The “Star Wars” universe just got a bit more diverse.
Members of the creative team behind “Star Wars Resistance” said this week that two of the animated series’ characters, Orka and Flix, are a gay couple.
The relationship was confirmed by “Star Wars Resistance” executive producers Athena Portillo, Justin Ridge and Brandon Auman in an episode of the podcast “Coffee with Kenobi” released Monday.
“I think it’s safe to say they’re an item,” Ridge told host Drew Taylor when asked about the duo, who operate the Office of Acquisitions in the Colossus. “They’re absolutely a gay couple and we’re proud of that.”
Fans of the Lucasfilm Animation series, which debuted on the Disney Channel last year, had speculated about the nature of the relationship between Orka (voiced by Jim Rash) and Flix (Bobby Moynihan) for some time.
One of the show’s Season 1 episodes, “Dangerous Business,” featured a scene in which the characters mention going to visit Flix’s mother. (Check out the clip below.)
The news comes more than two years after “The Force Awakens” director J.J. Abrams first hinted at the possibility of LGBTQ characters in the “Star Wars” franchise.
“I would love it,” Abrams told The Daily Beast in an April 2017 interview. “To me, the fun of ‘Star Wars’ is the glory of possibility. So it seems insanely narrow-minded and counterintuitive to say that there wouldn’t be a homosexual character in that world.”
In 2018, “Solo: A Star Wars Story” writer Jonathan Kasdan told HuffPost that Donald Glover’s character, Lando Calrissian, identifies as pansexual. Nonetheless, he expressed an interest in featuring “a more explicitly LGBT character” in the franchise at some point.
The second and final season of “Star Wars Resistance” premieres Oct. 6 on the Disney Channel.