Neurodivergent (Headcanon) Alley: Will (Fire Island)

*Will-related spoilers.*

Okay, I know I’ve already written about my autistic interpretation of Mr. Darcy, and as a modernized reimagined Darcy, Will can easily be grandfathered into that post. But I rewatched Fire Island recently, and it left me wanting to talk about Will in his own right.

Because my god, he’s just so wonderfully autistic! From the first moment we see him onscreen, we see that social cues aren’t his forte, but that his misreadings are often assumed to be snobbishness. He and Noah meet when Noah tries to rope him into helping him escape from the unflattering attentions of a determined rice queen—Noah turns down the guy’s offer to get him a drink, insisting that his “boyfriend” Will is handling that. But Will very honestly says he doesn’t know what’s happening. Noah, who’s quick and sharp in social situations, doesn’t see a shy, uncomfortable guy who’s bewildered at being called “honey” by a stranger. He just sees a fellow Asian American hanging him out to dry as Noah tries to extricate himself from the lame dude who’s exoticizing him.

During the afterparty at the beach house, Charlie is sent to go find Will, who’s off “hiding” during the big chaotic social situation, and when Charlie finds him, Will wonders why he even had to come on this trip. Then there’s the Alice Munro scene, where Noah browbeats the taciturn Will into having more than a monosyllabic conversation. As Will disagrees with some of Noah’s literary opinions, Noah wants to know why they’re arguing, but Will doesn’t even realize an argument is happening.

Will is pretty quick to realize that his first impression of Noah was wrong, and to an extent, he gets that Noah hasn’t exactly warmed to him. He doesn’t fully know why that is, though—he doesn’t know that Noah overheard Will calling him “not hot enough to be that annoying” and is later crestfallen to learn that Noah heard what he said. And even more importantly, he really doesn’t know how to fix it. He tries in various ways, without much success. He offers Noah a water bottle for Howie after he gets sick and gets called out for single-use plastic waste. He talks with Noah about Alice Munro, thinking they’re having an interesting discussion about literature when Noah thinks they’re arguing. He tells Noah where his friends went when they leave the underwear party. And of course, after he realizes Noah heard his insulting remark at the afterparty, he writes a letter to apologize, additionally trying to offer what context he can for his warning about Dex. A lot of Will’s fumbling attempts to smooth things over with Noah involve giving him information, as if things will be all right if he can just explain himself sufficiently—big autistic mood!

I’ve said that Conrad Ricamora is 100% a Colin Firth-level Darcy, and it’s really true. So many tiny moments of Will’s characterization come together to deliver peak Darcy-ness, and the autistic coding is a major part of that. When he’s forced into playing Head’s Up with the five “sisters,” you can physically see the panic in his eyes as Keegan and Luke scream at him about Marisa Tomei, after which he shrugs off Charlie’s attempt to reassure him. He goes to the underwear party (in shorts,) still wearing his watch and standing on his own in the corner. After he insists that he’s a fun guy and Noah volunteers him for a dance-off, the drag queen emceeing the contest initially thinks he’s cute but soon starts laughing at his stilted, one-word answers to her questions, suggesting that he’s a robot. He gets awkward and nervous about being perceived too closely—when Noah lightly teases him about eating a tiny ice cream cone, he chucks it away, then claims it was melting. Oh my god, I love it so much!

Relationship Spotlight: Noah & Will (Fire Island)

*Noah/Will-related spoilers.*

I haven’t really written about this film since I first saw it, but I still love it. Not only is it a great, entertaining movie on its own, it’s also such a fantastic Pride and Prejudice reimagining, nowhere more so than in the relationship between its version of Lizzy and Darcy.

From the moment the five “sisters” get to Fire Island, Noah, our Lizzy, is on alert in more ways than one. He’s determined to find some action for his best friend Howie, so he’s looking out for potential hookup prospects, but he’s also keenly aware of the way that their group has less “currency” than so many others on the island. In a literal sense, they’re not rich, but they’re also mostly BIPOC, they have a range of body types, and some of them are more feminine than is considered desirable. Noah is determined not to let the exuberant Luke and Keegan embarrass them, not because he feels a need to impress the rich/white/toned/masculine guys around them, but because he’s determined not to give those jerks the satisfaction.

And to Noah, Will is the embodiment of those jerks. Our Darcy is both a lawyer (read: soul-sucking) and comes from old money (read: elitist), he’s hot and chiseled (read: full of himself), and he looks like he wants to be anywhere but hanging out with Noah’s group (read: snobby.) He’s not white, but everyone else in his friend group is, and Noah frames him as the token Asian American of his social circle. When Howie starts making eyes at Will’s friend Charlie, Will is the one sullenly standing in the background, seemingly determined not to like anything. To add literal insult to injury, Noah hears him telling Charlie that Noah “isn’t hot enough to be that annoying.”

But this is Pride and Prejudice we’re talking about. Will’s stiff awkwardness derives mainly from him being a massive introvert who wasn’t built for wild social situations like this (and as with Original Recipe Darcy, he can definitely be headcanoned as autistic.) He and Noah both make some snap judgments about each other, but Will starts to reassess his much more quickly. I love how, in many early scenes, we can see that Will is clearly amused by Noah’s banter but trying to hold back his smile/laughter. He quickly morphs from grumpy and standoffish to polite but stilted, making an effort to get to know this guy who’s already decided they hate each other.

I just love how the film portrays these two slowly figuring each other out. Noah is smart, witty, and can use bitchiness/sarcasm as a shield to protect himself and his friends from anyone he thinks might be a threat to them. By turns, Will is shy, cautious, and bad with first impressions, but he’s able to unwind a little as people get to know him. Both care a lot about their close friends, and both can let their pride get in the way of a good thing if they’re not careful. Compared to the blatant puppy love between Howie and Charlie, both tend to be cautious where feelings are concerned.

One excellent scene between them comes when Charlie visits Howie with Will in tow, and Will comes across Noah reading Alice Munro by the pool. Things immediately get off on the wrong foot, with Noah taking Will’s expression of surprise as a dig on his intellect, and they don’t get much better when Will disagrees over Noah’s interpretation of his favorite Munro story. Noah wonders why they’re even arguing about this, but Will says, “I didn’t think we were arguing.” And Noah, with just the right amount of archness, says, “So let me win,” which Will does. The whole scene somewhat mirrors Lizzy and Darcy’s first dance, where she coaches him in conversing, and it’s just as crackling with chemistry.

I love how Fire Island is very much a 21^st-century story set in an entirely different world than Pride and Prejudice, and Noah and Will’s dynamic together is specific to who they both are, but at the same time they’re so very recognizably Lizzy and Darcy. From the looks to the repartee to the hard-won nature of their romance, they just nail it in every single scene.

Fire Island (2022, R)

That’s right, I’m reviewing two diverse modern-day Pride & Prejudice adaptations this week, and they’re both awesome. The trailer for Fire Island had me intrigued from the jump, but when I found out that this rom-com starring gay Asian American men was riffing on Austen, I couldn’t sit down to Hulu fast enough.

Noah and his four closest friends have just arrived at Fire Island for their annual getaway. Witty, confident Noah is determined help his sweet but insecure best friend Howie gain a little mojo through a choice hook-up. But things don’t quite go as planned when the guy who starts vibing with Howie is wholesome doctor Charlie, who’s staying at a fabulous beach house full of wealthy party boys who look at our crew like they got dragged in on someone’s shoe. Naturally, Noah is especially suspicious of Will, a taciturn lawyer who seems to look down his nose at them.

I won’t go deep into comparisons with Pride, but suffice to say that I love Fire Island for a lot of similar reasons. I adore the way the characters are drawn as gay incarnations of the original Austen characters. As our Lizzy, Noah’s intelligence, wit, and slight bossiness quickly endear him to me, even as they get him into trouble when he sizes up a situation too quickly. Meanwhile, Will is just peak Darcy, hitting that ideal balance between blunt and shy—special shoutout for the way, very early on, you see how he’s started smiling at Noah’s jokes despite himself. Meanwhile, Howie and Charlie’s syrupy connection is as cute as it is funny, with Noah busting his ass to help his friend score when Howie clearly wants to fall in love. The “younger sisters” are all terrific, the serious Debbie-Downer Max and the loud and flirty Keegan and Luke.

I love how well the story translates to a 21^st-century Fire Island setting. It’s easy to see what plenty of scenes are emulating, even as some of them take a very different slant. Both love stories are done so well, every “event” has all the passive-aggression, uncertainty, and peril of the Netherfield ball, and the film’s version of the Wickham storyline (his name is Dex in this version) hits the right notes.

In addition to being a banging Pride and Prejudice reimagining (albeit a much more explicit one,) I also really like what the film brings to the table that’s uniquely its own. Just the fact that we’re dealing with a found family instead of a literal one speaks deeply to the LGBTQ experience, and even as the romances are the main focus of the story, the movie never loses sight of the friendships. While the five friends are most definitely in a lower socioeconomic bracket than Will and Charlie’s crowd, Noah’s narration also highlights the other types of “currency” they’re lacking on Fire Island. They’re mostly men of color, mostly more feminine, and have an array of body types, all of which mark them out as less “desirable” to the wealthy/white/masculine/toned men they’re interacting with. Noah and Howie are in some ways tied by their shared knowledge of what it’s like to be a gay Asian American man, but their experiences aren’t identical, as Howie makes very clear to Noah in a critical scene. And it’s only addressed briefly, but I find it really interesting that Will is the one person of color in Charlie’s group, a mixed Asian American man.

Joel Kim Booster wrote the screenplay and stars as Noah, and he’s pretty delightful. He has a light about him that’s infectious, but he’s also not afraid to let Noah be unreasonable and stubborn at times. Conrad Ricamora is so good as Will. I’m discovering that I can’t rank Darcys—like Doctors, I can only tier them, and Ricamora is absolutely a Colin Firth-level Darcy. SNL’s Bowen Yang is equal parts funny and sympathetic as Howie, and James Scully makes for a charmingly dorky Charlie. Every member of the cast does a fantastic job, by turns hilarious, outrageous, and lovable.

If Booster wants to write a sequel, I’m so there. Alternatively, if he wants to do a series of queer BIPOC Jane Austen adaptations, I would eat that up too.

Warnings

Sexual content, language (including “reclaimed” slurs,) drinking/drug use, and thematic elements.