‘Star Wars’ introduces its first-ever gay character
By Josh Haggis
An upcoming Star Wars novel will feature the franchise’s first-ever gay character.
Lords of the Sith – written by Paul S. Kemp – will see the inclusion of a lesbian Imperial officer named Moff Mars. According to Big Shiny Robot, the character is described as an officer that has “made a lot of mistakes” but “works hard to prevent failure” in the new novel.
“This is certainly the first LGBT character in the canon,” said the editor of Star Wars books, Shelly Shapiro. “It’s not something I really think about, it just makes sense. There’s a lot of diversity – there should be diversity in Star Wars.”
“You have all these different species and it would be silly to not also recognize that there’s a lot of diversity in humans. If there’s any message at all, it’s simply that Star Wars is as diverse as humanity is in real life and we don’t want to pretend it’s not. It just felt perfectly natural,” she added.
Meanwhile, the first trailer for the forthcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens was unveiled recently – watch it here.
Lord of the Sith is released April 28.
More stories:
Banana hottie Dino Fetscher on coming out and being a gay actor
Playgirl, Man of the Year star Dirk Shafer has died, aged 52