If you’ve been on TikTok lately, your feed is flooded with clips from Dreamworks’ new movie Trolls 3 Band Together. And if it’s not - prepare to listen to the earworm Better Place from the movie, which features the first new single from NSYNC since 2002.

I want to welcome you into the TCU: Trolls Cinematic Universe. The first Trolls movie dealt with a pretty unextraordinary plot about finding happiness in its many forms but stood out thanks to super performances by Anna Kendrick as peppy pink-haired troll Poppy and the easy-to-meme dour Branch, voiced by Justin Timberlake. It was the second movie, Trolls World Tour that caught my attention and praise for its deep lore and fun storytelling.

Learning from Trolls

Of course, Trolls is a movie made for children, but like most kid’s media, the adults behind the magic are weaving in deep lessons for all audiences to engage with. Where kids laugh, adults can laugh and think. This can spark important conversations and teach lessons that exist outside of ourselves. Teach empathy, parents!

The sequel, Trolls World Tour, deals with heavy topics like revisionist history, the repatriation of cultural significant artifacts to their rightful people, and has a really well-written storyline about how our differences should be celebrated, not ignored for the sake of assimilation. Deep, right? The film explores how there are 6 main music genres of Troll societies, with several subgroups like K-Pop or Reggae Trolls, and how the history Poppy was taught is false. It turns out that her people, the Pop music trolls, stole the magic strings from the Funk, Techno, Classical, Country, and Rock Trolls. Akin to stealing the other culture’s musical lifeforce, a huge aspect of any society’s identity, Poppy had to reconcile with the fact that their decades of happiness came at the cost of others' joy.

When Poppy agrees to right her ancestor’s wrongs and returns the strings, she’s taught that the strings exist to celebrate different music genres. The various cultures end the movie singing together, feeling empowered to make their way in their own genres. It’s an effective lesson about understanding how to correct the mistakes of the past and accepting the future is going to be a diverse harmony. It was a wonderful watch!

Trolls 3 Band Together leans more into Branch and Poppy’s relationship, along with Branch confronting his toxic family and standing up to his 4 older brothers. Not a queer storyline but it was nice to see that Branch’s troll family can overcome shitty things, like being abducted and drained of their talent by two performer icons, Velvet and Veneer. They’re basically Sharpay and Ryan from High School Musical, fast approaching fame with vastly different levels of respect for others.

Veneer: Queer Icon

Veneer is voiced by Andrew Rannells, a queer icon who has been giving us hilarious characters from Eliot on Girls to Gary {Prince on Adventure Time: Fiona and Cake. He was also on this short-lived sitcom in the early 2010s that was pretty groundbreaking about a same-sex couple living with their surrogate called The New Normal.

Veneer falls victim to his sister’s malicious ways and gives a quirky along-for-the-ride energy throughout the movie, making him not the main villain but someone we root for to flip sides. Someone kind enough with the capacity to change- a complex queer character! He explains throughout the movie that he’s only along with stealing the Trolls and using their talent as their own because it’s what his sister wants. When he offers that they consider practicing to improve, instead of killing Trolls, his sister scoffs. There’s even a really manipulative scene where Velvet confides in Floyd, one of Branch’s captured brothers, that he can’t go against his sister. The trapped Troll explains that if Veneer's sister really cared about him, she wouldn’t keep forcing him to use music-enhancing trolls like Barry Bond steroids. Veneer considers his sister’s emotional abuse, but sneaky Velvet plays to his sympathies and convinces him to keep the Troll for their concert.

Here For Veneer

TikTok has dubbed him ‘zesty’ (Gen Z for gay af lol) and there are tons of compilations of his funniest lines. One hilarious and gay moment from Veneer, brought perfectly to life by Andrew Rannells, is when the chaotic siblings are reminiscing about their childhood. Now that they’re pop stars (using the Trolls’ Musical Life energy - it’s a lot but makes sense trust me) Velvet exclaims “Do you want to go back to the BAD place where we had NOTHING!?” which Venner shatters with the snippy line “Girl we lived in the suburbs, our parents were dentists.”

Veneer is unapologetically himself, so much so that he confronts his sister at the end of the movie when justice is served by exclaiming “You knew who I was and you wanted me to change anyways. That’s not okay… family or not.” He’s learned to stand up for himself! We see growth and change in a male character who presents femme and I’m excited about that. You should be too! Also, check out his sick makeup and hair- could he be more iconic?

The Lance Bass Glitter Troll

In the same vein as Glee, where the covers take the iconic moments of songs and mash them up with other bops trending in the cultural zeitgeist, Trolls’ soundtrack has some hits. The third movie is boy-band-themed and brings some really exciting music to the screen. Better Places featuring NSYNC is a certified club anthem and I currently can’t stop listening to it.

A final note on Trolls 3 is that NSYNC members make a cameo at the end of the movie, in Troll form of course. A Lance Bass Troll named Boom has an awesome glitter-covered body and rainbow-layered hair. It’s queer and subtle and I appreciated seeing the design reflect the proud gay person Bass is. It’s not enough to be a statement or get them banned in Russia a la Steven Universe, but it is a great homage to Bass’s queer identity.