When the secret comes out… of the closet
Queerness has been inserted into vampire storytelling for a long time. Because vampires represent society’s outsider, they live in both secrecy and freedom; something many queer people relate to, and something many homophobes see as dangerous. As such, vampires have just as often been written to serve as a warning, as they have been a source of fantasy. A major captivation about The Lost Boys (1987) is how it straddles both these narratives to create horrific, yet also sympathetic and fun vampires. The Lost Boys Musical (2026) adapts this vision into an even more overt display of duality. This is most prominently shown in the sequence/song, “Secret Comes Out”.
The musical opens with a recording of Ronald Reagan, speaking on the importance of “traditional family values”. But Michael as the protagonist is established to be a victim of parental abuse; “traditional family values” have only caused him harm. Michael seeks a new kind of family structure, to find a place where he belongs. This primes him perfectly for the invitation extended by the Lost Boys and Star, who have created their own family outside of the values pushed by a heteronormative society.
DAVID: We have each other. Freedom, Michael.
MICHAEL: Sounds awesome.
DAVID: It does, doesn’t it?
David promotes their lifestyle as freedom, and Michael is easily taken in by it. David also tells Star how he envisions his own perfect family, where everyone, including her, is happy with Michael as one of them. While David wears an antagonist’s role, it is not out of a place of malice, but rather in his view, a mercy. He is offering an escape from burdens to whom he sympathizes with.
This brings us to “Secret Comes Out”. Michael’s transformation into vampirism begins, and it’s all too confusing and painful for him. As this occurs, The Lost Boys begin the song.
DAVID / THE LOST BOYS:
Truth will rise up eventually
You’ll be who you were meant to be
When the secret comes out
I promise you everything will become clear
When the secret comes out
The questions that haunt you will all disappear
And the daylight will fade oh, but be not afraid
The lyrics are assuring that Michael’s pain is temporary, and that “coming out” will help him “become who he was meant to be”. While this occurs, Michael’s hallucination is of his father beating him up and calling him “soft”. It all rhymes well with fears, and unfortunately for many, real experiences associated with being outed as queer to your family.
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By this point, Star has joined in the song, and sings how it is a “game of survival”. Star is a half-vampire like Michael, and has been playing this game a lot longer than him. She continues to resist fully embracing vampirism, keeping one foot in the closet assigned to her by humanity. We get to hear more of Star’s thoughts on all this later in the song “War”, and it only reinforces what we initially get from her here. Star is someone who feels a lack of autonomy, and is just trying to survive against the odds. Surviving for Star means living two different lives, relating well to the experience of protecting oneself from fully coming out.
David’s role in this song continues to be the voice of freedom — or at least, perceived freedom. David has fully embraced being a vampire, and claims “you’ll feel a power like you’ve never known” if Michael follows his lead and embraces it as well. To call David a “typical vampire” would be a lie, as typical vampires are hardly as animated as he is. But what is typical of David, is how he embodies the temptations of society’s impermissible desires. The best classical vampire to compare David to is, I propose, Carmilla (Sheridan Le Fanu, 1872). Like Carmilla, David seeks companionship. Like Carmilla, David is both affectionate and predatory towards the companions he seeks. Like Carmilla, David’s desire for this companionship is viewed as a perversion, because it does not align with “traditional family values”.
“Carmilla advocates, in a rather dark way, for Laura to die with her because the choice of death would be a final assertion of agency and power through their refusal to conform to the heteronormative society around them. Thus, the notion of sexuality transforms into a supernatural context as the heteronormative society haunts these individuals with torment and suppression to conceal this part of their identity.”
— The Haunt of Injustice: Exploring Homophobia in Vampire Literature, Clare Nee
Agency and power is what David offers Star and Michael. But doing so means they must become like him; someone who presents as predatory and perverse. A threat to what they have been taught is right from wrong. A monster.
MICHAEL:
It’s a hard reality
That I can’t unsee
Is the monster in me
What I’m meant to be?DAVID / ENSEMBLE:
Any kinda truth can set you free
Michael is afraid to accept the role of a vampire, even though at the same time, he has an established desire for companionship himself. That companionship comes in a package deal with vampirism, complicating things. Michael wants to be free, but he is afraid of “coming out” to get there.
The song ends with, “do you know who you are?” as Michael physically loses control of his flight. Michael is now at a crossroads without an answer. Because the song ends with a question rather than an assertion, it leaves open room for interpretation for Michael, and for the audience. Is Michael falling down a dangerous path of corruption, or is he on the verge of self-acceptance and freedom?
The brilliance of “Secret Comes Out” is that it pulls pre-existing queer narratives for vampires into contrasting these characters in a stronger light. The negative narratives are used to show the fear Michael and Star have for thematically rejecting heteronormativity, while the positive narratives are used to show how David sees himself as thriving in the freedom that rejection of the norm offers. It does this without necessarily enforcing what is the “correct” perspective, either. This is what takes “Secret Comes Out” beyond just being a good sounding song. (And it is!) It is what makes “Secret Comes Out” a perfect example of how musicals can successfully intertwine song and story to enhance both as an experience.
