Last year, when J.J Abrams confirmed that there will be an openly gay character in the new Trilogy, this announcement agitated a broad spectrum of fans in the Star Wars community. Yes, there were admirers of this move as well, but investigation of a multitude of Internet comments reflected that the number of supporters was way too small.
A majority of people were “OK” with the inclusion of the Gay character, but they wanted to make sure that character’s sexuality shouldn’t feel forced on the viewers, and shouldn’t have any real impact on the storyline. Star Wars had some controversial elements in regards to sexuality, like the infamous kiss between Luke and Leia, who were later revealed to be siblings.
However, Rian Johnson, the director of the 8th Episode has clarified that the trilogy is not going to have any intense romance between the characters. But he has also hinted that there will be some romantic dynamics between the major characters in the future, but it will not get much focus compared to what we have seen in the original or prequel trilogy like Han-Leia or Anakin-Padme. Here’s what he had said in his latest interview with Vanity Fair:-
“[There will be] no one-to-one equivalent of the Han-to-Leia, burning, unrequited love. In our story, that’s not a centerpiece.”
Now, before you jump the gun on this statement, you need to understand the background here. Episode 7 was a major hit, there is no doubt about that, but it also garnered a lot of negative attention from fans and critics for being too similar to the previous Star Wars movie. Rian was repeatedly bombarded with scathing comments from the interviewers and fans on his social media handles to figure out if his movie is going to be retro-remake as well. Since then Rian is using every public statement to convince the fans that Episode 8 is an original concept.
If you read his comments carefully, he has indirectly hinted that there will be a love story incorporated in the upcoming movies, but it won’t get much recognition as the other Star Wars trilogies.
Katheleen Kenedy reverberated the same thing in one of her interviews with a Spanish Entertainment site named Escartelera. The interviewer directly asked her the big question, “Is there going to be a gay romance between Poe & Finn?” She answered without hiding or twisting her words, here’s what she said:-
“We’ve talked about it, but I think you’re not going to see it in The Last Jedi.”
Now, a top level executive wouldn’t say “they’ve talked about it” unless there is some truth to that concept. She didn’t even deny that this won’t happen, she just said it is not going to occur in “The Last Jedi.”
So does this mean, we are going to see Poe & Finn doing a tongue-to-tongue kiss in Episode 9? Well, we wouldn’t rule that out. Anything is possible at this point. The main issue here is that a lot of fans connect “LGBT” inclusion in movies/comic books as political propaganda. To be honest, this could turn out to be disastrous for the Star Wars franchise, if they fail to handle the homosexuality element of the movie.
