Star Wars: Finn and Poe don't get together, but J.J. Abrams still teases LGBTQ representation

The Finn and Poe shipping community may be thriving thanks to all the Star Wars press and its encouragement of John Boyega and Oscar Isaac’s off-screen bromance to flourish, but the canonical relationship between the two won’t end up how they’d like. However, LGBTQ fans may still find representation (maybe) somewhere else in The Rise of Skywalker.

Speaking with Variety, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, and J.J. Abrams all had slightly different things to say on the LGBTQ aspects of The Rise of Skywalker. For the actors, they disappointedly revealed that their characters didn’t get together. Isaac has never been coy about his stance on the subject, recently explaining that every relationship with Poe has a sexual component — so of course his closest on-screen relationship (Finn) had that element as well.

“Personally, I kind of hoped and wished that maybe that would’ve been taken further in the other films, but I don’t have control,” Isaac said. “It seemed like a natural progression, but sadly enough it’s a time when people are too afraid, I think, of … I don’t know what.” Who exactly is afraid — be it writer/director Abrams or a Disney higher-up — is unclear, though Isaac capped his position on the subject with “But if they would’ve been boyfriends, that would have been fun.”

Does Boyega reciprocate the feeling? A little less literally, but sure. “They’ve always had a quite loving and open relationship in which it wouldn’t be too weird if it went beyond it,” Boyega said. “But at the same time, they are just platonic at the moment.”

That’s a line drawn in the sand and confirmed by Abrams. “That relationship to me is a far deeper one than a romantic one,” Abrams said. “It is a deep bond that these two have, not just because of the trial by fire in which they met, but also because of their willingness to be as intimate as they are, as afraid as they, as unsure as they are, and still be bold, and still be daring and brave.”

But Abrams wasn’t going to shut down shippers and leave them with nothing. He teased that “in the case of the LGBTQ community, it was important to me that people who go to see this movie feel that they’re being represented in the film.” So would he confirm that a character in the last film of the Skywalker saga would be the franchise’s first LGBTQ representation on film? Well, no. But he would be coy about its possibility.

“I will say I’m giving away nothing about what happens in the movie,” Abrams said. “But I did just say what I just said.” Does that mean a new character is queer in the film? Or one of the returning characters (maybe Lando?) gets a new dimension?

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker answers these questions when it drops on Dec. 20.