Derry Girls: A Neurodivergent Reading of Chaotic Catholic Girlhood

Friday, April 18, 2025.

Let’s begin with a confession appropriate to the setting. The recent British historical sitcom: Derry Girls is not about autism.

At least, not overtly.

It’s about Catholic girlhood in 1990s Northern Ireland, the final bloody chapters of the Troubles, and the universal humiliation of adolescence rendered in a dialect so quick and poetic it deserves subtitles even if you speak English.

But like all great shows about misfits, outsiders, and the socially erratic, it is absolutely haunted by autistic tropes—whether it knows it or not.

Neurodivergence in a Conflict Zone: Context Matters

Lisa McGee’s semi-autobiographical series is set against the backdrop of sectarian violence, curfews, and bomb threats—where the absurdity of daily life plays out in a way that’s both political and gloriously petty.

And within this charged context, we are handed five teenage archetypes that accidentally double as a neurodivergent bingo card. IMHO.

This isn't to say the characters were written as autistic. They were not.

But in the absence of explicit diagnoses (which were vanishingly rare in 1990s Northern Ireland unless you were completely nonverbal or setting things on fire), they live in the same psychic neighborhood: socially misattuned, passionately literal, often overwhelmed, deeply loyal, and emotionally unfiltered.

Let’s take a closer look.

Erin Quinn: The RSD-Drenched Ringleader

Erin, the protagonist in the loosest sense of the word, is the type of person who writes poetry about the existential pain of being 16.

She is volatile, dramatic, and always a little too much for the moment she’s in.

One might argue she's a poster child for rejection sensitivity dysphoria (RSD)—a trait commonly found in both ADHD and autistic populations.

Erin’s self-image crumbles with every perceived slight, and her emotional dysregulation is a symphony of flailing limbs and word vomit.

But more importantly, Erin has no chill when it comes to social rules.

She understands them intellectually but has no capacity to intuit them in real time. She is constantly saying the wrong thing, often while trying to say the right thing, which, for many autistic girls, is a painfully familiar experience.

Orla McCool: The Accidental Autist

And now to the crown jewel: Orla McCool—a neurodivergent icon if ever there was one.

Orla is the embodiment of autistic joy before it’s been coached into camouflage. She moves at her own speed, speaks in delightfully off-tempo rhythms, and has no use for performative social scripts.

Her interests are niche and her observations eerily precise. She dances when the mood strikes, wears what she likes, and often delivers the one-line zinger that slices through everyone else’s drama with Zen-like clarity.

She’s the kind of girl who might be labeled “a bit odd” or “away with the fairies,” the kind whose parents might shrug and say she’s just “her own person.” She is, in clinical terms, unbothered by peer mimicry demands.

Which, in 1990s Derry, may have been the only available form of neurodivergent self-protection.

Orla’s character subverts the current trend in autistic representation, which often insists on trauma-laced diagnostics.

Orla has no diagnosis, no tortured inner monologue, no special interest in trains. What she has is freedom from the tyranny of cool—and in that freedom, we glimpse what it might look like to grow up autistic without shame.

Clare Devlin: Masking on High Alert

Clare is Orla’s opposite: tightly wound, rules-bound, and soaked in Catholic guilt.

Her commitment to authority and social conformity screams high-masking autistic girl or possibly anxious-preoccupied ADHD’er.

She is the group’s moral compass and nervous system, a constant hum of self-monitoring and catastrophizing.

When Clare finally comes out as gay in Season 2, it’s not just a coming out—it’s a neurodivergent metaphor.

The entire show subtly links identity, masking, and authenticity in a way that makes Clare’s arc feel less like a side plot and more like a quiet manifesto.

James: The Outsider’s Outsider

Ah, James. The English boy in an all-girls Catholic school. His role as “the wee English fella” sets him up as a cultural outsider—but in terms of neurodivergent tropes, he’s also a walking stand-in for the late-diagnosis autistic male, raised in a sea of wrong assumptions.

James is hyper-articulate but socially hesitant, visibly uncomfortable in unstructured emotional environments.

He plays video games obsessively, is sensitive to loud girls (read: everyone), and is often left out of group rituals despite being physically present.

It’s hard not to read James as someone perpetually three seconds behind the group’s emotional wavelength.

His neurotype is never named, but we see him struggle with social inference the way many autistic teens do: trying to be invisible while wanting desperately to belong.

Michelle: The Dopaminergic Wrecking Ball

If Clare is Catholic guilt and Erin is Protestant drama, Michelle is the cocaine that makes the Troubles fun.

She is fearless, impulsive, inappropriate, and, let’s be honest, likely riding an undiagnosed cocktail of ADHD and conduct-disordered bravado.

Michelle is every chaotic dopamine-chaser who learned to manage trauma with volume and sex jokes. Her inappropriate comments are less a sign of cruelty than emotional under-responsiveness to norms, a common masking strategy for people who feel too much and know too little of how to say it.

She is the Freudian “ID” of the group, crashing through social mores and curfews like a wrecking ball on a sugar high. And yet, she is unfailingly loyal, emotionally honest, and the first to defend a friend. Neurodivergent chaos with a conscience.

Trauma, Camouflage, and Friendship as Scaffold

To read Derry Girls through a neurodivergent lens is to notice what isn’t said.

There is no diagnostic language, no special ed classroom, no earnest therapist handing out worksheets.

​As of now, there is absolutely no public indication that Lisa McGee, the creator and sole writer of Derry Girls, intentionally crafted the characters to embody neurodivergent (ND) traits or explicitly aimed to represent autism or related conditions.

In her interviews, McGee emphasizes that the show is a semi-autobiographical portrayal of her teenage years in 1990s Derry, focusing on the universal aspects of adolescence amidst the backdrop of the Troubles.

She highlights the importance of humor and the everyday experiences of teenagers, rather than setting out to depict specific psychological profiles or conditions .​British Comedy Guide

The character of Orla McCool, for instance, has been noted by fans for exhibiting behaviors that some interpret as aligning with autistic traits, such as literal thinking and social naivety. However, these interpretations are audience-driven and not based on any stated intent from McGee.

The show's characters are drawn from McGee's personal experiences and observations, aiming to reflect the diversity and complexity of real-life personalities without necessarily fitting them into diagnostic categories.​

In other words, while viewers may find neurodivergent traits in Derry Girls characters, these aspects appear to be unintentional and are not part of a deliberate effort by the show's creator to represent neurodiversity.​

There is, instead, coping in context—a kind of chaotic, trauma-soaked functional neurodivergence made bearable by tight friendship and gallows humor.

The Catholic school setting adds its own layer of ritual masking—uniforms, memorized prayers, rote shame—all of which echo the experience of many autistic teens learning to pass. And yet the characters manage to remain defiantly themselves.

The group’s friendship functions like scaffolding, allowing each girl (and James) to stumble, melt down, and bounce back without being ejected from the tribe.

Final Blessing: A Neurodivergent Love Letter

Derry Girls is not about autism.

But it is, in its narrative bones, about what happens when people who don’t quite fit are allowed to stay anyway.

It’s about surviving not just war, but the war zone of adolescence with your sacred weirdness intact.

It’s about the unspoken social contract that says, “You’re a bit much, but you’re ours.”

In that sense, it is more autistic than most shows trying to be autistic on purpose.

And that’s what stands out to me.

Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.