Claudia Gray’s new novel, Leia: Princess of Alderaan, has hinted that Laura Dern’s character in The Last Jedi, Amilyn Holdo, is bisexual, which would be a first for the Star Wars universe.
Claudia Gray’s new Star Wars novel, Leia: Princess of Alderaan, has just been released and within its pages is an interesting slither of information that could be hinting at the possibility of seeing an opening bisexual character in a Star Wars movie. The character in question is Amilyn Holdo who will be played by Laura Dern in Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi. Relatively little is known about Amilyn, but rumours suggest that she might not necessarily have the Resistance’s best interests at heart.
However, thanks to Gray’s novel we know that she knew Princess Leia before the events of A New Hope, and judging by their conversation they were quite friendly. The passage below is taken directly for the novel’s pages and seems to be suggesting that Holdo isn’t just interesting in what Leia refers to as “humanoid males”.
“A pair of pretty dark eyes.” Then Amilyn thought about that for a moment. “Or more than a pair, if you’re into Grans. Or Aqualish, or Talz. Or even – ”
“That’s all right!” Leia said through laughter. “It’s just humanoid males for me.”
“Really? That feels so limiting.”
“Thank goodness it’s a big galaxy.”
Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo in The Last Jedi
There’s been a long conversation surrounding LGBT characters in the Star Wars universe. They have been depicted in the books before, yet we’ve never seen an LGBT character in a Star Wars movie before. These new Star Wars films have done a lot to try and fix that problem. Both The Force Awakens and Rogue One were led by female protagonists in Daisy Ridley’s Rey and Felicity Jones, and we’ve also seen a more diverse range of characters with actors like John Boyega, Donnie Yen,Wen Jiang, Diego Luna and Forrest Whittaker given prominent roles in the Star Wars cinematic universe.
However, we have still yet to see an opening LGBT character in a Star Wars movie. There are fans who would like to see Finn and Po get together, but that hasn’t happened yet. J.J. Abrams has expressed his wish to see more LGBT character in future Star Wars movies, but he didn’t incorporate any into The Force Awakens. Hopefully things will change with The Last Jedi, and if the passage in Leia: Princess of Alderaan is anything to do by, then Admiral Holdo may very well be Star Wars’ first openly bisexual character. It’s about time!
Star Wars: The Last Jedi will be in UK cinemas on December 15th.
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