The season 10 finale of Shameless gave us the long-awaited wedding of Ian and Mickey, aka “Gallavich.”
It’s been a long road for these two but they were pretty much destined to be together — well, at least according to showrunner John Wells (and every Shameless fan, of course!). In an interview with EW, Wells detailed why it was so incredibly important to give Ian and Mickey a big, traditional wedding and to let them have their happily-ever-after. He said,
“We want to make certain that we see real weddings, with anybody who is prepared to make that life commitment, whether they are gay, straight, transgender, whoever.”
He continued,
“If people love each other, they should be together, and that’s why we staged it as a real wedding, with tuxedos and flowers and love and family and even some people who object. But that’s who we are now as a country and let’s just all accept that that’s what we’re doing. And so that was always the plan, it’s what we really wanted to do.”
Of course, not everyone was on board with the wedding. Mickey’s dad was determined to prevent their marriage at all costs (hey, this was the guy who married Mickey off to a Russian stranger after finding out he was gay).
Wells said having a bigoted character on the show was something they thought quite a bit about and they wanted to ensure they portrayed him in the right way. He explained,
“It was important to acknowledge that there are people who have oppositions and that those people need to be made fun of. I think that those people would prefer you take them on violently, but if you ridicule someone it is the most damaging thing that you can do to their position because you think their position is ridiculous, which is why we did it the way we did.”
While it was recently announced that Shameless was ending after its next season, Wells has assured that a priority of the upcoming episodes is to have Ian and Mickey remain together and observe their lives as a newly married couple.
It’s a shame that viewers will only have one more season to see Ian and Mickey together. But we’re lucky that the Shameless cast and crew are so committed to illustrating a truthful and honest depiction of same-sex relationships. It’s because of them that Ian and Mickey are two of the most popular gay characters on television.
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