Star Wars Introduces First LGBT Character Into Canon

The Star Wars universe is a vast and varied one, full of characters of all shapes, sizes, colors, lightsaber colors, abilities, and moral alignments. Now it's getting a little more diverse on the sexual orientation front as well.

Star Wars: Lords of the Sith, an upcoming novel by Paul S. Kemp, will induct the first-ever LGBT character into the official canon. Learn more about the Star Wars LGBT character after the jump. Big Shiny Robot broke the news on the Star Wars LGBT character, Moff Mors, and describe the character as follows:

Moff Mors is an Imperial who has made some very serious mistakes but she is an incredibly capable leader and spends much of the book working hard to prevent absolute failure. She also happens to be a lesbian.

Del Rey Star Wars editor Shelly Shapiro explained that the inclusion of Moff Mors isn't intended as a message, but simply as a reflection of our reality:

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 (or more so because they have alien species) as humanity is in real life and we don't want to pretend it's not. It just felt perfectly natural.

Shapiro additionally pointed out that while Moff Mors is the first LGBT character in the official Star Wars canon, she's not the first LGBT character in Star Wars. "This is certainly the first character in canon," she said. "But there was a gay Mandalorian couple, so it's not brand new."

The gay Madalorian couple Shapiro is referring to were featured in Karen Travis' Legacy of the Force novels. Additionally, there was a lesbian character in the 2003 video game Knights of the Old Republic, and the MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic allows same-sex relationships. However, none of these examples are considered canon.

Although Shapiro is absolutely right that humans right here on Earth are very diverse, the Star Wars universe (and to be fair, most big-screen fictional universes) haven't always reflected that. Moff Mors can't fix that all by herself, but she certainly seems like a step in the right direction.

And while we've no clue about the sexual orientations of the new Star Wars: The Force Awakens characters, they already look more diverse than their predecessors in terms of gender and race. Heck, the only three faces in the trailer belong to a black man (John Boyega), a white woman (Daisy Ridley), and a Latino man (Oscar Isaac).

Here's hoping they, and Moff Mors, are a sign that times are changing in that galaxy far, far away. Kemp's book hits shelves April 28.