Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire botched a beautiful queer storyline

polygon.com:

I don’t have a lot of nostalgia for the Ghostbusters franchise, but even going into the latest movie without any expectations, I still thought it was disappointing. For me, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire — now streaming on Netflix — wasted its one compelling plot point: Whatever Phoebe Spengler (Mckenna Grace) had going on with ghost girl Melody (Emily Alyn Lind).

Quick catch-up, in case you’re lucky enough to have not watched the newest new Ghostbusters movies: Phoebe is the 15-year-old granddaughter of original Ghostbuster Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis). And like her grandfather, she’s a bit of a misfit. She loves ghosts and science. And she’s so, so queer-coded. That hair! Those overalls! The fact that she feels isolated from her peers and can only connect with ghosts!

In the new movie, she strikes up a friendship with a ghost girl, Melody, who died tragically in a tenement fire in some unspecified time period. They form a deep bond, heightened by the fact that Phoebe has been temporarily banned from ghostbusting, thanks to, like, child labor laws or something. She’s feeling particularly isolated from her family and ghostbuster friends, so she really latches onto Melody as someone offering her friendship in this trying time.

[Ed. note: Major spoiler ahead for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.]

The friendship gets intense mighty quickly, in a way that makes way more sense if you read it as a romantic infatuation. Phoebe literally decides to put her body into an unconscious near-death state just so she can enter the ghost plane and touch Melody. And yet the movie still portrays this as a “just gals being pals” moment, a completely platonic urgent need for physical contact with a buddy. Who’s going through all that just to hold hands with a friend?

Throughout the whole movie, I kept waiting for some sort of confession, or for their final scene to have a big ol’ smooch or something. Of course, I was disappointed. (But not surprised!) The two of them share a teary but