Hollywood, CA – At a celebration event for the 53rd anniversary of Goofy being fixed, incoming returning Disney CEO Mikayla Eisner (xe/faer) announced a special surprise to throngs of cheering fans, with a delectable hint that we queers might be getting something we've been waiting for since a long, long time ago, from a gender-xy far away! We here at The Rusty Needle are pleased to announce that the franchise might just be about to cross the final frontier, as Eisner's pitch for the gritty space western Holdo and Binks: A Star Wars Story, set to premier on newly-acquired Tubi in January 2028, claimed that the show will "have someone [in the cast] unlike anyone you've seen before in Star Wars; not just an alien, a robot, or, y'know, a wizard- uh, j-Jedi, but... a woman."
This is obviously huge news to Star Wars fans everywhere, as while underground fan theories, out-of-context lines, and non-canonical entries in the so-called Extended Universe (such as fantasy author Harlan Ellison’s original pitch for Revenge of the Jedi known as Splinter in the Mind’s Eye, online video games like the Knights of the Old Republic series, and Episode VII: The Force Awakens) have stated or implied characters in the series may be female before, Holdo and Binks will be the first mainline canonical entry in the famed hard sci-fi series with an out and proud woman in the lineup. Speculation online is already running wild as to who she may be, as while Eisner did not confirm whether or not the woman in question would be a new addition to the Star Wars multiverse, many are hoping for confirmation that it will be one of the many suspected existing females present in the planetary romance already.
Theories about women in Star Wars aren’t just some 21st-century hyperfeminist ultra-woke exercises in fanfiction, however! They’re a proud, sacred tradition, dating back at least as early as the hallowed ancestral era of 2002. The first hint that a character may have been female in Star Wars came from a blog post on the fansite StarWarsWeb.net, entitled “My Theory: Carrie Fisher Played Princess Leia,” by ultrafan polincowell119. In this weird, off-the-wall, yet bizarrely compelling post, the blogger detailed a strange series of coincidences that indicated the actress Carrie Fisher may have meant the character of Princess Leia to be viewed as female in the original trilogy, highlighting Leia’s pronounced chest, flirtation with protagonist Luke Skywalker, and lack of attention and active physical abuse by her dad while his golden boy twin son is the chosen one the whole time. The blog post received both supportive and questioning comments from other users on StarWarsWeb.net, such as cillaryhinton, dubyaprez, rumsfeldNc0ke, johnmcPA1N, osamab1nsleepn, and nettin-yah0o, before the site eventually went offline for unrelated reasons.
However, with the launch of the so-called “Prequel Trilogy,” one could say the Next Generation of Star Wars fans suddenly became obsessed with the idea of finding woman characters in the series. While it’s generally agreed that The Phantom Menace featured no female characters in its cast (although most accept by now that Watto was written as a he/they pansexual white Maoist), fan theories absolutely exploded upon the launch of what’s generally seen as the entire series’ zenith, Episode II: Attack of the Clones. With her stunning fashion, elegant demeanor, smoothly delivered demure dialogue contrasting with much of the rest of the cast, incredible chemistry with her onscreen partner, surprisingly well-choreographed action scenes despite her slight frame, and just-shy-of-gratuitous glimpses at her supple body, it was pretty difficult for even the most misogynist of Star Wars fans to argue that the character of Anakin Skywalker was not meant to be viewed as a woman. Although her role might not be the largest, as she was killed off in Return of the Sith by being burned in lava by her brother OB-1, Anakin is, up until 2026, the closest the series has come to having an openly female character.
Things, however, went dark for a while following the acquisition of the series by Disney, as the company released a statement in 2018 confirming that,
“[u]nder no circumstances are any characters in this property to be considered a member of any controversial or heterogenous persuasion, including but not limited to communist, semitic, mongoloid, drapetomaniac, autogynephilic, achilleic, bilitic, arabesque, gothic, catholic, feminine, or extraterrestrial.”
This obviously meant problems for quite a lot of writers of Star Wars material, as not only did it shut down the “female character” debate entirely, but it caused problems for existing canon by overriding one of the central tenets of the series by disallowing the onscreen depiction of Yoda’s goth identity. Fortunately, this policy is no longer in place, as the decision was appealed by proceeding through the proper channels: first, the writers voiced their complaints to management and were unilaterally fired; then, a Change.org petition was filed, reached 1.87 million signatures, and was ignored; subsequently, a legal case was brought before a senate subcommittee as an “egregious assault on First Amendment rights,” whereupon Disney lawyers killed it like a Republican senator with a family dog; and finally, in 2025, a disgruntled fan mailed hundreds of pipe bombs to Disney shareholders in a concerted terror campaign that lasted twelve weeks and injured dozens before the company released a public apology and rescinded the policy out of mortal fear.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world,” indeed!
Since the revocation of the so-called “China Policy,” so-named due to the inaccurate belief by fans that it was imposed due to restrictions by the CCP despite the policy explicitly stating people of Asian descent legally do not exist in the Star Wars universe, the possibilities for our favorite opera have become endless. The Rusty Needle attempted to contact numerous queer-related forums on the niche fandom site Reddit for reactions to this exciting news, but were stymied in our efforts by being accused of being “fake trannies,” “doomer bitches,” and “not having a high enough IQ for Rick and Morty” and subsequently permabanned. Unfortunately, it seems our correspondent failed to answer a coding-based logic puzzle, submitted a required photograph in which her kneesocks were two inches shorter than the subreddit’s limit, as well as her skin color two shades darker, and was, ultimately, told by a moderator that she was suspected of being part of an underground network of nefarious MordeTwi shippers causing,
“disharmony and degeneracy to [the subreddit's] noble übermaster race [of dickgirl posters].”
Oh well, better luck next time!
In the mean time, if you have any hints over who the first openly female Star Trek character might be, please feel free to leave them in the comments below! And we here at The Rusty Needle welcome fan theories, as long as they’re backed up by hard, fast, textually based evidence. After all, we don’t want to be accused of sloppy research or inaccurate reporting on important topics like these. So when you comment below, remember; you might, just maybe, one day, be engaging in the marketplace of ideas with a global community of likeminded intellectuals, participating in meaningful discourse on subjects which are at a critical junction of decision at this particular point in time, and your words, specifically, could influence the very fate of not only your community, but world history at large.
So don’t post some fuckin’ nerd shit, that’s gay.
