies and all the ways they grip our hearts as kids and as adults. But above all, Wendell & Wild is a cornucopia of inclusivity, with its secret standout shining through Raúl (Sam Zelaya), the film’s lead trans character.
Wendell & Wild follows Kat Elliot (Lyric Ross), a teenage hell maiden who summons two demons from the underworld, Wendell (Keegan-Michael Key) and Wild (Jordan Peele), in hopes that they’ll bring her parents back to life. It’s a simple premise that soon becomes a whirlwind of adventure, hell-risen mishaps, and a profound commentary on the carceral system. While the film takes on both fantastical and painfully real horrors, its thematic through line is allowed to breathe through its wonderfully diverse cast of characters. From Kat being a young Black girl refreshingly allowed to be angry at the world’s horrors, all the way to every single one of her peers at the Rust Bank Catholic School for Girls, Wendell & Wild is a blueprint for how to do representation right. And Raúl’s story is a remarkable bit of inclusion that doesn’t feel forced, wronged, or — more importantly — tokenized.
In a Q&A session hosted by Neil Gaiman following the film’s first screenings in New York, Selick shared that while the film is abundant with representation, he didn’t want a gold star for doing it all. In fact, Raúl is trans purely because he wanted a male-identifying student within the school. How do you include a boy in an all-girl school? You make them trans. Selick’s solution was so simple, and yet the first of its kind.
After sharing his ideation behind Raúl, I was dumbfounded by how easy Selick made it seem to organically include trans characters without pigeonholing them or falling into virtuous complexes. Bluntly put, it seemed so easy because it actually was that easy. An overshadowed side of inclusivity is showing people from marginalized communities in a light outside of their trauma. Is it important to talk about trauma pertaining to different groups? Absolutely. Is it still a feat of representation when the subject matter is trauma heavy? Of course. But is it also as doubly important to shed light on stories of marginalized people simply being people? A thousand times yes. And that’s exactly what Selick does.
So who exactly is Raúl? He’s an incredibly talented artist who’s using his work to try and expose the evil behind the town’s prison system, Klax Korp. His mom, Marianna (Natalie Martinez), is also working as a paralegal in the town’s council to prove that Klax Korp had something to do with their town’s devastating fire. And while their linked mission makes them integral players in Kat’s journey, it also infuses Raúl’s story with stakes that have nothing to do with his gender identity. He’s an artist, he’s an activist, he’s a son, and he’s Kat’s first ever friend — who just happens to be trans.
We first meet Raúl while he’s hiding in the school’s bell tower and working on something that’s initially unclear to us. But as the story unravels, and Kat and Raúl go to hell and back (almost quite literally) to save the day, the film’s final moments reveal the mammoth task Raúl had been working on the entire time. Taking the town’s rooftops as his personal canvas, Raúl had been painting a mural of a mother protecting her son from two evil, gargantuan snakes, with the latter symbolizing Klax Korp’s owners. While the piece is beautiful and lends into Wendell & Wild‘s overall themes, it’s absolutely mind-blowing that a kid made a project on that large of a scale. By Raúl’s age I could make a detailed sketch at best, but an art project turning every house in my town into a canvas? That’s MVP behavior.
Alongside his phenomenal artistic talent, Raúl is a support system for Kat throughout her entire journey as a hell maiden and as a kid grieving the loss of her parents. He helps her every step of the way, whether it’s by being by her side while summoning demons, understanding where her defensive outbursts stem from, or defending her against their many antagonists without a second thought. Get you a friend that can make you laugh in detention all while battling demons with you in the very same night.
And in moments when Raúl’s gender identity is foregrounded to illuminate the audience about his journey, it’s done so beautifully with twinges of realism that’ll hopefully resonate with trans kids and their families. From including clips of his friends at school adjusting to his transition, to showcasing a scene where his mom fiercely defends him against bigots deliberately misgendering him, Wendell & Wild craftily illustrates Raúl’s reality without falling into potholes of vapid commentary. The film isn’t grabbing you by the face and introducing you to something shocking. It’s just placing you in a town and in families that probably look a whole lot like people you know — minus the whole demons and army of the dead fiasco.
Focusing primarily on Raúl’s life and interests is a wonderful decision that bolsters his character with so much charm and authenticity while lessening the weight of being a rare trans character in animation. If anything, it reminds us of how seldom we see trans characters living life abundantly on screen. Raúl is a small but mighty step towards more trans inclusion in genre stories. And we sure know that it’s about time.
