It’s time to go back to the halls of Degrassi High!
HBO Max has greenlit a new Degrassi series, bringing one of the all-time classic teen shows a new life.
The new Degrassi, coming from showrunners Lara Azzopardi (The Bold Type) and Julia Cohen (Riverdale, The Royals), will have ten hour-long episodes in its first season and is expected to launch on HBO Max in 2023.
Degrassi is a show that follows students at Degrassi High in Toronto, Ontario, and the new series “explores a group of teenagers and school faculty living in the shadow of events that both bind them together and tear them apart. The show travels deep into the hearts and homes of diverse, complicated characters, as they struggle to find their new normal, reaching for hope, redemption, and love.”
Degrassi has a long history of queer characters, including the bisexual Paige, her girlfriend Alex Nuñez, quarterback Riley and his on-again-off-again boyfriend, the out and proud Zane, and many more. Hopefully, this new series will continue that trend, and even push it farther than it’s gone before.
For a lot of teens, Marco (played by Adamo Ruggiero) was one of the first gay characters they saw on TV when he first appeared in the second season of Degrassi: The Next Generation in 2004. Starring as Marco on the show actually helped Ruggiero to come out himself.
“What Marco gave me is a community,” Ruggiero said to the AV Club. “In the promotion of the show, I connected with a queer world. He just busted open this door of a world that probably would have taken a lot longer to find.”
While his storyline was filled with dangerous and problematic tropes and was played by a cis woman, the character Adam also pushed forward representation for trans men on TV. Now with a new platform on HBO Max, Degrassi has a chance to explore trans characters using trans actors.
If you can’t wait until 2023 to see the new Degrassi, HBO Max has also announced that the entire fourteen-season library of Degrassi: The Next Generation will be available on the streamer this spring!
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