Does “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” Feature the Saga's First LGBT Characters?

Spoilers ahead.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi has only been in cinemas for 24 hours, but we’re assuming millions around the world have already seen it. That said, this article discusses a moment from the third act of the film, so if you haven’t watched it yet, and don’t want anything spoiled, look away now.

A day before Rian Johnson’s maniacally anticipated new Star Wars sequel The Last Jedi arrived in cinemas, Vanity Fair asked, not unreasonably, “What Will It Take to Get a Gay Character in Star Wars?”

Well, those who attended the opening night screenings of the film discovered there might have been one in the franchise all along.

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Though writer-director Johnson never makes it explicit (and the series remains without an openly queer representative in its entire cinematic galaxy), he heavily hints that Laura Dern’s character, Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo, may be gay, following a tender moment with General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher).

(We’re sorry to break the news that John Boyega’s Finn and Oscar Isaac’s Poe don’t pair up in The Last Jedi, though we’re certain that won’t stop the fan art.)

Perhaps in the world of Star Wars, gay and lesbian men and women (and wookies?) are persecuted, hence the continued masking of their sexualities. Regardless, the movies are not yet brave enough to openly acknowledge them.

As has been previously reported, the new Star Wars prequel book Leia: Princess of Alderaan by Claudia Gray (set before the events of A New Hope) features a telling discussion between Holdo and then-Princess Leia.

As Digital Spy recounts it, the two characters describe the specific organisms they find attractive. Leia says, “just humanoid males for me,” while Holdo responds, “Really? That feels so limiting.”

Several decades later, in The Last Jedi (spoilers incoming), the two characters give one another an emotional goodbye, and they clasp hands for an extended period of time, in a manner that indicates something more than friendship, recalling the coded visual language that was used to obscure gay and lesbian relationships back in the era of the Hays Code (when such relationships weren’t allowed to be depicted in American cinema).

The silent exchange between them speaks volumes, and the short passage from Gray’s book certainly adds fuel to the speculative fire, even though that same passage seems to point out Leia's heterosexuality. It also presents an interesting additional wrinkle to Leia and Han Solo’s break-up.

⚠Star Wars spoiler⚠ etc etc

Ok so, I'm convinced that General Leia and Vice Admiral Holdo were both lovers. Forget Han.

— ⚠Star Wars 8 Spoilers⚠| PristinPidgePolitics (@PassionateTM) December 15, 2017

"Oh, completely; there was something going on there between them," journalist and critic Ella Donald agrees.

"They look into each other’s eyes meaningfully for a really long amount of time."

Donald (who "loved" The Last Jedi, FYI, and wrote for the SMH about the value of queer representation in Battle of the Sexes) picked up on the subtext during her midnight premiere screening. Though, she saw it more as 'text'.

"I immediately was like, 'I don’t think I’m reading into this.’ I felt like it was quite plainly laid [out], because it is using that language we are very used to and very accustomed to seeing."

This marks Disney’s second consecutive Star Wars picture to feature what is highly speculated to be a gay relationship, after fans insisted Chirrut (Donnie Yen) and Baze (Jiang Wen) in Rogue One were more than fellow soldiers. Those fans are still meeting the filmmakers more than halfway; Chirrut and Baze never officially note their (presumed) romantic relationship.

"The thing that’s going to be a problem when trying to do this is these movies have to come out in places like China and places like Russia, where queer relationships on screen are quite heavily shunned, policed, erased," Donald explains.

However, she still believes there is value in these more subtle depictions of queer characters.

"Of course you want very out-and-proud characters, but it’s going to be a challenge for [Disney]; also, for them, it would be quite difficult to do in a way that doesn’t feel tokenistic," she says.

"It’s a Star Wars movie that finally has a lot of female characters and a lot of female characters driving it for the first time.

"With representation, it’s good to see that type of stuff, and that type of stuff come so unassumingly. That’s a real joy."

There remains, however, the issue of representation behind the camera.

"If you want to do stuff like that, you’ve got to have the right writers and directors on board to do justice to those kinds of stories, and not do it in a really cliché way."

The (now non-canonical) books and video games long ago broke ground in this regard. But until the big screen saga can speak the words, and explicitly include LGBTQI characters in their expansive galaxy, they will lack an essential texture of the human(oid) experience.

Nonetheless, as a queer Star Wars fan, Donald was appreciative of the exchange between Leia and Holdo.

"Regardless of debating ‘is it a good thing? is it a bad thing? what different way could it be done? what could it mean?’, et cetera, it’s very special," she said.

"And it was really special because Leia’s been such a big part of the series from the beginning; that suddenly there's this new, different way of looking at her.

“A lot of people probably had headcanons about that over the years, and it’s sort of like watching a good fantasy come to life.”

Photo: Disney