There is no better example of a legendary character than Ben Mitchell. The son of original EastEnders character Kathy Beale and iconic gangster Phil Mitchell, Ben is an integral part of two of Walford’s most legendary families.
He is also one of the show’s most visible and popular LGBTQ+ characters. He came out as gay in 2011 and married Callum Highway ten years later. Known to fans as ‘Ballum’, this combination has proven popular with many viewers and has spawned legions of Twitter fan accounts, fan fiction and fan-made videos on sites like YouTube.
Unsurprisingly, fans of Bowden, Ben and Ballum were disappointed when news broke that the character will be written off the show later this year. Sure, we hate seeing an old character leave almost as much as we hate seeing a capable actor like Bowden lose his job.
In reality, however, this most recent version of Ben has never sounded entirely authentic, undoing much of the character’s growth and ignoring much of his foundation in favor of creating a pound shop version of a Kray Twin. Axing Ben Mitchell could be exactly what EastEnders needs to improve the accuracy and diversity of its LGBTQ+ stories.
Ben Mitchell is a complex, complicated and controversial character. Ben was raised mainly by his mother until he was 10 years old and was a camp child who enjoyed dancing and musicals when he returned to Walford in 2006.
But almost twenty years later, you’d never know it. The Ben Mitchell on our screens today – brooding, hardened, violent – is in stark contrast to the gentle, sensitive boy who moved in with Phil after Kathy’s alleged death in South Africa.
Sure, he has his reasons: from being abused as a child by his father’s fiancée, to enduring a stint in prison for the murder of Heather Trott, to the murder of his partner Paul Coker at a homophobic attack and the assault by his next partner Luke Browning. . There’s enough in Ben’s backstory to justify this complete change in character.
Since returning in 2019, writers have continued to dump trauma after trauma on Ben. He was shot by Hunter Owen, raped by Lewis Butler, fell victim to yet another homophobic attack, lost his girlfriend and the mother of his daughter, Lola Pearce-Brown, and recently developed an eating disorder.
The problem is that this complex pathos was never really explored by the writers. We never discuss how the trauma Ben endured affected him. Viewers were never treated to a storyline where Ben became an epitome of toxic masculinity, compensating for the homophobia he faced at home and on the streets.
Instead, Ben simply doubled down on being a villain and fans were meant to accept it because he’s Phil Mitchell’s son. Kate Oates, the then-executive producer who hired Bowden, said the same thing. “I just want to take the character in a different direction,” she said Digital spy in 2019.
She did. Ben was never an outright evil or mean character before Oates.
But from bullying Callum Highway into coming out and then starting an affair with him, to blackmailing Martin Fowler and trying to arrange Keanu Taylor’s murder (years before Linda Carter had finished the job) to trafficking his own sister Louise and violently attacking Peter Beale During his vigilante reign as a Walford Attacker, Ben has caused as much misery as he has endured. He has become one of Albert Square’s main opponents.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a gay character or a previously good character becoming a villain (or, to be generous, an antihero). However, when that transformation is concocted to generate a plot, rather than being tackled as character-driven development like with Ben, it rings hollow.
This is especially true considering that Ben went from a believably gay kid who danced around to Kylie to a being who was essentially “straightened out,” with any hint of femininity or campness erased from his personality. What was set up as a groundbreaking and dynamic character in the ’00s essentially became Phil Mitchell when he slept with men.
The problem is compounded when we’re dealing with one of the show’s most important historical characters — and perhaps its most important LGBTQ+ character, since most other LGBTQ+ characters are little more than window dressing.
Characters like Bernie Taylor and Felix Baker are, at best, supporting characters, popping up with a funny one-liner from behind a counter, or to serve another character’s storyline. Bernie has never had a serious girlfriend and Felix appears so rarely and in such a limited capacity that he might as well be an extra.
Neither has explored their character in depth or had anywhere near the screen time that Ben Mitchell has enjoyed. While that may be justified due to Ben’s status as the son of two legendary characters, it also reinforces the glaring problems with his characterization.
Many fans latched on to Ben and Callum because they are the only true representation of an LGBTQ+ couple on the show. Yes, there’s Suki and Eve, who we have high hopes for in 2024. But for most of the past two years, their relationship has been clandestine and tortured while they were even together.
Again, that in itself is not a problem. Suki and Eve are undoubtedly the most compelling couple currently on EastEnders, and it’s great to see fans rooting for the triumph of same-sex love.
But when the only examples of same-sex love are a closeted woman married to a man, and a perpetually traumatized and traumatized criminal — which is what Ben has become in this latest version — the show has a huge problem with the LGBTQ+ representation.
Ben’s marriage to Callum has been a social media success, but we don’t see them kissing and showing affection the way other characters, including Suki and Eve, do; the most we are treated to is the occasional kiss on the forehead. Barry and Janine had a more believable romance, and she pushed him off a cliff.
Ben’s popularity isn’t so much an indication that the show got him right, but rather an indication that the show is mishandling all of its LGBTQ+ characters. Ben was simply the only one who was really visible in recent years.
In reality, EastEnders never really figured out what to do with its LGBTQ+ characters. Despite its groundbreaking history with Colin and Barry in the 1980s, and again with Tony and Simon in the 1990s, the truth is that when it comes to long-term LGBTQ+ characters – like Ben – the show has struggled.
Sonia Fowler’s bisexuality is often treated as an afterthought; Tina Carter was largely sexless unless she slept with men despite being a lesbian, and was subsequently murdered; Kyle Slater – the show’s first and so far only regular transgender character – lasted just a year. Iqra Ahmed barely registered.
When LGBTQ+ stories are told, it often involves the drama and struggle that comes with coming out. Sure, that’s a cornerstone of the queer experience, but it’s not the only queer experience.
Suki’s struggle to come to terms with her sexuality mirrors Callum’s from a few years earlier. Johnny Carter, who will soon return to the square, also had a hard time coming out to mother Linda. One of the show’s most successful same-sex couples, Christian Clarke and Syed Masood, similarly focused on the latter’s struggle to come out to himself and his family.
However, there is more to the gay experience than just coming out. Let characters like Bernie, Felix, and Johnny take center stage in the show, so you get meaty storylines that reflect an accurate LGBTQ+ experience, mixed with plenty of frothy drama.
EastEnders needs to invest in its queer characters, delivering stories that resonate and are grounded in reality, rather than writing gay characters as straight in all but name or simply using them as window dressing.
It would be great to see EastEnders explore that with a same-sex couple in a healthy relationship. That’s not going to happen with Ben Mitchell. He’s too far gone. The show is right to give the character some much-needed rest.
EastEnders airs Monday to Thursday at 7.30pm on BBC One. The show is also streaming on BBC iPlayer, where most episodes start early at 6am, ahead of their TV broadcast.
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