Star Wars has had a habit in recent years of playing coy with questions about its characters’ sexuality, encouraging fans who really want to see Oscar Isaac’s Poe and John Boyega’s Finn kiss while taking half-steps like introducing canonically LGBT characters in Star Wars novels, but not the films. Now Solo co-writer Jonathan Kasdan has declared that goateed scoundrel Lando Calrissian likes to lay his charm on all human genders (and possibly droids).
Explicitly asked if Lando is pansexual by The Huffington Post, Jonathan Kasdan—who co-wrote Solo: A Star Wars Story with his father, Lawrence Kasdan, who created the character of Lando for The Empire Strikes Back—says, “I would say yes. There’s a fluidity to Donald and Billy Dee Williams’ [portrayal of Lando’s] sexuality. I mean, I would have loved to have gotten a more explicitly LGBT character into this movie. I think it’s time, certainly, for that, and I love the fluidity―sort of the spectrum of sexuality that Donald appeals to and that droids are a part of … [Glover] doesn’t make any hard and fast rules. I think it’s fun. I don’t know where it will go.”
Beyond the general pansexual horniness of the Star Wars fandom, the question was presumably prompted by a line in one of the Solo trailers where Lando addresses Han, saying, “You might want to buckle up, baby.” Reviews of Solo have also implied that Lando has a, let’s say, unique relationship with his droid L3-37 (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) in the film, and that she makes a joke about him flirting with Han at one point. Asked about that possibility, the elder Kasdan says, “That is her personality. Maybe it means something, maybe it doesn’t.”
Note that this is not an official statement from Lucasfilm, and the odds of the Lucasfilm PR department swooping in to contain Jonathan Kasdan’s statement like they did yesterday’s quasi-announcement of a Lando spin-off are very real. But as we all know, Star Wars fans don’t like being told the odds, particularly when they could be writing sexually explicit fan fiction instead.