Recently I profiled Mason McKenzie, who played Gideon in
Once Upon a Time, where all of the Disney fantasy characters you've ever heard of are connected in a huge genealogy. I thought I would research some of the other actors that gave me a gay vibe. First up, femme boy Brandon Spink, who played Baelfire, son of Rumpelstiltskin and his first wife (making him Gideon's half-brother). He is briefly swayed by the homoerotic freedom offered by Peter Pan's Lost Boys, but in the end accepts his heterosexual destiny and marries Emma Swan. Their son becomes the Chosen One.
Let's see if the same thing happened the real-life Brandon (center).
Spink, by the way, comes from an Old English word for "finch." It's not dirty.
According to an article in Oz Magazine, Brandon was born in 1995 in Marietta, Georgia, and began acting on stage at age seven, playing Captain Hook's life partner Smee in
Peter Pan. After minor parts in
Game of Your Life (2011), with Nathan Kress, and
Devil's Knot (2013), with Colin Firth, he hit the big time in 2015, playing the young version of the
Jackass star a tv pilot called
Untitled Johnny Knoxville Project. The young Johnny is a prankster and rebel growing up in the "outlaw culture" of 1980s Knoxville, Tennessee.
That same year, Brandon was cast as the young Bruce Wayne in
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). Playing the iconic figure was "a dream come true" for the boy. Plus he got to work with Ben Affleck (grown-up Bruce), Henry Cavill (Superman), and Jeremy Irons (Alfred the Butler).
Next came Game of Silence (2016), with childhood secrets threatening a successful lawyer; the teenage Baelfire in Once Upon a Time (2017); Berlin Station (2017), about CIA agents in Germany; and a few show that I've never heard of.
Brandon's next big break was in
Fear Street: Part Two (2021), the second in a trilogy about paranormal events in a small town in different historic periods. In 1978, it's a summer camp with a serial killer. Brandon's character, Will Goode, is the mayor of the town, with wife and kids, in Part 1 (1994). As a teenager, he bullies the other teens and survives the slaughter.
There are lesbian characters in every Fear Street episode, but gay men do not exist.
In 2025 Brandon appeared in four episodes of the sports drama
All American, as a random football player; and three episodes of
NCIS: Origins, about the NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigation Service) in the 1990s, as the teenage version of agent Michael Franks (played by Michael Erik White, left).
Michael seems to be gay in real life, but the character is straight.
In fact, all of Brandon's characters have been straight or straight-by-default.
He'd better be gay in real life, or what am I doing this for?
More after the break
