Why people think these 'Rogue One' characters are gay

Warning: This article contains a few serious spoilers for the movie Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

Contrary to the opinions of a tiny group of homophobic fans, there is nothing controversial about including gay characters in the increasingly diverse Star Wars galaxy.

Author Chuck Wendig has already done so explicitly, in the Force Awakens prequel novel Aftermath. Director J.J. Abrams, asked earlier this year if he would like to see gay characters included in Star Wars movies, didn't hesitate for a second: "Of course," he said.

But that doesn't necessarily make Rogue One characters Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen) and Chirrut Imwe (Donnie Yen) Star Wars' first on-screen gay couple—especially not in a series of movies that tend to focus on friendship and family, and barely hint at romance.

The notion that Baze and Chirrut were an item was born in a recent piece on Vulture piece, and spread quickly to other news sites in a classically clickbaity, game-of-telephone fashion.

The sum total of Vulture's evidence is that the long-time colleagues, who are both "Guardians of the Temple of the Whills," bicker affectionately like an old married couple. And when (here comes the first big spoiler!) Chirrut dies heroically on the beaches of Scarif near the end of the film, he "raises his hand as if to caress Baze's cheek."

By which standard, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) were lovers prior to Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Here's Qui-Gon's death scene: note, at 1:10, Qui-Gon is actually caressing Obi-Wan's cheek.

This is a standard trope for Star Wars death scenes. (Remember the last thing Han Solo did after Kylo Ren, a.k.a. Ben Solo, ran him through with a lightsaber? He reached out to touch his son's cheek.) It's also a pretty standard trope among all action movie death scenes.

True, Hollywood's got a decent history of signaling gay relationships between characters in under-the-radar fashion; Vulture rightly points to the eye-opening documentary The Celluloid Closet.

But sometimes a dying soldier's cheek-stroke is just a dying soldier's cheek-stroke—a heartfelt expression of simple male affection in a world that seems to allow too few opportunities for them.

Are you free to believe that there's more to Baze and Chirrut's bromance, off-screen? Of course! Just as many have imagined and written what they want about Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon, or Finn and Poe in The Force Awakens. Former stormtrooper and Rebel pilot Poe share meaningful looks when they're reunited; Poe biting his lip for a brief second was the gesture that launched a thousand fan fictions.

This kind of "headcanon" (as nerds call their own internal storylines) has a long and proudly gay history. You may have heard of "slash," a kind of fan fiction that is explicitly sexual; it was named for the slash in "Kirk/Spock," the first but by no means the last set of stories about Star Trek characters and what they get up to in their off-duty hours.

Members of the Lucasfilm Story Group, which guides the various strands of the Star Wars universe in the wake of George Lucas' departure, have encouraged any headcanon that doesn't contradict written or filmed material.

This is one of the major joys of the galaxy far, far away: it's driven by mystery, and fan theories abound. So are Baze and Chirrut lovers? They are if you want them to be. But nothing in Rogue One explicitly tells us so.