“I was like, ‘This is Hugh’s last moment and I’m going to make some personal choices, and so I’ll make them personal choices about how I want them to be,’” says Del Arco. “And I think there were a lot of things about Elnor that for me resonated as a gay man.”

There certainly is a spark between the two characters in that moment. And while reps for CBS say that Hugh has not been identified as gay, Del Arco took his own experience as a gay man into consideration when playing that scene.

“You know, I think he loved him,” he says. “I think in essence he might’ve been in love with him in the time that he was there. I think that the hope was really someone loves him. Someone who was idealistic. I think he saw a lot of himself in Elnor. Hugh used to have that sense of innocence, of righteousness. And all those things were hopeful to him, because he hadn’t been in a space of hope for all this time. And I think for a minute he thought, ‘You know, I think me and the kid can go all the way with this. We could take the cube. We could save it.’ And there you go. It didn’t work out.”

I love Jonathan’s take on all of this, and how he incorporated his own life experiences into his characterization. I personally see Hugh as a romantic asexual individual who forms attachments (when he forms them, which is rare due to his status as an xB and the trauma he’s endured) without desiring a sexual component to the relationship. I don’t think this classification would apply to all xBs, but it is how I see Hugh specifically. I love that Jonathan specifically and personally imbued his performance of Hugh to have such a profound connection with Elnor, however brief.

I am a bleeding heart for doomed ships, and god knows this qualifies T_T I vote for a ship name of “Hughnor”, “El-Ex” (Elnor and ExB) <3 I was trying to come up with one that used swords, or Absolute Candor (Absolute Cinnamon Rolls, was the best I could do lol), but wasn’t having any luck…