‘The Queen’s Gambit’: Revisiting the Addicting Teen Heroine Trope

Beth Harmon sits up in a tub, soaking wet, and rushes around her Parisian room. She cleans up her act and puts on a swinging green dress. Her eyes float over to the bed where someone sleeps, then she slams back a few green pills with a gulp of liquor. Where is this party animal off to so early in the morning? A chess match.

The pilot episode of Scott Frank’s The Queen’s Gambit throws the audience into a new kind of period drama: welcome to 1960s Kentucky. On-trend for the times, the series touches tastefully on gender roles, which is oftentimes tough for Netflix. The heroine of The Queen’s Gambit is the orphaned chess prodigy Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy); an atypical protagonist for this coming of age story. After her mom passes away in a car crash, she finds herself on the doorstep of an orphanage. Harmon’s destructive coping mechanisms quickly sweep the audience into glimpses into her past. She escapes these haunting memories by indulging in “magic vitamins,” tranquilizers, which are given to the orphans. Despite her coerced drug dependency, she forms an unlikely friendship with the janitor who teaches her chess. Here is where we find the chess prodigy.

Harmon’s character is refreshing. Normally, Netflix originals of these sorts explore the teen girl years through crushes, pimples, or whatever else fictionalized girls think about (yes, To All The Boys I’ve Loved). The Queen’s Gambit chooses to focus on obsession, the ups and downs of being a child prodigy, escapisms, and gender roles — all rolled up in a miniseries.

Frank crafted a pilot episode that showed dedication to the lead character’s backstory, partially due to young Harmon’s talented acting. Impressively, the young actress — Isla Johnston — acts beyond her years and authenticity portrays an actual 9-year-old on drugs. The grand finale of her performance is the moment she overdoses to the sound of the “Hallelujah Chorus,” in the back — shoving fistfuls of the candy-like pills in her mouth. Johnston’s composure made the backstory all the more believable.

Teen heroines, especially in period dramas, can be exhausting. It’s hard to not compare this Netflix Original to others, such as Enola Holmes or Anne with an E. While showing the ails of being a girl (especially in the 1960s South), it does not ignore the existential question every child has to ask themselves: What is next? Child prodigies face an identity crisis once they no longer are considered children, something we see boiling up inside Harmon.

All the while, we experience the ups and downs of women’s roles in the ’60s South. In multiple scenes, we see Harmon wishing her chess performance would outdo her gender role — a hot topic for many successful females. The Queen’s Gambit faces head-on the discussion of gender roles: do we care about her because she is a girl, or do we care because she is good at chess?