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Ryan’s Big High School Musical Season 4 Moment Was 15 Years Coming: “Lucas Was In Tears” -TGN

Summary

  • The creator of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series reflects on the significance of Ryan’s upcoming gay storyline, aiming to bring a more modern context and representation to the show.

  • Ryan’s journey in the series reflects the desire to provide powerful representation for fans of the franchise.

  • The character of Ryan Evans has long been speculated to be gay, and now his ambiguous sexuality will be explained in the upcoming season, bringing his story full circle.

The creator of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series has reflected on the show’s huge upcoming Ryan moment. The upcoming fourth and final season of the meta comedy musical series will be centered on the production of a fictional movie sequel titled High School Musical 4: The Reunion. In the movie-within-a-show, Lucas Grabeel will reprise his original High School Musical role of Ryan Evans, who reveals that he is gay and in a relationship with singer Scott Hoying.

People recently sat down with creator and executive producer Tim Federle to discuss High School Musical: The Musical: The Series season 4, which premieres on Disney+ on August 9. While discussing bringing back the original characters, Federle expressed his interest in introducing a “slightly more modernized context.” He reflected that Ryan likely would have discovered his sexuality after high school, and shared that “Lucas was in tears on set” while filming Ryan’s new scene. Read Federle’s full quote below:

The stories had a discreet ending with High School Musical 3, but presumably these people went on and lived other lives. Those movies were like mosquitoes in a perfect Jurassic Park simulation. They were perfect for their moment. They lit the country and the world on fire with musical theater, thank goodness for them. But to do it now, I wanted to bring some of these stories into a slightly more modernized context.

Part of that for me felt like it would be this beautiful thing that is not so far removed from reality, that Ryan would’ve gotten through high school and presumably went to college and discovered the side of himself that would end up being life-changing. The more depictions in media of anyone who feels othered as now living a happy healthy life is powerful. He has lived with the legacy now for 15 years, and Lucas was in tears on set when we shot that little moment, that kiss. He said, “I think this is going to mean so much to people who grew up with this movie and always wondered about Ryan, and this is a type of representation we can really bring into the future.”

Ryan Evans’ Ambiguous Sexuality Explained

Ryan Evans was a major character in the High School Musical franchise. The twin brother of Drama Club queen bee Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale), he was known for his flamboyant outfits and love of musical theater. While High School Musical 3 paired him romantically with Kelsi Nielsen (Olesya Rulin), there has long been speculation that the character was coded to be gay.

While flamboyancy and an interest in musical theater do not specifically indicate that a character is gay, there were many clues to Ryan’s sexuality laced throughout the movies. The biggest of these clues can be found in High School Musical 2, when Ryan and basketball star Chad Danforth (Corbin Bleu, who recently played himself on HSM:TM:TS season 3) swap clothes after a musical number that shows off their sizzling chemistry together. After the original trilogy was released, openly gay director Kenny Ortega also reflected that Ryan would have come out as gay in college.

High School Musical: The Musical: The Series has brought the character’s journey full circle, even though it takes place in a world where Ryan is a fictional creation. This is an extension of the series’ interest in presenting a more representative depiction of modern high school students. There are several characters in the series who are members of the LGBTQ+ community, and now that Ryan will be publicly joining them, the character’s ambiguous presentation will finally come to an end.

Source: People