I found this in my drafts - I wrote it after I finished Leverage: Redemption S1 and then most of the original series. Posting it now with the caveat that I never got around to watching the rest of Leverage: Redemption so I do not know what happened from there.
It still amazes me that people who've lived through
- Sherlock, where the creators outright deny that their two male leads could ever get together, while throwing out constant M/M fanservice.
- FIFTEEN seasons of Supernatural, where women can't survive for very long because they'd threaten the fan-preferred M/M pairings, and one of the actors for the pairing straight up denies that his character could even be gay, shot down questions about it, and finally just "didn't want to put him in a box" following an outcry near the very end of the series.
- She-who-shall-not-be-named, who never so much as hinted that any character might not be straight, but then declared one gay when the series was basically done.
- and however many more queerbaiting shows
can look at Leverage and think the creators are trying to pull one over on us.
- "That means I would be thinking about you and Parker, which I never do!" in the least convincing tone, after lamenting the suave thief Parker is out with that night.
- Watching them kiss and nodding
- "'til my dying day" and "but you never, never need anything" "Yeah, I did" looks over at Parker and Hardison for a moment before looking back "And thanks to you, I don’t have to search anymore."
- Confirmation from the creator that the OT3 is canon.
- "Even numbers only baby" and "Age of the geek, babe"
- The hints in the show (Hardison being aware of how Eliot wakes up, "we built vents in the house", etc) and then confirmation that the three of them live together.
- Hardison talks to Eliot AND Parker before making the decision to step away from the team. Parker's scene is more dramatic, sure - but Hardison checks in with Eliot too, and Eliot confirms his support before Parker drags Hardison off for their chat.
They haven't given us a kiss or the exact words, sure. Polyamory still isn't widely accepted in the US - it's very possible that they can't give us a big flashy display on screen because of executive meddling, or just that they have to consider ratings.
But what they've given us is in line with the characters they've created. They also never make it into a joke, aside from Hardison's "We're together" bit in The 12 Steps Job (which was season one). They don't make flashy fanservice out of scenes with Hardison and Eliot together, or with the three of them.
The Leverage PTB haven't queerbaited us with the OT3. They queercoded them. And then confirmed that they intended the things we saw on screen.
Part of me wonders if the idea that the OT3 are queerbait is the fact that Eliot's relationship with Hardison and Parker is more subdued than their relationship with each other. I think there may be folks who want to see them as a perfect, exclusive triangle where they all share the exact same relationship style. But that's not how polyamorous relationships have to work - and indeed, it's not how most of them work. Parker and Eliot have always had a different kind of relationship than Parker and Hardison. It's not unreasonable to think that, even in a committed romantic threesome, the three sides of the triangle would represent different types of relationships.
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