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While scavenging through the horror genre, it is hard to stumble upon final girls or protagonists that are queer, whether that be in their sexuality or in their gender. The aspects of gender non-conformity and attraction to the same gender are often ignored, or thrusted upon the villain to reinforce the image of the final girl and the survivors who rise against them as pure, usually upholding the conservative values of the era the film has been released in. Most of the time, it’s up to queer audiences to create their own representation by picking up bits and pieces from the heroes, the villains and whichever background character they gain an attachment to, in hopes of curating a small gallery of characters who could be interpreted as gay or trans in the eyes of the viewer.

Since most villains often present these queer undertones, sometimes horror protagonists are ignored in these readings since they’re usually aggressively straight and cisgender. It’s easy to dismiss characters like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Sally Hardesty, who is up against Leatherface, who in recent years has become an icon for many trans horror fans, myself included; and is well known for blurring the lines of gender in the original timeline of the Texas Chainsaw films, with the most blatant examples of Leatherface’s transness occurring in 1995’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, a very messy film all on its own. My point being that it is very easy to view yourself in these villains rather than the protagonists of the story.

However, I do think examining the roles final girls play in their films is important. They themselves play with their movie’s imposed gender roles when they take up the weapons their antagonists have been using to harm them and manage to defend themselves in some cases, such as Laurie Strode in 1978’s Halloween; she takes up the knife Michael was using to attack her with and fights back with it, even if in the end she is saved by Dr. Loomis and she spend the next movie, 1981’s Halloween II bedridden and mute for most of the film. We also have the opposite of Laurie’s earlier situation, with one of the first examples of final girls who actively fought and beat their slasher, A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Nancy Thompson.

Nancy is a character who has transcended her origins in the 1984 film and become something else entirely, solidified by the blurring of the lines between reality and fiction in Wes Craven’s New Nightmare. She was expertly played by Heather Langenkamp in her three outings in the franchise, and with the ending of the original film, which included Nancy simply being driven away with no agency as she watched her mother die, she could have simply disappeared from her franchise completely, like it happened to many other survivors in their respective film franchises (Looking at you, Friday the 13th). However, we get Nancy back as a kind presence who helps Jesse Walsh in Freddy’s Revenge, she comes back physically for Dream Warriors and we have her on screen one last time in New Nightmare. Like many final girls of her time, Nancy could have simply been written off as another character with no queer undertones to her. But I find her character a fascinating example of coming of age as a transgender individual, and how some elements in the movies can be seen as a metaphor for transness and transitioning.

Starting with the original storyline in the 1984 film A Nightmare on Elm Street, Nancy seems to be a normal high school senior. However, the way her arc develops as the movie goes by very much makes her feel like a teenager who’s just starting to figure out she might be trasngender. In this case, her dysphoria would be represented by Freddy Krueger, who has a whole lot of other subtext to his character that should be dug into properly in another time. He plays a key role in making Nancy realize the feelings she’s having might be something else, not only this general fear of this outside threat or fear of what’s happening to her body.

Her dysphoria not only affects her, but the relationship she has with Marge and Don Thompson as well. Her connection with her parents start to become strained once Freddy comes into play, since they don’t understand her and ultimately dismiss what’s happening to her. Only Tina, Rod and her boyfriend Glen seem to understand what they’re all dealing with. This resonates with growing up as trans with very little support from family members and relying on your friends who might be trans as well.

The role of unsupportive and dismissive parents falls also on Glen’s parents, who dismiss Nancy as a troubled child. I always found it interesting too how Glen’s father refuses to refer to Nancy as a girl, instead referring to her as a kid in a rather bitter tone. When seeing Nancy as a trans character, this simply adds a new layer as to how she’s seen by other adults outside of her family, who at least do an attempt at supporting her daughter, whereas outsiders react with anger. Eventually, this apparent disgust of Nancy leads to Glen’s parents cutting all communication between them, and eventually Glen falls victim to Freddy’s claws as well, joining Tina and Rod.

In Freddy’s Revenge, Nancy doesn’t show up physically in the film. However, she plays a big part in helping Jesse and Lisa beat Freddy in the end of their film. Nancy is sort of a guide for Jesse, who could be read as another trans character in need of guidance for their transition. Jesse found Nancy’s diary thanks to Lisa, and upon reading her story and her struggles with Freddy, our stand-in for dysphoria, he goes through his own process of coping and accepting who he is. Her role is brief but powerful in his story, and even if they never met, they have a connection that runs deep. It also adds another layer of subtext to Freddy’s Revenge, which can now be seen as a film about a gay trans man learning to cope with both his internalized homophobia and transphobia, which makes it all the more important for others like me.

Now, onto Dream Warriors, the movie with the heaviest subtext for Nancy in my opinion. Her appearance back in the series is one that’s very welcome, and with her we have the titular Dream Warriors, a group of “troubled” teenagers who are all being chased by Krueger as well. Nancy comes into their lives knowing the struggles they have faced, and offers a friendly presence for them during their stay in the Westin Hills. As Nancy herself says it, they are survivors, but they don’t know how long they can continue surviving without the proper support. Nancy becomes their role model for survival, with her teaching them how to use their dream powers to fight Freddy. Following the reading of Nancy being trans, is taking all of these trans teens who are in the same position she was years ago and offering the support and understanding she never had.

With Freddy still being the physical representation of our main characters’ dysphoria and/or internalized transphobia, it adds to this reading that Nancy has begun to take a special medicine to suppress visits from Freddy and the nightmares he brings. The medicine, appropriately named Hypnocil, provides Nancy with a more normal life without Freddy’s presence, in a similar vein as to how medically transitioning helps a trans person ease their dysphoria. Nancy is secretive about her use of Hypnocil, but she risks her position at Westin Hills to try and get the group of teens under her care the same treatment so they can achieve similar results to her own; again following the vein that transitioning does work in easing a person of their dysphoria, despite others’ attempts at arguing against it.

To expand upon that point, the movie has more situations that could be interpreted as instances of the transphobia that is ever present in the medical field. Dr. Elizabeth Simms, who runs the teens’ ward, noticeably dislikes Nancy and is against Hypnocil, arguing it will affect the teens’ health more than “healthy” sleep. It’s not very difficult to look at these scenes and see the behavior of real medical specialists when presented with teenagers seeking ways to transition and being turned down due to unjust laws, or the doctors’ personal bigotry and biases.

Dream Warriors could have been the end of Nancy Thompson, since she is one of the final deaths in the film. But in 1994, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare was released. This film and the role Nancy plays make the trans reading come full circle, albeit making it a little complicated to discuss, since in New Nightmare we follow Heather Langenkamp playing a fictionalized version of herself living in Los Angeles, and not Nancy per se.

The movie takes its time showing us the effects the Elm Street fame have had on Nancy’s life and how her fame and image have been shaped thanks to Nancy. While she wants to move past her role in the films and do other things with her fame, the fictional horror that haunted her character comes alive to follow her instead. The movie also follows Heather’s son, Dylan, and how she hides the fame brought by Nancy and the role she played in the Nightmare on Elm Street films. The only reason he is made aware of the movies is because of Freddy, who is revealed to be a real demonic entity that has escaped from the films into the real world to kill Heather once and for all. He starts to affect Heather’s son in order to get to her, and in the last act of the film Heather goes back into the dream world, now turned into a hellish palace where Freddy resides, to end him once and for all to save her son.

While watching New Nightmare I started to pick up on the fact Freddy only referred to Heather as Nancy, never using her real name. Not only Freddy does it, but side characters in the film have a preconception of Heather thanks to her being a horror icon; most notably the doctor in charge of caring for Dylan, who believes Heather has been showing Dylan the horror movies he participated in and blames her for his Freddy-induced lack of sleep and health issues.

Continuing with the metaphor of Nancy/Heather being an allegory for being trans, Freddy is deadnaming Heather in order to get to her negatively, while the doctor’s behavior aligns with the treatment trans adults are constantly bombarded by. Cisgender people treat transness as a burden to the person and they use it as a way to undermine their efforts at getting by and making a life for themselves, and in the case of this reading, their efforts at having a family as well.

Both Heather’s and Nancy’s character arcs come to a closure when she goes into the dream world to beat Freddy one last time with the help of her son. Leading up to their final encounter, Heather has to reluctantly accept her role as Nancy as she is thrusted into the Elm Street home once more, with John Saxon, who is also playing a fictional version of himself in New Nightmare, turning into Don Thompson as well. This can be read as Heather having to come to terms with her old, pre-transition self, even if that includes facing her own internalized issues and the dysphoria that comes along with them. Both Nancy and Heather finally have their well deserved peace after Freddy is beaten, returning to the real world with Dylan and the script for the film as proof of what happened.

I’m sure Wes Craven’s original intentions weren’t to write Nancy as a possible trans character, but I feel glad I can look at one of my favorite heroines from horror and see someone who could be like me in more aspects than just one.