A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away feels a little too close for comfort when it comes to issues of bigotry.
But racism, misogyny and homophobia have all been issues among the Star Wars fandom.
Most recently, Moses Ingram who plays a villain in a new Star Wars show on Disney+ is getting a lot of racist comments online from the same demographic that attacked other actors of color.
Ingram shared some of the comments she's getting on Instagram.
The fan backlash against non-White actors, women and any possibility of LGBTQ+ storylines have been coming from mostly White, male fans.
The comments have gotten so bad, the Star Wars division of Disney had to speak out.
And series star Ewan McGregor addressed the issue in a video message as well.
The new Disney+ series Obi-Wan follows the Jedi between the prequel trilogy—episodes 1-3—and the original trilogy of films—episodes 4-6.
In the series so far, the primary conflict involves Ingram's character. Despite Obi-Wan trying to lay low on Tatooine and watch over a young Luke Skywalker, he’s called back to duty when Leia Organa is kidnapped under orders from an Imperial Inquisitor, Reva Sevander.
Ingram portrays Reva, trying to hunt down Obi-Wan Kenobi and get on the good side of Darth Vader. Despite the show only having two episodes available for streaming, Ingram has been singled out for online abuse.
She took to her Instagram where she shared the hundreds of racist and sexist messages she’s been receiving.
The messages in support of Ingram came quickly after she revealed the hate being directed at her.
As with previous instances of online racism and misogyny—like the attacks against Kelly Marie Tran—the White male fans took to social media to claim the racist, sexist comments are justified because they don't like Ingram's character.
There have been claims she’s just being criticized for her character, but there’s been little seen of her character yet.
Reva is hunting Obi-Wan due to her job as an inquisitor, but there’s already big hints that bringing down the Jedi is a more personal matter.
On top of this, her temper is shown in direct contrast to the calm, cool and collected way her fellow inquisitors react. This makes her stand out amongst them.
Ingram isn’t the first to suffer from racist hostility from supposed fans due to her “character.” John Boyega, who played Finn, a former storm trooper in the sequel trilogy, got a years’ worth of racist messages due to being a Black man as a storm trooper.
Kelly Marie Tran, who played Rose Tico in The Last Jedi, experienced similar harassment as well.
Ingram is insistent she will not let this deter her ambition, saying:
“I’m not built like that, so I really just wanted to come on and say thank you to the people who show up for me in the comments and the places that I’m now going to put myself.”
“And to the rest of y’all: y’all weird.”
People couldn’t be more pleased at Ingram’s determination.
Obi-Wan is currently streaming on Disney+, with new episodes weekly.
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