Any universe with hundreds of sentient species and thousands of star systems is bound to have a lot of gender diversity. While “Star Wars” took longer than queer fans would have liked to begin to explore that side of the galaxy far, far away, the franchise has slowly but steadily expanded its canonical view of gender over the last eight years or so. If you only watch the movies and the Disney+ shows, though, you might not even know about all of the trans and nonbinary characters who now populate the timeline. That’s because they’ve generally been relegated to novels and the High Republic comics, at least for now.

It’s no secret that Disney has often been skittish when it comes to queerness, let alone genderqueerness, in its major brands. (I will still wave the “Finn and Poe should have ended up together banner” any chance I get.) As a queer “Star Wars” fan who’s covered the franchise professionally for years, I can say that progress can often feel like an arduous process defined more by tokenism than real representation. Even still, plenty of writers and other creators have tried their best to expand the series’ gender diversity, bit by bit.

The first canonical genderqueer “Star Wars” character was introduced in the 2016 novel “Aftermath: Life Debt.” Five years later, in 2021, the first two canonical trans “Star Wars” characters were featured in Marvel’s High Republic comics. Let’s take a deeper look at how gender is depicted in the “Star Wars” universe, the history of genderqueer characters in the franchise, and how things continue to change.

In the old “Star Wars” Expanded Universe days, before Disney purchased Lucasfilm, genderqueerness rarely came up. That’s more a reflection of the times than it is of “Star Wars,” though. Queer representation has progressed by leaps and bounds since the early 2000s. It was hard enough to get gay characters back then, let alone any instances of gender variance. You’d occasionally come across an alien species in “Star Wars” Legends that used plural pronouns due to biological traits, and Hutts were known to be hermaphroditic, but that was about as far as it went.

The first nonbinary “Star Wars” character in the current canon came a few years into the Disney era. That character, a space pirate named Eleodie Maracavanya, was introduced in Chuck Wendig’s 2016 novel “Star Wars: Life Debt” and appeared again in “Aftermath: Empire’s End” the following year. Eleodie uses a form of neopronouns — zhe/zher — in both books. Zhe plays a key role in the “Aftermath” series and even commandeers an Imperial Super Star Destroyer.

More nonbinary characters have followed since. The nonbinary Mirialan pilot Keo Venzee features prominently in the video game “Star Wars: Squadrons,” and a nonbinary Jedi appears briefly in the animated Disney+ series “Star Wars: Tales of the Empire.” In 2021, “Star Wars” introduced its first trans characters in the High Republic comics — a pair of twins named Ceret and Terec.

Ceret and Terec are trans nonbinary bond-twins of the Kotabi species first introduced in 2021’s “Star Wars: The High Republic” #2. Raised and trained as Jedi, the siblings share a powerful mental connection and were stationed on the famous Starlight Beacon space station, which plays a pivotal role in the whole High Republic saga.

Unlike Eleodie Maracavanya, who uses neopronouns, Ceret and Terec both use they/them pronouns. In the comics, they go on a series of Jedi adventures, butting heads with both the Hutts and the space marauders known as the Nihil, who act as the primary villains for much of the High Republic story. The twins ultimately escape the climactic destruction of the Starlight Beacon, leaving them alive and available for more stories to be told in the future.

While they were the first trans characters introduced in “Star Wars,” Ceret and Terec are no longer the only ones. E. K. Johnston’s 2022 novel “Star Wars: Queen’s Hope” introduced a transfem clone trooper called Sister, as well as a genderfluid human character named Tepoh.

Sci-fi and fantasy stories can be beautiful spaces to imagine different ways of being. Unfortunately, that imaginative space often butts up against what’s deemed “brand-friendly” when the story in question is part of a massive franchise like “Star Wars.” Queer representation has become much more common in the series, with characters like “The Acolyte” protagonist Osha (Amandla Stenberg) and fan-favorite Doctor Aphra getting a lot of attention. The addition of so many more genderqueer characters in recent years is undeniably another big step for Lucasfilm, and things are definitely trending in the right direction.

Though the nonbinary Jedi in “Tales of the Empire” had a very small role, any representation on Disney+ is substantially more high-profile than supporting characters in novels or comics. More recently in 2024, Abigail Thorn became the first out transgender actor to play a named character in “Star Wars” onscreen, appearing as Eurus in “The Acolyte,” a member of the Force witch coven on Brendok. Showrunner Leslye Headland and star Amandla Stenberg are both gay, and Stenberg uses both she/her and they/them pronouns. Diversity behind the camera is always great to see, but live-action “Star Wars” projects still generally eschew putting openly queer or genderqueer characters in the spotlight.

With the limitless potential of a sci-fi universe, there’s tons of room for more exploration of gender within “Star Wars.” In a 2021 Tumblr post, author Claudia Gray — a longstanding member of Lucasfilm’s writer bullpen — wrote that “there are brand new genders and thousands of species in the GFFA.” Slowly but surely, we seem to be getting there.