With the last decade’s television boom across a multitude of platforms, producing hundreds of network and streaming series, American audiences are being treated to a cascade of shows that some have trumpeted as a second Golden Age. But something completely new is stirring, too—the Rainbow Age. For the first time in the history of American television, we have shows in which LGBTQIA+ characters have evolved from being an anomaly to being an almost given and celebrated presence on the small screen. But what more can queer TV do? Is each new queer character really breaking ground? And has the curse of the fictional dead lesbian finally been defeated? Warner uses original interviews with queer TV icons such as Lilly Wachowski and Stephanie Beatriz along with detailed history to investigate the constraints under which queer people have been allowed to exist on American television.