Image description: There are three characters standing in front of a tree. On the left is Genevieve in a black ankle-length dress with a wide skirt and black heels, in the middle is Nicholas in a black suit, pants, and tie with black dress shoes, and on the right is Matilda in a black sweater and floral knee-length dress and black flats. They are look somber and thoughtful.

Warning! The article below contains spoilers for season one of “Everything’s Gonna Be Okay.”

Everything’s gonna be okay, a Freeform series debuted in January 2020, centres around the twenty something Australian Nicholas (Josh Thomas) and his two high school aged American half sisters, Genevieve (Maeve Press) and Matilda (Kayla Cromer) – who are autistic. During the visit that Nicholas takes to Los Angeles, his father informs him that he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. His father then tells Nicholas, he will need to find a guardian that will look after the girls after his death. 

For the rest of the series; Nicholas, Genevieve and Matilda navigate grief, autism, high school, college, love, sex, teenage hood and life in general.

Matilda is a revolutionary autistic character. Most autistic characters are portrayed as a sort of robot, math loving savant – and not to mention, most if not all the representation is male.  The cherry on top of Matilda being an excellently written character, is that Kayla Cromer, the actress who plays Matilda, is autistic herself. She is the first autistic actor to play an autistic lead role. 

Josh Thomas, who plays Nicholas, and who is also the creator of the show, recognizes the importance of authenticity in roles and accurate disability representation. Thomas discusses this, in an interview with BUILD about the show. “If I am, like hiring a barista, like to make a coffee, we typically try and hire people who used to be baristas, cause they are gonna know how to do it and I don’t know why that doesn’t translate,” said Thomas. 

Everything’s gonna be okay also premieres two other autistic series regulars; Drea (Lillian Carrier) and Jeremy (Carsen Warner) who are also both played by autistic actors. 

One of my favourite things that this show explored – as early in the first and second episodes, is the sibling dynamic between Matilda and Genevieve. One of my favourite sentiments is that Matilda used to cry out of empathy for Genevieve. As being autistic myself, the attention to detail to include that autistic individuals often have hyper empathy, was especially important to me, as seeing autistic characters in film and television (we all can name a few) portrayed as unempathetic robots – can be hurtful and damaging to the community.

We also know that Matilda loves to please Genevieve (fun fact, a lot of autistic afabs are natural people pleasers, sometimes to their fault) – and there was a scene in the first episode, “Seven Spotted Ladybugs”, that showcased that so well. When Genevieve gets her period, Matilda is not shy to come up to her and her friends at school and ask her how that is going. Little does she know, Genevieve told her friends that she had gotten her period a long time ago. This confuses and worries Matilda as she doesn’t know if she said the right thing. She feels bad for embarrassing her sister and Genevieve tries to console her even with the judging looks of her friends.

One scene with Genevieve that was a hot topic of debate was her stand up routine at the end of the show. Her stand up routine is about Matilda, and there are varying opinions on whether it was the right move to poke jabs at Matilda for an audience to see, such as comedically telling the story of Matilda’s first plane ride, and how that went awry.

Personally, I loved the routine. There is a difference between making fun of someone, and telling a funny story with lighthearted jokes. Just like Matilda only eating orange foods, dressing up as a turkey and then puking up orange on a plane; my peculiarities can be funny, like how for a month I only ate broth, or how I dressed in skirts so much in 5 & 6th – that people started to label me “the skirt girl” cause it wasn’t what the others were wearing. 

Another very important subject that the series tackles is consent. When Matilda goes to a party, in hopes to hook up with her crush Luke – things don’t go as planned. She goes inside, peach schnapps in hand, and eventually gets rejected by Luke. In frustration, she drinks more, goes outside, has a good scream and starts crying. Out comes Zane. He invites Matilda into his trailer, and Matilda; drunk and persistent continues to ask him to have sex. He eventually agrees to.

They have sex and we don’t hear much about it until the next day at school. Genevieve quickly goes to tell her friends; soon spreading to the whole school what has happened – raising the question “Was Matilda raped?” 

There are two issues this episode dives into and very well, might I add. Sometimes, neurotypicals are often under the impression that Autistic individuals cannot give consent. Sometimes the social cues leading up to consent can be hard to understand; which can lead us to getting taken advantage of. Autistic individuals are more likely to experience some form of sexual assault two to three times higher than non-autistic individuals, a report from York University showed. 

But that aside, autistic individuals are capable of giving consent. 

Since no one believed that Matilda was capable of having sex with this popular boy, and not to mention inquiring about it first – it was assumed she was taken advantage of, even though later in the episode, lines suggest she knew what was going on, and was fully complicit. 

Finally, the ultimate treasure of the show is the relationship between Drea and Matilda. Drea and Matilda have become only of the few, if anything the first, queer autistic couple to be represented on screen. That’s something I never thought we’d see, considering the lack and struggle for representation of this community. We get to see Drea and Matilda’s relationship blossom, and we see all their highs and lows, including a break up, a prom and kissing. You know, the staples in a high school relationship. 

This is the kind of representation you dream about. It’s so nuanced but it doesn’t come across in a “trying to be woke” way – it just feels natural. Almost like it’s time to see neurodivergence on our screen, but just as a normal everyday occurrence.

So to conclude, everything was more than okay. This show is a blueprint for television to come and is the prime example of what authentic representation should look like. Season 2 of Everything’s Gonna Be Okay, has premiered on Freeform, and available to stream now on Hulu.