Why not. Count Dooku was gay. Jango Fett was gay. Even Anakin turned out to be pretty gay (but he was too dumb to realize it). Maybe all the Jedi are...it's like a monastic order that uses shame and self-repression as a form of mental discipline.
The only guy I'm sure about is Chewie. He wasn't gay for Han, he was just a bad father.
I'm feeling kind of disenchanted with Lucasworld today.
These sentiments were shortly followed by:
Wait wait! I've had an important realization. All the characters are *not*, in fact, gay. Something else altogether is going on, and it's this: Lucas has no idea how to write adult relationships. Okay, this is probably not a controversial claim. Here's the more interesting consequence: Everything Lucas writes, from character design to plot structure, is designed to avoid adult relationships.
Evidence:
1. Preponderance of unattached male characters (Luke, Obi-Wan, Chewie, Lando, Yoda, Qui-Gon, Mace, Jar-Jar, Watto, every single Rebel, every single bad guy). I had made the mistake of concluding that many of these characters were actually gay. But they're not gay, they're just written too one-dimensionally to support a girlfriend/wife character.
2. Family? Shmi Skywalker and the immaculate conception — no father. And we never see her and her second husband, Clieg Lars, together. AND Owen & Beru Lars, the only married couple in all six movies, are killed swiftly and horrifically. Oh, I guess you could count Bail Organa & his wife in Ep III, but they have no speaking parts together. And that's the last we see of them until Tarkin pushes the button. Chewie is an absent father. And where's Padme's family, for that matter?
3. One-sided friendships. What do Han & Chewie, Artoo & Threepio, Lando & Lobot, Lando & Nien Nunb, and Ponda Boba & Dr. Evazan have in common? Only one of them speaks English.
4. Parallel action. The main characters are repeatedly split up and their stories followed separately (rescuing the princess from the Death Star, the trench run, scouting on Hoth, asteroid field/Dagobah, individual arrivals at Jabba's palace, the three-way Battle of Endor, the three-way Battle of Naboo, the Clone Wars...). This device avoids the need to develop relationships.
5. Han & Leia. They have chemistry in Empire, on which Lucas has *no screenplay credit*. But then Han gets frozen just as the romance is maturing. This would be due to Lucas's "story" credit. In the Jedi screenplay (co-credited to Lucas) the chemistry is gone, along with Han's vim and vigor. Carbonite killed their love.
6. Twin sister. This is the lamest way to escape a potentially interesting love triangle.
7. Anakin & Padme. This is what happens when Lucas bellies up and tries to write a romance. Maybe we should be grateful he normally avoids it. Note Anakin's childlike immaturity throughout Eps II & III.
8. Jango Fett clones himself a son. Another immaculate conception! Note that Lucas (now divorced) adopted one child with his then-wife. After the divorce he adopted two more children by himself. He has no biological offspring. Hm...
9. Gay Hutt. BUT Ziro the Hutt has *no partner*, because Hutts reproduce asexually by spontaneously changing gender, like frogs and velociraptors.
10. THX-1138. This movie is about emotionally suppressed automatons that reproduce anonymously by growing sperm bank babies in test tubes. Uh-huh.
11. American Graffiti. It's been a while since I saw this, but I'm pretty sure it consists mostly of vintage cars and a soundtrack. And the characters are split up throughout. And they are all emotionally undeveloped teenagers with simplistic faculties.
All right, so what have we learned? I guess when we first fell in love with Star Wars as kids the movies made sense because the relationships are written at a level we could completely understand. Kids are self-absorbed. They don't know how other people feel, so a kid can only imagine many copies of himself. I bet it's lonely at Skywalker Ranch.
