J.J. Abrams Promises That Yes, There Is Homosexuality In a Galaxy Far, Far Away

By Vivian Kane | Star Wars | March 1, 2016 |

In addition to being just one of the all-around, every form, very best movies of the last… ever, Star Wars: The Force Awakens also gave us the kind of diversity we’ve been crying out for. This movie gave us a female Jedi and a black male lead, and according to J.J. Abrams, that’s only the start. When asked this weekend, at an event before the Oscars, if he thought there could be a gay character in the Star Wars universe, he didn’t leave much room for naysaying debate.

“Of course!” Abrams said Thursday night at his Bad Robot HQ, where he hosted the US-Ireland Alliance’s annual Oscar Wilde Awards ahead of Sunday’s Oscars, where The Force Awakens is nominated in five categories. “When I talk about inclusivity it’s not excluding gay characters. It’s about inclusivity. So of course.”
By Abrams’ logic, the sprawling Star Wars universe couldn’t possibly exist without a gay populace—even if we haven’t seen a single character identified as gay thus far. “I would love it,” he said. “To me, the fun of Star Wars is the glory of possibility. So it seems insanely narrow-minded and counterintuitive to say that there wouldn’t be a homosexual character in that world.”

ABOUT F*CKING TIME AND THANK YOU, J.J. ABRAMS. So often when we talk about “diverse” casts, we see a world that is white by default, with one or two POC characters. Or the same with gender, a single female lead in a still all-male world. Or one in which (*cough* Pan *cough*) there’s plenty of diversity in the background actors, but the leads are white. Real diversity, or inclusivity, represents the world, where people of all backgrounds exist in all situations, in all numbers. Anything else is, as he put it, narrow-minded.

Last month, Abrams called the state of inclusivity “shameful”, saying “I think we all have a hell of a lot to do, and I think it is insane to me that we still have to have a conversation about inclusivity… We all need to do better to represent this world.”

Now, clearly, we ALL know who the first openly gay characters in Star Wars should be.