*This transcript is produced using transcription software and reviewed for quality. Despite our best efforts, some passages may be incomplete or contain errors due to audio quality or software limitations.*
Matthew
We are New York and we play basketball. We’re gonna win it all. We are the New York Knicks. So Alex and I are very proud of the fact that the New York Knicks won the NBA championship. But even more so, we are proud because it is Pride.
This is June 2026. We’re celebrating Pride. And what better way to celebrate Pride than in a galaxy far, far away in a time long, long ago?
Because guess what? Star Wars is not made up of all straight cis people. We had a couple of requests for this from fans, and so we want to spend today talking about who are some of the queer LGBTQIA+ characters in the Star Wars universe. I am Matthew, non-binary queer, they/them pronouns, joined as always by my two wonderful co-hosts. Why don’t you introduce yourselves, starting with Erin?
Erin
Hey, I’m Erin, she/her pronouns, I’m bisexual, I love Pride Month. Yeah, I’m excited to talk about this.
Alex
I’m Alex, he/him. I am the straight cis part of this podcast. But I am a great ally and I’m here and excited to talk about it. I love Pride Month as well.
Matthew
So Alex, we want you to know we don’t understand your lifestyle, but we support it. All good, all welcome, all good here. Our token straight boy. Let’s just kind of talk about, starting off, why is this important? And Erin, I’m gonna start with you. As someone who, like all of us, has gone through their own journey of discovery and stuff like that, why does it matter to you that there are characters beyond just those who are straight and cis in Star Wars?
Erin
Yeah, I feel like for me, Star Wars has always felt like home. It’s felt very accepting. It’s always been a very safe lore and history for me to delve into. And growing up super Christian, very conservative, bisexuality is not really a thing. I’m gonna be dead honest with you guys. I talk about being bi on this podcast all the time.
My dad doesn’t even know I’m bisexual. I’m not fully out to him, to be honest. Not because I think it would be a huge problem. I just don’t feel like I need to have that conversation until there’s a reason to.
Matthew
I mean, mostly you just come out as not getting your parents to listen to this podcast. We gotta get our numbers up. But also, understandable.
Erin
Yeah, everyone but my dad listens to this podcast. But no, I think it’s really important for something that’s been around for so long and is so important to so many people, that over the years it really does start to build out and include more people. Because like I said, it’s felt safe, it’s felt like home. And so now seeing, for example, in the Resistance show, there were two characters that were kind of implied to be partners of some kind, and one of them seemed to be non-binary. They were both sort of male presenting. It’s just the littlest thing. They’re just mechanics. Nothing about sexuality or relationship is ever mentioned about them, but it’s showing — because Resistance was really for children, like Clone Wars originally was — it’s showing children that it’s okay to be in relationships that aren’t strictly man, woman, cisgender on both sides.
And yeah, I’m really excited to talk about it. I love how much they include trans characters, because I feel like that is a part of the LGBTQ community that gets left out a lot. People love to talk about how important sexuality is, but God forbid we talk about gender. So I’m excited to talk about some of the characters we have here today.
Alex
I mean, I actually find some frustration with how Lucasfilm has presented LGBTQ+ characters, because I feel like there have been multiple instances in the major films where they’ve hinted at it. There’s been clear implications, like with Finn and Poe, or hinting at it a bit in the movie with Vice Admiral Holdo. And I just feel like they just backed off. I don’t know if that’s a Disney decision or where it kind of comes from. But I feel like I’m very happy that they explored it in the books and comics and shows a little bit, but I would really like to see it more out front in the mainstream movies and not just, you know, two femme-forward characters kissing for one second on screen at the end of Episode Nine.
Erin
Yeah, that’s true. It’s definitely a lot more prominent in the books and comics and online media, even in some of the TV shows, versus the live action big box films, which really sucks. Like you mentioned Poe and Finn — the actors were so down for it, everyone wanted them to be in love. It was just the way the story was working. And JJ Abrams didn’t want to do it.
Matthew
And I think that’s a really important point. The two women who kiss at the end of Rise of Skywalker, we do have names for them. Larma D’Acy is the one who had been seen a couple of other times in The Last Jedi, I believe, and I think actually in the first movie as well, and Wrobie Tyce. If you haven’t heard those names before, don’t worry, nobody else has either.
They are named in the credits, but those names are never spoken, because as you said, they’re not important characters. There’s no build-up. It’s just that one moment in the background. And checking boxes is better than those boxes not being checked, but it definitely felt like one hell of a box-checking moment.
And I think you really put your finger on something. To me, Star Wars right now is kind of a double-edged sword. Star Wars is kind of a pyramid. At the top, if you want to look at it that way, are the movies, and that’s where you get the most fans, and therefore it’s also the most diluted. You’re gonna have probably the smallest amount of deep lore cuts, and it’s gonna be for the most mass market. Then come the TV shows, then the books, then the comics, and the video games are somewhere in between there as well.
What we’ve seen is that the higher up that pyramid you go, the smaller the audience gets, but also the more risks they’re willing to take. So that’s where you get a lot more exploration. A lot of times stuff will happen in the films and TV shows that seems so radical, and it’s like, wait a minute — we’ve been doing that in the books for decades. We’ve been doing that in the comics for a long time.
And I think part of what we’re doing today is celebrating so much queerness that happens, especially as we get higher up that pyramid, but also talking about why it’s important that it’s getting further and further down. The TV shows are doing it more and more. And to me, if we get the next big Star Wars trilogy and not that the main character has to be gay — it’s not that kind of quota stuff — but if there’s just none of that, or there’s an active attempt to squash what seems like some character growth in that direction, as we saw in the sequels, I think it’s gonna be really disappointing.
Alex
Yeah, I think it’s a good point, Matthew. I’ve always felt like in general, Star Wars has taken more risks in quotes as the audience kind of gets smaller, because they feel like, oh, well, if we present this in a book or in a show format, only the really diehard fans or people who are really interested are gonna see it. And so it’s okay, but if we put it in the big movies, we could lose viewers. And it just feels like a kind of cop out, a cowardly tactic.
Not to get into the weeds, but in Rise of Skywalker, there’s a lot of interesting concepts where they pulled all the punches, which is why the movie kind of fell flat. Interesting concept, but you didn’t follow through with it or explain it at all. And I think the fact that they also chose in that movie to pull back on the Poe-Finn relationship and suddenly give Poe a female love interest we’d never seen before — I just felt like JJ decided to take absolutely no risks in Episode Nine. It’s frustrating.
Matthew
And I think the last part you said there is also really important because this is something we haven’t talked about as much, but certainly if you listen to podcasts about Supernatural or shows like Doctor Who or Sherlock, people talk a lot about queer baiting — the idea of how much you’re going to imply that something is happening, how much you’re going to hold back on it actually happening.
And I think the response to that is sometimes that they’ll kind of queer bait, or the fans will run with that theory, and then what the producers or writers will do is say, okay, no, but we’re gonna introduce a heterosexual love interest that doesn’t seem needed in the plot at all, and where it’s pretty hard to believe they’re doing anything except saying, “No, look, here’s this person in a straight relationship.” As you mentioned, they give Poe someone from his smuggler background that he can kind of flirt with, which doesn’t seem to serve the plot in any important way.
And even with Finn — they’d given him Rose Tico, and there was obviously a flirtation there, but part of the fanbase didn’t like her. So yet again, not only was he not going to flirt with Rey, he wasn’t going to flirt with Rose. Now they gave him a Black stormtrooper woman — again, as you said, a fascinating concept. The idea that more stormtroopers are breaking away is a great concept. But as it was executed, they barely scratched the surface, and it really felt like it was just a way of saying, “Look, Finn and Poe are just good friends, because look at the love interests they both have.”
And that to me feels cheap. And I think that’s part of why the kiss at the end of Rise of Skywalker felt like — it’s like just throwing it in to say, “No, no, don’t accuse us of being homophobic.”
Alex
Look, we have, in the last possible second of the last Star Wars movie, let’s throw in a lesbian kiss because we’re so woke here at Lucasfilm. But guys, you had so many opportunities to do this right.
Erin
And it just felt like they took the two male characters that could have been queer in some way, and they were like, “No, guys, don’t worry. Our main characters are straight, just to clarify. They’re straight, okay.” But yeah, there can be gay people in Star Wars. But God forbid they’re a named character whose name is spoken in the movie.
When really they could have just left it ambiguous. They could have just not thrown in any love interest for Poe. I mean, Zori Bliss is a really cool character design, but I don’t really see what she did for the overall story. Which really sucks for that actress because they’re very talented and good in other stuff. But yeah, it just felt very cheap and very much like, “Oh well, look, we can still do a gay kiss. But God forbid it’s the main characters.”
And I feel similarly about Lando. From the Solo movie, I mean, Lando in general is extremely bi-coded.
Yeah. And I just would have loved if the droid he had a relationship with had been more male-coded, quote-unquote. Not that droids really have strict gender, but you know, L3 —
Matthew
— was female-voiced and I think very female-coded, you’re right. The voice actress was herself female and presented as female as we understand it. And I think you touch on a really important thing there. We’re gonna start getting to some of the positives as well. This isn’t just gonna be about problems.
No, I think naming the problems at the start is really important too. But one of the things I have mixed feelings about, and I want to know what you guys think, is where a character exists at that wider stage and is coded, and then it’s confirmed in a much smaller audience venue.
So for example, Lando Calrissian is very kind of swishy in the original movie. I don’t think he’s necessarily queer-coded, but certainly he’s not like, you know, macho McMasculine in that kind of way. Just the fact that he is a Black character who is shown as not only the equal of, but a potential romantic partner to Princess Leia in a way that Han can get jealous of — that alone is radical for the early ’80s. But by the Solo movie, he’s obviously very pan-implied. And the actor, Don Glover, has said that he very much intended to play that. Also, apparently in Lando’s standalone comic, which is canon, he is confirmed to be pansexual.
Similarly, you mentioned Admiral Holdo. I think you get some elements in the movie that she might be queer. In the book Leia, Princess of Alderaan, which talks about her friendship with Holdo as teenagers, Holdo was confirmed to be queer. And two of Padme’s handmaidens — Yane and Sabe — who never really get named in the movie, but in the Queen’s Shadow, Queen’s Peril, and Queen’s Hope books, they’re confirmed to be in a queer relationship.
Alex
Sabe’s the one that gets blown up in Episode Two?
Matthew
No, I don’t believe so.
Erin
It’s Sache, not Sabe. Sabe gets blown up. It’s Sache and Yane, my bad.
Alex
Okay, okay, yeah.
Matthew
Sabe also does not get blown up, though, because she’s one of the ones who’s still around at the end of the movies, doing stuff in comics. So yeah, it is somewhat — but we’ll get into that later.
But the point is, what do you think? And there are some other examples as well. Tarkin — there’s a story about him in one of the From a Certain Point of View books. And actually in those books, there are a number of characters, some big in name and some just like a pilot of an A-wing in Return of the Jedi, who are later identified as trans or bi or something along those lines. What’s your take on that — queering characters on the page later when it wasn’t on film?
Alex
Similar feeling to what I said earlier, Matthew. I am happy that they are exploring it at all in the Star Wars canon universe. But again, it frustrates me that — I don’t know if it’s just that they feel like they can’t present queer characters to the main public without losing viewership or receiving backlash, or if they’re just like, we don’t want to cross any boundaries. Which is frustrating because Star Wars at its core is such a political film and has pushed boundaries and limits forever, and it’s 2026.
You’re pushing no boundaries, you’re crossing no limits. It just feels like you’re being kind of cowardly. And to then do it in a smaller medium — again, I’m happy it exists, but it’s also like, guys, why do it in such a small audience? Why not just explore it in the main film or the main show and give a lot of your loyal fans who are looking for representation an opportunity to see that on the big screen?
Erin
Yeah, it’s hard and it’s frustrating. I sometimes wonder if things could have or would have played out differently if Lucasfilm was still an independent company. I don’t know what Disney really has to do with it. I feel like Disney often shies away from making statements like that, yet they are, over the last ten years, getting better about including same-sex couples in children’s cartoons as just, like, the neighbors or something like that. So it’s hard to know. But I also wonder — because George Lucas is very problematic in his own right — if he were still completely at the reins, would we have none of this? Would we have more of this? It’s hard to know.
Matthew
I think for me, a lot of it has to do with when the original was made. Because I try to think about why something like Holdo doesn’t give me a really positive feeling — like, why didn’t you just have that in the movie? But for example, the book Padawan, which is one of my favorite Star Wars novels, for all intents and purposes confirms that Obi-Wan is pan or bi. It’s about a time when Obi-Wan is a Padawan — forgive me, mild spoilers for the book. We’ve done an episode on it some time ago.
In the book, he basically gets lost on this planet with a bunch of other teenagers, all of whom have romantic relationships or at least physical affection with each other. And it talks about how part of him yearns to be a part of that, and that he wishes he could go off and cuddle and maybe kiss some of the other people who are there — and the one in particular he’s thinking about is another male character. So I think it’s pretty clear. And I sort of feel like that’s a character who came out in ’77. I don’t mind that they didn’t name it then.
And frankly, I think to have named it in the prequels would have further complicated the relationship with Anakin in a way I didn’t trust the movies to handle well, quite frankly, without it becoming really badly read. So that’s one where I’m fine with it. I like Tarkin being gay. I like some of the other things like that. But yeah, someone like Holdo or Lando — it’s like, yeah, it’s great that it’s happening in other places, but you could have just done it in the main story.
Erin
Yeah. Yeah, it’s hard, and I hope we’ll get there eventually. But it sucks to see how many characters had like a breath or a whisper of that in main media and then really got built out later. Like, wow, I would have loved to know this about that character when I was seeing them in this big movie. But we still have a lot of really great queer representation throughout other media in Star Wars.
Matthew
So I want to name, and I want to get into some of our favorites of that. And the first thing I want to say is that — and I don’t think these sorts of people are listening to this episode anymore, but if you are, welcome. We’ll take your money and feel free to give us an angry review. A lot of people who are very against this kind of thing will often say, “Oh my gosh, this is Disney making Star Wars woke.” And I want to make very clear: Disney did not come up with the first queer characters in Star Wars. It did not come up with the first trans characters in Star Wars. These were things that were happening on the edges of Lucasfilm, but they were definitely there.
In the 1999 comic book The Bounty Hunters, Aurra Sing introduces us to the character Reess Kairn, who presents as a human woman but was born as a male Twi’lek. Now there’s a whole bunch of stuff about that character, and the deceptive framing you can take with a grain of salt, but still, that’s at least a nod in that direction. Later on, in the video game Knights of the Old Republic, there’s apparently a female character who will possibly romance you whether you’re a male character or a female character yourself. And in some of the other books, particularly the ten-book series Last of the Jedi, there were some queer characters introduced, not as major characters, but they were there.
So I wanted to first name that — the idea that Disney did all of this is a whitewash. That’s just not the case.
Erin
So I want to talk about one character specifically from some of the Padme books. Sache. And my best friend Kit is a huge fan of Sache. I’m gonna be honest, I listened to those books. I don’t remember that character very well.
They must have been a very small part in the overall plot and it didn’t grab me. Because I am someone who is cisgender. I feel very comfortable as a woman. I was born a woman, and that’s how I’m happy to live. So something like that doesn’t hit me in the same way — I don’t personally relate to that, I’m not gonna catch on to this little character. But my friend Kit is non-binary. And they kind of shared that when they were in middle school, they went through a phase before figuring out if they were non-binary or what, and it was well before pronouns were really fluid socially and talked about. So being able to read that book when it came out — I’ll look up the date in a second — it was just really cool to see a character for them that was not non-binary, but was a different gender than they were born in and was comfortable in that, and people accepted that and people talked about it. And kind of like I mentioned about seeing queer characters in Star Wars, it’s just huge to see, even if it’s the tiniest touch of representation, in your favorite media. That’s so important.
Matthew
I had a similar reaction. That book came out in April of 2022. And when Queen’s Hope by E.K. Johnston came out, I got to that character and I just stopped, took a screenshot — we were on a Kindle — and sent it to all of my friends and was like, “Oh my god.”
And what I think is a really cool and obviously very intentional thing, both by these individual authors and also obviously approved by Lucasfilm and Disney: that book comes out on April 5th, 2022, and I believe just a week or two later, the book Brotherhood by Mike Chen comes out. And in that book, that character also appears and is once again confirmed specifically to be a male clone who has transitioned of their own volition to being a woman. And apparently E.K. Johnston and Mike Chen coordinated on that. E.K. had had this idea for the character, shared it with Mike and asked him to kind of add on, just so that people couldn’t be like, “Oh well, E.K. Johnston, she’s very queer herself, she’s just pushing this thing.” It was very clear: no, this is a named character now in two totally different books, acknowledging that this is a thing.
Erin
It’s cool to see. Alex, do you have a favorite character or storyline or something like that you want to bring up here?
Alex
I don’t think I’ve read as many of the books as y’all have. But I would say that from my experience, I really liked the exploration of gender role and sexuality in The Acolyte, with — I’m gonna have to read this because I always mispronounce the name — Mother Aniseya. Because it was this coven of really powerful women. And at some point she basically says — what was the line?
Matthew
Yeah, Leslie Headland said that it would be reductive to call the witches lesbians. Because a lesbian is a person in a multi-gendered society who is a woman who chooses to only be with other women, and theirs is a society that is specifically women-only. Her point is that this is a society — and I think this is a really important part of sci-fi in general — sci-fi gives us the chance to explore things outside of our context. We live in a world where it’s understood, though not actually accurate, that we’re basically born into a gender binary and that our romantic relationships are fundamentally in a gender binary. Science fiction lets us explore all sorts of other things. And so Leslie Headland made it very clear that she wanted this to be clearly a queer story and an exploration of love and reproduction outside of heteronormativity. But yeah, it’s simplistic to just call them lesbians. It’s more like, what about this totally different kind of situation where there’s no men around?
Alex
Which we haven’t really gotten to see much exploration of. I mean, we see it in the Nightsisters, but those are just episodes here and there. We don’t really get a deep dive like we do in The Acolyte.
Erin
Kind of because there are still Nightbrothers. They don’t live within the same society. They’re aware of each other and they do interact with one another every once in a while.
Alex
True. So I guess it is really kind of unique in its own right in Star Wars, and another thing I would have liked more of — a deeper dive into that story. But in the end, a very small focal side of the fanbase got that canceled too. And I’m sure part of the reason was they just couldn’t handle explorations of things in Star Wars they weren’t used to. And that’s what this show did, I think, at all levels across the board. The coven and their relationship with one another, and how that family and that group grew together, really fascinated me, and I was really frustrated to not get a chance to explore that more. I don’t even know — are they continuing it in book or comic form?
Matthew
Nothing has been announced. Leslie Headland has said a couple of times that she has ideas she wants to continue. I think Disney was kind of letting that fear die down a little bit. I will say this is obviously a pretty small part of the universe, but some of those characters have now started to pop up in the Star Wars Unlimited card game that I play, and there’s been no pushback about it, which has been kind of nice.
I was going to say, based on what we mentioned about the Nightsisters — in the same way that it would be reductive to call all the Nightsisters lesbians, we do have canonical confirmation that some of them are bi or queer or lesbian or whatever it is.
The character I know best — and if you guys have played Jedi: Survivor, the second game, you might be able to comment more on this — is Merrin, who is a former Nightsister. She’s introduced in Jedi: Survivor and clearly has a growing romance with Cal Kestis, who’s male. But her history also mentions that she had a lover among the Nightsisters. So to me, that confirms her as being bi or queer in some way — more sapphic, but also interested in men.
Erin
Yeah, I’d agree. And I like that — and not to get on my high horse, but there’s something to be said about the erasure of bi women who date a man. People are like, “Well, you’re with a man, so clearly you’re not actually that bi. You were just exploring or something.” So I like that we have a character where there’s confirmation that it wasn’t just a fling, but like, “No, I had a lover. It was a relationship, and it was a woman.” And that’s something. And everyone is fine with it because that’s, guess what, normal.
Matthew
And that can also happen the other way, where a character who’s been with men in the past is now with another woman. And this happens both on TV and in real life all too often — “Oh okay, so now you figured out what you really were.” And sometimes that is true. Compulsory heterosexuality is a real thing. Lots of people take decades being in relationships with people who aren’t necessarily the gender they’re attracted to before figuring out, no, I really just want to be with people of this one gender. But it’s by no means all, you know.
So, any other things from the TV and film side? One of the things I wanted to mention — you said, Erin, that we’ve seen it showing up in some of the kids’ shows. And here again, I think one of the attack points always is, “Why are you pushing this on kids?”
And yes, we call these things sexualities, and a lot of it is about who you have sex with. But a lot of it’s also about who you have romantic love with and who you build families with. In both of the most kid-coded shows of the last couple of years — Young Jedi Adventures, which is very much kid-coded, and Skeleton Crew, which I think is more like eight-to-ten-year-old-coded, but also for the kid in all of us — in both of those, there’s a group of kids, and one or more sets of parents are same-gender, or at least same-sex as presented to us.
And again, I love that. Because that’s not pushing sexuality in any way. It’s just acknowledging the reality that all these kids have families. Some of them have families that look like this, some of them have families that look like that.
Erin
And I think it’s so important to include that in media. As the world grows and changes — and I say that while knowing that people who love more than one gender have been around since ancient Egypt and ancient Rome — the modern world has been very adverse to it.
I think it’s so cool and so important to include that for kids. Because growing up, I was literally steeped in a community that was so one-minded that if I were to watch a Disney Channel show and see some sort of a same-sex relationship, I would be disgusted. And I’m what, like nine years old? I don’t need to have those strong of opinions, but that’s just the way it feels because it was so abnormal when I was that age to have any sort of queer relationship shown in children’s media.
And I know that people love to hate on it and be like, “drag queens just want all the kids to be gay” or whatever. But I really appreciate it, and I see it as beautiful. Because that’ll make sure that when they go to school one day and they meet a friend who says, “Oh, my two mommies,” they don’t make that friend feel bad for their two mommies or feel weird about it. They just say, “Oh, that’s so cool.”
Matthew
Or just, “My mommy who used to be my daddy,” or whatever it is.
Erin
Yeah, exactly. It’s so important to include those things, and not — although some people like to say it’s “in your face” — it’s not in your face that KB’s two mothers were her parents in Skeleton Crew. And I think it’s really important to show kids that. Really important, not just for themselves and their own journey of whatever their gender or sexuality may be, but so that they can treat others with open-mindedness, unlike the way that I was raised.
Matthew
Yeah, no, I think it’s so very true. And we’re talking about how to make stories better, but we’re also talking about how to keep kids alive. The rates of self-harm and worse than that in queer youth and trans youth are incredibly high. And every study in the world shows that showing people examples that “you’re not weird, your heroes are like you sometimes, and other people in the world are like you, and that’s okay” — that is so valuable.
I do want to mention one other thing that is going to give you a reason to feel positive about something you probably have very little positive feelings about, because there’s one more character who appeared on screen in a Star Wars project who we later found out is queer. That is the character of Ackmena. And for anyone wondering who Ackmena is, I see Alex’s face searching through the Star Wars database. I don’t think you’re gonna come up with this one, because she was played by Bea Arthur in the Star Wars Holiday Special.
Alex
Ah, a classic.
Alex
A classic. I have seen it, but it’s been many years.
Matthew
A lot of people tried to burn every copy. It does still exist. But in the novel From a Certain Point of View, they mention a bunch of different characters. She’s one of them, and they talk about her having a wife — which, given how queer-coded, but in a good positive way, The Golden Girls was for its time, I’m sure Bea Arthur would be thrilled with that. I don’t know if it was published before her death or not, but that little moment did make me really happy. Is the character a Wookiee? No — Bea Arthur from The Golden Girls played her. She’s the bartender, she sings a song, I think with Luke. Oh my god.
Alex
Listen, Matthew. I watched it one time like six years ago, and I just lost part of the memory.
Matthew
I don’t care about your knowledge of the Star Wars Holiday Special. I care about your knowledge of The Golden Girls.
Alex
One, my mom watched The Golden Girls, I have not really watched it. Two, why couldn’t Bea Arthur be in a Wookiee costume?
Matthew
Because she’s great. That’s fair. I will withdraw that. See, when you have —
Erin
When you brought this up, I thought you were gonna talk about somebody else. Who do you think I was going for? I thought you were going for Grand Moff Tarkin.
Matthew
Oh yeah, no, tell us about Mr. Tarkin.
Erin
I thought you were going straight for Grand Moff Tarkin. So, from From a Certain Point of View — as you may know, and as Matthew just mentioned, it’s a book where they take every Star Wars film and retell it from the point of view of side characters, people who are just in the corner of a screen, not named, no lines. And there’s one called “Of Mice and Men,” except it’s “Of M-I-5-E” or something like that, because that’s the name of the droid. It’s about a little mouse droid on the Death Star that runs into Tarkin and accidentally plays a holo image of a random stormtrooper. And there’s some unnamed general with Tarkin who’s like, “Oh, this stupid droid, let’s have it burned.” And Tarkin’s like, “Stop.”
“He’s beautiful. Find me this stormtrooper.” And on we go with these escapades told from the point of view of the mouse droid, so it’s all written in like droid-speak — check systems, do this. It’s honestly a hard read. But me and my best friend read it by the pool, and we were kicking our feet and giggling because it was so gay for Tarkin.
I discovered this story this Pride Month because my best friend found a TikTok of somebody saying Grand Moff Tarkin is the reason they came out as gay. And I said, “You know what? You mean the space Nazi? The one you related to?”
Alex
Wild behavior, I’m not gonna lie.
Matthew
You know what? I’m not gonna say that Tarkin qualifies as “big gay do crimes,” because it’s not “be gay, war crimes.” It’s not even “I support gay rights and I support gay wrongs.”
Like, Tarkin is still an awful, awful person. But guess what? Queer people are everywhere. And the fact is, a lot of the high-ranking Nazis, especially the ones who really loved their uniforms, were also queer. Like, people are not always good. Queer people are just people like anybody else. We come in all — all over the place. Does not mean we’re all fascists by any means. None of us are.
But yeah, the idea of that Tarkin story. I will say, though, I haven’t read the story. I was familiar with it. And I was really — I thought I had paid good attention when you told me about it a couple of days ago. But then the way you started telling it, listeners, write in if you had the same experience. You said, “And so he sees this mouse droid and he says, ‘Oh, he’s so beautiful.'” And I thought we were talking about a very different kind of sexuality that I was very concerned by. Tarkin and the mouse droid, damn.
Erin
No, the mouse droid projects an image of a stormtrooper. The mouse droid gets damaged and accidentally projects the last thing it recorded.
Matthew
Got it.
Erin
And it’s a random stormtrooper with acne being like, “Damn, this bucket gives me such bad acne. I gotta get a new face wash or something.” And Tarkin’s like, “My man. My man.”
Like, yeah. How old is Tarkin? Much older than that stormtrooper, I’ll tell you that.
Matthew
It’s definitely an age gap situation. But it’s hilarious. The stormtrooper gets a message from Tarkin through the mouse droid, and he’s like — look, if I play my cards right, I could get a transfer to Coruscant. I could be doing VIP duty. He’s trying to use Tarkin as a sugar daddy. It’s great.
Matthew
Oh my god. I love it. One thing I want to comment on — and this is something we especially see in the books, but could see a lot more of in the TV shows and movies, and have seen a little bit of — is this idea, and this is true about science fiction in general, but especially in Star Wars. Part of the point of going out into alien worlds is that we don’t have to be stuck with the human categories that we have.
Even back in 1977, there was some of this. The degree of alienness that you see in that cantina — in a world where most science fiction was humans with weird ears or foreheads — was mind-blowing. People like the Ithorian, the one used to be called “Hammerhead,” or even Greedo or stuff like that. But they were all still primarily bipedal humanoids.
In more recent books, they’ve really started to explore that all these things can be different. So in the High Republic especially, we’ve seen a pair of twins who are Jedi and who are both what you could describe as transbinary or non-binary. Part of why I’m not saying the exact term is because these are human terms that don’t apply. Their species is literally, I think, much more fluid about gender — both in philosophy and literally in biology.
Similarly, Hutts are able to, to some extent, switch genders at various points in their lives. I think it’s supposed to be a kind of reference to Jurassic Park — the idea that lizards can do that based on circumstances. There are also a number of human characters and characters of other races who are queer in various ways.
In one of the first High Republic books, one of the first characters you meet is a captain on a ship where a lot of people are hooking up with each other. And one of them kind of looks at the captain and says, “So, what about you? Do you like this person or that person?” And he says, “You know what? I just like being friends. I just really like having friends.” They don’t use the word ace, but every ace person I know who’s read that book was like, “Oh, that’s me.” And anyone on the asexual or aromantic spectrum has been like, “Yeah, that’s me. I can see myself in that.”
And similarly, there have been non-binary characters with neopronouns. There’s a character in one of the Queen’s books that has neopronouns. Some of it’s because it’s sci-fi and different races are just different, some of it’s because a character can be non-binary in gender or in sexuality. And I just love that so much. I love that at least in those books, we’re really pushing the bounds of it doesn’t have to all be the same.
Erin
And we’re seeing some of those more asexual characters on screen as well. I know in your research, you had found that Vernestra Rwoh is considered to be more of an asexual character. And for anyone who’s seen The Acolyte, that’s the bald green Jedi with the lightsaber whip who is most likely the Stranger’s master. So it’s so cool to just — and I don’t know if this is problematic of me to say — but knowing that character’s ace and reviewing the way they act, I’m like, it makes sense. It comes together. And as someone who is very close to some asexual people, yes.
Matthew
And also to be clear, ace can mean anything in regard to actual sexual activity. Ace is not necessarily by definition celibate. For those who have had a lot of feelings or written a lot of stories about Vernestra and that whip, just know that’s still in the realm of possibility. But might not be — you know what, write what you want to write. That whip had an effect on a lot of people.
There’s one of the relationships I want to mention, just kind of as a banner connection for the High Republic. Also, just to clarify something, Erin — I know this is what you meant — Vernestra was the Stranger’s master, we think, when the Stranger was a Jedi. Not that she’s like secretly a Sith or something.
Erin
Yes, yeah, sorry. But thank you for that.
Matthew
She’s pretty bad and doing some dark-side-adjacent things, but yeah, to be clear on that. Let’s end then with what I think is my favorite queer relationship in Star Wars, but is also very much on the “just barely canonical if you squint your eyes a lot” side. It reminds me a lot of the main relationship in The Legend of Korra, where it was really strongly implied, and in the last seconds of the last episode they were supposed to kiss, but then they didn’t.
I’m talking about from Rebels, Agent Kallus and Garazeb Orrelios. Yeah. Erin, talk about this relationship and why it’s seen as queer. Actually — Alex, you want to take a shot? I know you’ve seen Rebels.
Alex
I mean, I feel like I’m not overly qualified as a straight person, but I can try.
Erin
Go for it.
Alex
It just feels like throughout the series, Kallus’s arc — his loyalty to the Empire, and then kind of realizing that’s not who he is — it feels like the Empire would be an organization that makes you suppress your gender identity and your sexuality. And it feels like Zeb kind of opened Kallus’s eyes slowly to the evil of the Empire, until, like, “You can be yourself, you can make your own choices.” And Kallus regularly was like, “I’m making my own choices, I’m gonna be my own person.” And I feel like, if you break through that, it would be very natural to develop feelings towards the person who helped you find yourself and see yourself in that new light.
And as the show progresses, especially at the end, Zeb shows Kallus his home, and they’re just spending a ton of time together. I even remember at Star Wars Celebration, they gave out posters, and one of the only characters with their arms around each other was Zeb and Kallus, just hidden on the poster there. And I’m just like — at no point does Zeb ever flirt with any female-presenting characters, and neither does Kallus. It just feels like they really threw all of that at us and then did not deliver the payoff.
Matthew
And again, I think they came as close as they could, sort of Legend of Korra style, and weren’t able to cross that line. But I will say the creator, when he’s been asked at cons whether these characters were intended to be queer, what he said was, “They’re two men who care about each other and love each other.” He kind of couches it as audience interpretation, but you can interpret it that way.
Which I think is fair. The actor who played Garazeb, Steve Blum — who I think is also playing him now in live action, or at least voicing him — has actively championed the romantic pairing, joking in interviews that Zeb got his man in the end. The thing that really confirms it for a lot of people is that Kallus had been involved in the literal genocide of Zeb’s people, and we find out that the people are rebuilding, that they’re still alive, that they have the secret planet. And Zeb takes him back there to live. It’s very much not “hey, you should come back here because this is your penance,” but the way it’s framed is very much like “come home and meet my parents.” We see his introduction to Zeb’s kind of two big mentors who are parental figures to him, and it really has that “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” kind of feeling to it.
And so I think that’s where a lot of people were confirmed in how they read it. And I love that. Garazeb is now appearing in some other Star Wars stuff. He was in Grogu and Mando, and he was briefly in some scenes from Ahsoka. I think he’s probably going to be in other properties.
The immortal Zeb. Unless he mentions Kallus by name — like “I gotta get home because Kallus is waiting for me” — or uses Kallus’s first name, which is Alexander, I think a lot of fans are gonna be pretty pissed. Like, we all wish it had happened before, but if Zeb’s gonna continue to be a character, it’s gotta be confirmed for us.
Erin
Yeah, they’re the ultimate enemies-to-lovers. What can I say?
Matthew
It is both a beautiful enemies-to-lovers and one of the only truly earned redemption arcs I’ve seen. And I say that as someone who absolutely loves Vader’s turn, but would never in a million years call that a redemption arc. That’s a good final moment. I think Rebels has had some. I think Kallus is a lot more believable, honestly.
Alex
Kallus is the Zuko of Rebels.
Matthew
Yes, very much so. I think Zuko is one of the only ones. I’d put Catra from She-Ra as well — probably those three are the top three.
Alex
Yeah, Zuko’s one of my favorite arcs ever.
Erin
I’m gonna nod and pretend I understand those references.
Matthew
You’ve got to watch She-Ra someday. And Avatar, or something.
Erin
And I know it’s from She-Ra, I do. All right.
Matthew
Any other last things you want to say before we wrap up this topic?
Alex
I think there’s a lot more we’ll have to explore in this universe as more content is made. And if there are any characters that have resonated with you as you’ve read and watched and grown up, we’d love to hear from you. Share with us and we can mention them in a future podcast. Just write to us. Matthew, what’s the best way to reach us?
Matthew
You can reach us at matthew@TheEthicalPanda.com. And of course, you can find us on any of our social media, all of which are in the show notes for this episode. Cool. Well, on behalf of myself, Erin, and Alex — thank you all so much for listening. Go New York, go New York, go.
Alex
Yeah, stay classy, New York City. There we go.
Erin
Wendy said that. That’s all I know.
Alex
Yeah, actually he did say it at the end of his press conference.
Erin
He said it at the end of the press conference. See y’all never.
Matthew
He’s a loser.
Erin
And then the comment section was just calling him “lanky and cranky.”
Alex
I don’t know what he thought he was doing with that comment. I don’t know if he thought he sounded cool, but it was just like, all right, bro.
