All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Sign up for The Agenda — Them's news and politics newsletter, delivered to your inbox every Thursday.
A new reference book containing lore for a transgender Star Wars character is already causing a stir among the notoriously intolerant portion of the franchise’s fandom.
On Wednesday, the Star Wars news X account Star Wars Holocron shared an image from the book Star Wars: Secrets of the Clone Troopers, which was released on Tuesday. The social media post contained an image of the character Sister, a trans woman and clone trooper who was first introduced in the Star Wars novel The Queen’s Hope, according to the Star Wars Fandom wiki.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
The description of Sister, according to the post, reads:
“When one of our kind expressed her gender identity differently than her fellow troopers, she [feared] she’d have to hide who she truly was inside. Fortunately, her brothers in the 7th Sky Corps gave her the name Sister as a constant reminder that she belonged.”
The Star Wars fandom has been known to unleash terrifying levels of toxicity, especially towards any characters that are not white or male. In the past, actors of color who have appeared in the Star Wars franchise have been outspoken about the explicitly racist reception they’ve gotten from people who supposedly love the media behemoth. For instance, Kelly Marie Tran, who starred in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, had to delete Instagram posts after a deluge of racist and sexist comments. Similarly, Moses Ingram faced racist backlash for appearing in the 2022 Disney+ miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi, leading her co-star Ewan McGregor to release a statement condemning the racist bullying of Ingram.
X content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Similarly, Star Wars fans have already begun a negative campaign against the mere existence of Sister.
“This can't be real. Gotta be a parody... there is no freaking way!” one fan wrote under the Holocron’s tweet announcing Sister. “What happened to the franchise I love” another wrote.
People have also already begun to “review-bomb” the book on Amazon. Though it has only a handful of reviews, they are all either one- or two-star reviews, with many making oblique references to the presence of a trans character.
“If lore is something you care about … then this is a book you'll want to bypass,” one reviewer wrote. “It seems like they outright rewrote much of the preexisting lore to fit in to modern day politics instead of the actual narrative of the Clone wars,” wrote another. And finally, one person bemoaned the state of lore, writing, “Keep letting it burn, soon, the burnt corpse will not be anything you will recognize.”
According to the fan-edited wiki about Sister, she is a clone of the bounty hunter Jango Fett who served in the Clone Wars. She “considered herself a loyal Republic trooper” while serving under Obi-Wan Kenobi.
“Although she was initially nervous about embracing her femininity in front of her commanding officers, Sister gained confidence in her gender identity through the support of her brothers and later from the acceptance of the Jedi she served under,” the wiki reads.
Just this summer, Star Wars fans review-bombed the Disney+ series The Acolyte, which featured an all-female space coven and a character asking someone their pronouns. Following the vitriolic response from fans, The Acolyte was canceled. In August, star Amandla Stenberg spoke about the “rampage of hyper-conservative bigotry” they and their castmates experienced on Instagram.
“I’m going to be transparent and say it’s not a huge shock for me,” Stenberg said regarding the cancellation. They added that the cast received online harassment before the show’s premiere. “That’s when we started experiencing a rampage of, I would say, hyper-conservative bigotry and vitriol, prejudice, hatred, and hateful language towards us.”
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them’s weekly newsletter here.
