Double the Fun, Half the Character? A Critical Look at Twins in Pop Culture

In the last few days of the star sign Gemini, I wanted to talk a bit about twins in pop culture. I think television writers struggle with how to portray twins, and that’s putting it lightly. Identical twins seem to be the ones featured most prominently—why bother making two characters twins if they don’t look alike? Never mind the hundreds of fraternal twins actually out there who get less representation on TV because they’re less of a curiosity. Identical twins tend to be used as visually striking additions to TV shows, typically in sort of a gimmicky way: “oh look how kewl, they look exactly like each other!” However, the line between novelty and fetishizing, and even dehumanizing, is terribly thin. It contributes to what is honestly a freak show mentality, which leads to poor writing, poor character development, and overall less than ideal portrayals of twins. Spoiler alerts for Teen Wolf Season 3 and Heroes Season 2 below.

Identically adorable.

The biggest problem with twins in fiction is that they tend to come as a packaged whole; it’s as if “the twins” as a unit are a single character, not the individual siblings. (Think the Weasley twins, Fred and George, from Harry Potter.) I don’t know about you, but I’d feel pretty damn dehumanized to be perceived as only half a person. Often this is displayed in what I call a yin-yang twin scenario. I suppose in an effort to make sure the twins are not just complete carbon copies of each other (that would be truly horrible writing), writers attempt to make sure the twins are different by making them opposites in certain ways. Before Season 4 of Teen Wolf starts up and everyone forgets about the Wonder Twins, Ethan and Aiden, let’s take a look at this duo.

From the Teen Wolf Memorial website—all the other characters get their own little bubble, the twins only get a joint one. #atwinisnothalfaperson

Ethan and Aiden join to form this guy. You know how people always ask twins, “omg can you read each other’s minds?” I hope people don’t start asking twins, “omg can you merge into one super form?”

Ethan and Aiden were physically identical, right down to their sculpted bodies and perfectly coiffed hair, but there was a bit of the yin-yang going on. Aiden was straight and Ethan was gay; Aiden was more aggressive and hot-headed, whereas Ethan was shown as capable of more sensitivity (though both twins actively engaged in Alpha-level werewolf violence). All possible character traits shouldn’t be polarized and separated, giving half to one twin and half to the other. And if this yin-yang business wasn’t bad enough, Ethan and Aiden had the special ability to merge into one super-Alpha werewolf. That’s right, they literally were each only half of the super-Alpha. Goodbye, autonomy! So long, individuality! This is “a twin is only half a person” tropiness in the worst way.

Then again, it can be challenging to add depth to any character when they’re objectified as much as this.

I think there were some good parts to the twins’ stories, however. Although Teen Wolf didn’t really have time to make either twin very interesting—Season 3 exploded with new characters and convoluted storylines that left little time for character development for anyone except the very main characters—they at least tried a little. I think there was at least one episode each where one of the twins was featured without the other (Aiden tagged along sans Ethan for Lydia’s banshee detective work once, and Ethan was solo in the bus ride and motel episodes. Let us never forget Dethan’s sexy motel scene). Ethan’s romance and relationship with Danny was very sweet, and was focused on a pretty decent amount. It contrasted nicely and organically with Aiden’s fuck buddy situation with Lydia. Rather than simply mirroring the same situation, just one gay and one straight, each twin had a relationship more fitting to his own personality and outlook.

The original Wonder Twins! While they didn’t have identical abilities, they had similar powers of transmutation, which could only be activated by physical contact. Form of a codependency trope!

Let’s take a detour to the question of fraternal twins. When fraternal twins are featured, it tends to be male-female pairings. In reality, this could be seen as sort of an extension of the yin-yang scenario I mentioned. It plays into a sort of cis/heteronormative view of male + female equaling some kind of “complete” microcosm in ways that a fraternal pair of same-sex twins wouldn’t, because a same-sex pairing would be lacking in symbolic wholeness and only representing an “incomplete” microcosm. This idea of “complimentary completeness” (I love making up terminology) often means that the pair of twins is unable to be separated and function independently. The clearest example of this that I can think of is Maya and Alejandro from Season 2 of Heroes. Also dubbed the Wonder Twins, by some online commenters, the twins’ powers are intimately connected. Maya has the ability to generate and project some sort of unspecified illness or poison upon others, a power she does not at first have control over and often unintentionally triggers in times of heightened emotion. Alejandro’s power is the ability to stop and reverse Maya’s power… what? Not even the ability to influence/manipulate any person’s power, Alejandro’s ability seems limited to only affecting his sister’s power.

I’m crying because I’m sad at the portrayal of twins in pop culture media.

What the hell kind of power is that? This sort of connected power might make more sense for identical twins, if the usual “powers are tied to genetics” is a factor, since identical twins started as one zygote and all that. When fraternal twins (or identical twins, really) have such connected abilities, all it leads to is codependent situations. Why couldn’t the writers have given them completely unrelated powers such as telekinesis and super strength? The writers completely eliminated any hope for Alejandro having independent superhero adventures of his own by giving him such a limited and specific power. If he had a generic ability to manipulate or simply dampen anyone else’s ability (think Marvel’s Leech, for example), he could’ve still served the same plot purpose (i.e. stop Maya from killing everyone every time she panicked) with more opportunity for independent agency. The final nail in the coffin so to speak was that Maya eventually learns how to stop and reverse her power herself; with that cleared up, did Alejandro and his power have any point? Apparently not, cuz the character was killed off right around then. Once one twin started to achieve self-actualization of a sort, the other was deemed unimportant enough to die.

This scene was SO fucking sad. Mad props to the Carver twins for their acting chops.

Curiously enough, Ethan and Aiden’s storyline also ended with the death of one of the twins. The actors were on the way out anyway, but Aiden’s death during battle functioned as a sort of redemption, something that would’ve made sense in his narrative regardless. It’s unclear where Ethan is going, but I would’ve loved him to stay; not just for more sexy Dethan scenes, but because it would have been compelling to watch a character deal with the loss of his twin. How would this impact his identity? The writers would certainly be able to give him more autonomy now, but would the character feel guilty about a sense of autonomy since it came at the price of his brother’s life? We will never know, since Max and Charlie Carver are leaving Teen Wolf to reprise their identical twin charm on HBO’s The Leftovers. We’ll have to wait and see which tropes follow them over. (That’s why I’ll be watching The Leftovers, to keep critically examining twin tropes, not for hopefully plentiful Carver twin shirtless scenes…)

So where does this leave us? Well, hoping for better portrayals of twins. Writers must move beyond using twins just for their side-show curiosity or symbolism of duality. Surely there is a middle ground between total copies who are identical in personality and body versus yin-yang opposites who just share a face. There must be a way to write more independence and autonomy for twins besides killing off one of the pair. Sharing a genetic code and/or being womb-mates shouldn’t have to completely define a character, and certainly should never make them seem to be merely an incomplete half of a whole when alone. Aurora and Northstar of Marvel comics give us faith that it can be done: these two are a pair of male/female fraternal twins who have powers that can be used in tandem or individually, and they have gotten lots of independent storylines and autonomy without the death of one of the twins. What other pop culture twins can you think of, and can you even think of any same-sex fraternal twins in media? Let me know what you think of their portrayals and storylines in the comments below!