Is the rebooted Lara Croft gay? Evidence for and against...

As some of you know, I’ve been fangirling hard over the new Tomb Raider, the first entry in the video game series since 2008, and ostensibly a reboot for the entire franchise. Taking the form of an origin story, Tomb Raider 2013 depicts the events that transformed a beautiful, if bookish, archaeology graduate into a pistol-packing adventurer with a devil-may-care attitude.

We meet Lara Croft as a pretty, fairly ordinary 21 year old, brooding over her work notes, listening to her mp3 player and very much confined to the shadow of her male mentors. By the end of the game, however, she’s taken charge – she’s had to! – and, battered, bruised and bloody, she’s both a survivor and hero, right down to rescuing the princess and carrying her away in her arms.

Yeah, this is probably the best point to mention that there will be some Tomb Raider 2013 spoilers in this post, so read ahead with caution.

Anyway, I loved the game. Technically it’s near faultless, it looks beautiful, the overall experience is cinematic and emotionally satisfying, and the new younger Lara is a wonderfully empathetic character far removed from the old boobs-and-braid portrayal. She is also, if some people are to be believed, gay.

It really shouldn’t matter, of course. Let’s make that clear right now. The Tomb Raider games have never been about Lara Croft’s sexual orientation or relationship status. They’re about her kicking ass and solving ancient mysteries. On her own. Despite her cheesecake “photo shoots” and infamous Duke Nukem gropage, Lara could easily be asexual; so wrapped up in her work that romantic relationships don’t even feature on her life radar.

To reaffirm, I personally don’t ever want to see Lara’s love life becoming a focal point of the series. By all means, drop hints and generate speculation to get the gamer fantas- uh, thinking, but don’t spell it out. It is far, far, FAR more interesting this way.

In a rather outstanding and enlightening interview with Kill Screen (read the whole thing), Tomb Raider writer Rhianna Pratchett reiterates the same point:

You know, we didn’t actually touch on Lara’s sexuality in the game…. People have talked about Lara’s boyfriends and stuff like that, and I’m like, “No, no, I don’t want that to be part of it!” This is about her. I didn’t feel like a boyfriend or that side of things fit into it.

But I do like the fact that people speculate about what Lara’s relationship to Sam might have been… It’s good that people care enough about those characters to think about those sorts of things.

Discussing the sexuality of a video game character may sound varying degrees of ridiculous and/or trivial. There is value in considering it though. Anyway you look at her, Lara Croft is an icon – the first Lady of Gaming. She is to video games what Wonder Woman is to comics: a character that has leapt out of a niche interest area into the mainstream public consciousness as a representation of women in that specific medium. Even if it’s likely to be an older interpretation they’re familiar with, people know who Lara Croft is. And given that LC, for better or worse, remains emblematic of female characters in gaming, it really does matter how she is being portrayed, physically, psychologically and emotionally. So is she slyly being set up as an icon for other marginalised groups as well? Let’s examine some of the evidence; do some archaeology of our own…


Actually, perhaps anthropology would be a better choice of words, because a certain segment of the online community has really rallied behind the idea of Lara Croft being gay. It’s been massively educational pursuing this line of enquiry as I haven’t delved into the world of online fan fiction since the late 90s, and it's seriously evolved over the past decade and a half, sprouting a new lexicon and everything. If I was around in the primordial days, present to watch the first fish crawling out of the sea, fan fiction is now happily scurrying around the brush, having split into dozens of different, thriving species.

Anyway, Lara Croft’s relationship with best friend and documentary filmmaker Sam Nishimura in Tomb Raider 2013 seems to have been tailor-made for this special brand of geek sub-culture. “Shipping” refers to the reimagining of pop culture characters as being romantically involved. And, of course, an actual ship is central to Tomb Raider 2013. The S.S. Endurance is how our heroes end up stranded on the lost island kingdom of Yamatai in the first place. Naturally, fans now refer to “setting sail on the S.S. Endurance”… The Same Sex Endurance. Geddit?

Tomb Raider 2013 certainly plays a lot with gender tropes, which further adds to the ambiguity about Lara Croft’s sexuality. For example, if you take age as an indicator, there are only really two potential love interests for Lara in the game: Sam and Alex. One is female, the other is male; both have unisex names.

Alex, as a character, screams Marty-Stu. Consider the stereotypical interpretation of a programmer or geek – the guys who made the new Tomb Raider and the guys who are playing it. Alex is a bespectacled hacker, has the chemical structure of coffee tattooed on his neck, reads graphic novels, loves his online conspiracy theories and is pretty damn cute. Is Lara interested? Evidently not at all. Alex’s attempts to impress Lara, who he has already called “his hero,” lead to his death. Before he sacrifices himself though, he admits his feelings. Lara’s response? A chaste little kiss on the cheek before she leaves him to his fate.

Out of interest, you really don’t want to be a white male in the new Tomb Raider. By the end of the game, every single one is dead. And three of the five most prominent WMs die saving Lara. The minorities pull through, meanwhile. The only people to escape Yamatai are a young white English woman, a black American woman, a Japanese-American woman and a Maori man whose backstory involves the horrors of domestic abuse. None of these characters are passive, for the record – they all pull their weight in battle; handle guns; fight back. It’s just that the only character Lara has real success saving is a woman: the very girlie, pretty-much-a-real-princess, Sam. Not that Pratchett isn’t aware of this:

There are different types of love. And I think in games we don’t really stray too much outside of girl-boy. There are things that can be done with sisterly love, brotherly love, paternal, maternal love. The straight boy-girl thing has been typified by the damsel in distress. It’s always the male character rescuing the female character. It was interesting that with a female [protagonist] like Lara rescuing a female, people sort of projected that there was more going on to that relationship because of that.

So yeah, there’s your first bit of evidence that over-eager fans are reading too much into the bond between Lara and college buddy Sam.

However, there's no denying that there is plenty of ambiguity in the game to feed speculation, regardless. It’s been fascinating to see that what one person uses to support the theory that Lara Croft is gay is also being held up as “proof” by someone else that she is straight. Case in point: This entry in Sam’s in-game journal:

I suppose on some level I have Lara to thank for this job. She's always believed in me. The academics at college dismissed filmmaking as nonsense. They just saw me as this ditsy American troublemaker with a camera.

But you know what? Most people can use a little trouble in their lives. And deep down, I know Lara wanted to just cut loose sometimes. She just needed a little help unlocking her inner party girl.

We had so many awesome adventures together. That insane backpacking trip through Bulgaria, I was always dragging her out to clubs. And the hiking trip on the south face of Kilimanjaro; all Lara wanted to do was explore ruins, but who knew we'd run into so many cute guys? Certainly not Lara, haha!

I have a feeling this expedition is going to be one for the books. Lara with her notebook, me with my camera...another crazy adventure!

From this extract, it sounds like Lara and Sam are your pretty standard pair of fun-loving girl friends, as opposed to girlfriends. Then again, why the “Certainly not Lara, haha!”? Does Lara’s disinterest in cute guys stem from her work focus or the fact that she’s gay? Sam definitely sounds very heterosexual in this passage while Lara’s feelings remain veiled. Is something one-sided happening? There may be some significance to the fact that the only photo Lara keeps in her cabin is of her and Sam at their graduation… Lara’s long-lost parents don’t even have a picture on her wall.

This said, I imagine it's significant that the new Lara Croft is essentially a self-reliant orphan. Although the details are unclear, at some point in her childhood/teens, her archaeologist parents vanished while on an expedition. This could easily account for Lara and Sam’s close bond; the relaxed demonstration of physical affection – because Lara naturally treasures the few loved ones she has left in her life.

As a result, when, Lara is “responsible” in-game for the deaths of friends, crewmates and rescuers alike, she becomes fixated on rescuing her kidnapped best friend, and “keeping her promise” to get them home. The stakes have been upped – Lara could lose everyone she’s ever loved – and her reaction escalates exponentially. Hence all the panicked screams of “Sam!” Lara’s guilt-plagued conscience clearly couldn’t cope with Sam’s loss as well. It’s her last chance at redemption for putting everyone at risk in the first place.

In short: Lara isn’t gay. She is just incredibly protective of her friend. And in their nightmarish situation, both she and Sam turn to each other for mental and physical support (all the hugging and hand-holding). Just think of Sam and Lara as being like Sam and Frodo…

Then again, there are still moments like this in the game. 

See here and here for the context of this clip.

Those long lingering looks and shy smiles are, well, saturated with subtext. Let’s not forget that Pratchett did also say this in the Kill Screen interview:

There’s part of me that would’ve loved to make Lara gay. I’m not sure Crystal would be ready for it! But we've not spoken about it directly, either.

Although to be fair, these extracts from the same interview provide additional context, and support the “just good friends” argument.

Certainly with Lara, I wanted to make a human story. But I never wanted to forget that she was female either. And, I mean, certainly the way she reacts to things could be said to be more female as a reaction. I’m not talking about being scared, or being vulnerable. But the way she interacts with other characters, her friendship with Sam in particular…you wouldn’t see a male character holding the hands of an in-pain male character or hugging a dying male character…

I think she’s got a little bit more female empathy, one could suggest. And certainly her friendship with Sam, especially when it’s fleshed out in the camera sequences, it’s quite a female friendship. It’s quite sort of playful and fun and girlish. And that underlines Sam’s importance in Lara’s life. They both have their differences, but they’re both ambitious women in their field. And they care a lot for each other. Maybe with a female character it’s easier to show those kind of emotions.

Still, I think there’s enough evidence to support a third way of looking at things. Perhaps Lara and Sam’s feelings for one another evolve from friendship into something more intimate over the course of the game? They undeniably become a lot more hands-on with their affection for one another over time. Consider the following – the first time that Lara and Sam see each other after the traumatic shipwreck that lands them on the island in the first place.


Not even a hug to celebrate the reunion. Granted creepy-as-all-hell Mathias is there to interrupt and literally step between the two young women, but afterwards the friends don’t even sit together. This scene doesn’t ring true in multiple aspects – given what she's just been through, I'd expect Lara's supposed “great instincts” to kick in and prevent her from completely relaxing at the fireside – but if you want, the "hands-off" response of the two women could be interpreted as Lara not yet realising what Sam means to her, and vice versa.Over the course of the game though, as Lara becomes a knight in decidedly unshining armour, that changes.

In the end though, the interpretation is yours to make. Nothing is explicitly spelled out for the players of Tom Raider, which adds to the fun if you’re in the mood to ponder character matters and motivations. I’m very excited to see if/how things will be handled in a sequel. “Hardened survivor” Lara seems all set up at the end of this reboot to head off in a very different life direction to Miss-Skinny-Jeans Sam, and there’s certain to be some severe post traumatic stress to contend with on both sides if both characters are around for 2.

------

P.S. There’s quite a bit of Lara-Sam fan fiction on the Web these days. I was most surprised to discover how sweet and tonally appropriate a lot of it is. The following are some of my favourite pieces because of how authentically the writers have managed to duplicate the characters’ voices from the game. Please be warned though that the stories contain varying degrees of sexual content:

• She traces your scars and rebuilds your world
• Coconut Rum
• Reverse Epitaph
• Infected 
• MAR 03 2013 00:00
• Dinner Date
• The Camera Loves You
• Insanity
• Sacrifice
• Survivor
• Surprise
• No heroes (only survivors)
• When old lives die
• In search for kindred spirit
• Can't go home [My story]
• Easier to run [Sequel to my story above]

NOTE: (8/5/2014) For an updated look at why Sam matters, and her significance in Lara's life, read my new post on the matter:

Defending Sam Nishimura

P.P.S. If you really, really want to grasp at every single straw in the “gay or straight” debate, it’s probably worth noting that Lara’s right ear is pierced twice. A pierced right, as opposed to left, ear is traditionally viewed as a way to indicate homosexuality.

P.P.P.S. As an afterthought, I suppose the argument could also be made that a lesbian-leaning Lara is more palatable for male gamers if articles like this are to be believed. It's not a case of cheap titillation please note; it's more that hetero male gamers apparently can't handle the thought of playing as a female character who becomes intimate with a male character. Take that as you will...