Have you ever seen a film with an asexual film character?
I am assuming there was a long pause just then because there has never been a canonically asexual film character in a major motion picture. Sure, there are some fab indie films with asexual representation like Slow (2023), Something In The Dirt (2022), Queens of the Qing Dynasty (2022), and technically Nymphomaniac (2013), but I don’t tend to count that film for myriad reasons.
So if you had told me a few years back that the first character canonically on the asexual spectrum in a major motion picture would be played by Miss Dark Betty herself, Lili Reinhart, and that the representation would come from an adaptation of a smutty BookTok romance, I genuinely would have eaten my hat.
And yet, in September of 2026, this representation feels so deeply right.
For those of you who weren’t waiting with bated breath for the adaptation of Ali Hazelwood’s bestselling book The Love Hypothesis starring Lili Reinhart as Olive Smith and Tom Bateman as Dr Adam Carlsen, let me get you up to speed.
Ali Hazelwood is a best-selling author known for STEM-set romance novels, including The Love Hypothesis (2021), Love on the Brain (2022), and Love, Theoretically (2023). The Love Hypothesis was Hazelwood’s first published book, but she originally wrote it as Star Wars fan fiction about Rey and Kylo Ren, which she published on AO3 (icon behaviour). The novel came out in 2021 and spent over 40 weeks on the NYT Best Seller list, sold over 750,000 copies in its first year, and has been rated on Goodreads over 2 million times.
This book is a cultural juggernaut. And the film is slated to be one of the most discussed adaptations of the year (which is a massive deal given just how god damn many adaptations have been released in 2026). From the cast’s press-tour outfits (shoutout to the 13 Going on 30 Nanette Lepore coat worn by Lili and the Notting Hill baby tee worn by Tom) to the buzzy TikToks, this film is going to be absolutely everywhere.
But despite all the chatter about the infamous chapter 16, the absence of Holden, and Lili’s rom-com sartorial homages, my mind is stuck on a scene between Olive and her housemate Malcolm (Jaboukie Young-White) early in the film’s runtime.
In this scene, the duo are bemoaning Olive’s dating life when Malcolm says, “It is rough out there for you demisexuals.” He’s talking about Olive, and when she asks for a definition of the word “demisexual”, she is shocked to discover that not everyone needs to have a strong emotional connection to have sex and feel attraction.
And just like that, an asexual icon was born!
For those unaware (or willfully uneducated), demisexuality is a term used to refer to people who can only feel sexual attraction for another individual after they’ve formed a strong emotional connection with them. Demisexuality is on the asexual spectrum.
This moment confirms a longtime fan theory that Olive is on the asexual spectrum, with Olive herself even pondering whether or not she is asexual in chapter three of The Love Hypothesis: “Should she explain that she’d had very little sex in her life? That for years she’d wondered whether she was asexual and she had realised only recently that she might be able to experience sexual attraction, but only with people she trusted deeply?”
Ali Hazelwood is no stranger to including asexual and aromantic characters in her work, with the most notable and canonical being Greg from Love Theoretically. Greg is a closeted aroace man who is soliciting the fake girlfriend services of the protagonist Elsie so he does not have to come out to his bigoted family.
Liam from Under One Roof, the first novella in Ali’s Loathe to Love You compilation, is yet another example of asexual coding in Hazelwood’s books, which discusses his historic distaste for sex.
Outside of these rare exceptions, asexuality is criminally misrepresented and underrepresented in media. According to GLAAD’s Where We Are on TV report for the 2024-2025 television season, there were 2 recorded asexual characters on mainstream television, a decrease of two characters from the prior year. There have been fewer than 10 canonically asexual film characters in film history, with none of these being in major motion pictures.
I rarely see myself or my community depicted on the page. I am a voracious reader, a woman with a book podcast, a creator who had a YouTube channel dedicated to discussing asexual representation in media, and literally got my first job in media through writing about asexual representation. This sort of asexual representation is the kind that I have a field day with (and believe me, I am), and is the stuff that I dream about. And now that it’s here, I genuinely still find it rather unfathomable. Part of me still believes this representation is fake news and that I am being punked, which is such a weird response to such a major win for the ace community.
To have a character not just be canonically confirmed to be on the asexual spectrum is one (fabulous) thing, but to include a moment of asexual education for the audience is another. It is an asexual wet dream.
Having demisexuality be destigmatised through showing that people like Olive, who identify as demisexual, can have healthy romantic and sexual relationships is such important representation for the world to see. The Love Hypothesis proves that asexual people can lead a juicy and buzzy film equally as well as allosexual folk.
From asexuality being criminalised in Niger, to major television shows like And Just Like That (2025) having a character claim to be asexual but be seen masturbating while using a puppet (in some cruel and outdated punchline about asexual people being freaks), and where asexual individuals are 10% more likely to be offered or undergo conversion therapy compared to other parts of the queer community, asexual oppression is deeply common in our world.
So having even one more character in a film that is getting a lot of attention be canonically ace-spec, and also offer an on-screen definition of demisexuality, is the kind of representation that deserves to be celebrated. It is so immensely rare that the asexual community has a win, so we need to celebrate them wherever and whenever we can.
Visibility and education are vitally important parts of spreading asexual awareness. Some may think that caring this much about the sexual orientation of a film character is silly. However, in a world where people have such a scarce understanding of asexuality, media representations are largely where people learn about other lived experiences. It feels so cliché to say that “representation matters”, but sometimes the clichés are kinda correct.
Does having Olive Smith in The Love Hypothesis be canonically on the asexual spectrum end discrimination against all asexual folk? Obviously not.
But it provides our marginalised community with some much-needed representation, and this may very well be some viewers’ asexual awakenings. And the importance of that representation can’t be overstated.