Finn and Poe are the movie couple Hollywood desperately needs

When you think of an ‘action movie hero,’ what do you picture? If you’re anything like Hollywood, it’s probably an attractive, muscular white guy with a girl around his shoulder. This has become the standard of action cinema, the baseline for all protagonists. In the less-common case of a non-white male lead, a film typically focuses on a much different type of drama; for black actors it’s typically crime, drugs or some other stereotypical motivating factor. If you have a female protagonist, it’s commonly a movie centering around her relationship with someone, her emotional turmoil or some other superficial, less ‘masculine’ struggle. Of course not all movies do this, not by a long shot; but for blockbuster action films, it’s rare we see an outlier. If a character isn’t straight and white, they all too often become a caricature of the very thing that differentiates them.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg; when it comes to relationships between characters, the predetermined box of ideas becomes smaller still. Between two men especially, any sort of interaction outside of a quick half-hug is taboo; to express compassion without a massive detriment to one or both of them preceding it is to raise eyebrows. As for women, it’s far less strict; they interact in more personal ways, but of course are also presented as sexual objects in many films of the genre.

However, the latest entry into the Star Wars franchise took a dramatically different approach to characterization and relationships. It flat-out ignored almost all of the tropes we see in similar films, and seated itself as one of the more refreshing action films in a long time when it came to the people portrayed within it.

Before I get into my main point, let’s talk Rey. Not once — not once in the entire film is she stripped down, shot at an overtly suggestive angle or used as a typical prize to be won by her male counterparts. She’s strong; regularly handling herself just fine alongside the rest of the cast, and even remaining one of the most mysterious characters in terms of identity by the time the credits roll. In fact, the first time she interacts with another main cast member — Finn — she ends up taking down the enemy you would expect him to run in and finish off by herself. She simply exists as an individual character; but because she’s female, it’s odd to see such traditionally-masculine characterization applied to her. She doesn’t fall in love with Finn (more on that later), and she doesn’t need to run into the arms of a big, strong man to round off her character arc in the final act. Instead, she embraces a distraught Leia after returning to the Resistance base. The last time we see her is approaching Luke, a powerful exchange without much said or done between them. Rey is such a bold take on the typical female lead simply because the writers decided not to portray her as a female typically is in action films. She’s not sexualized, she’s strong, and she has motivation without being a bag of feminine tropes saddled to a love interest.

Next up, let’s talk about Finn and Rey. I was fully prepared to watch them slowly fall for each other as we’ve seen a thousand times before, but they didn’t. They didn’t! They exchanged the odd line when Finn asked if she had a boyfriend (a cute boyfriend), but outside of that, we never got the often-overused stages of movie relationships. She never fell into his arms, they never had that painfully forced moment where they stared into each other's’ eyes, and they never embraced in the final act as a confirmation of their love. This is one of the best aspects of how Rey was written; by keeping her from becoming attached to Finn, she’s set up to be a stronger character in Episode VIII. She can function as a character without needing a male counterpart to exist alongside. By the end of Episode VII, Finn and Rey could just as easily remain friends as they could be shoehorned into a relationship in the next film. Hopefully Disney has enough sense to keep going with the strong foundation formed in The Force Awakens, however, and focus on developing the more important relationship instead.

With that out of the way, let’s move on to Finn and Poe. The first time they really interact is the hallway scene in which they try to figure out an escape plan together. As Finn stammers his way through a plea for help, Poe interjects with, “you need a pilot?” This establishes their initial, unspoken agreement to at least stick together until they can make it to safety. Once they escape in the TIE fighter and get clear of the enemy ships, however, they take the time for proper introductions. As he’s known thus far in the film, FN-2187 introduces himself as such, and Poe thinks for a moment before telling him “I ain’t using it.” He repeats the FN moniker before suggesting Finn, which the ex-Stormtrooper accepts without hesitation. This is a pivotal moment in Finn’s arc — not only is Poe the first person to ever truly care about what he wants, but he gives him his name for god’s sake. Knowing that the designation FN-2187 represented exactly what Finn was trying to escape from, he refuses to refer to him as another soldier. He refuses to reaffirm the notion that Finn is anything less than human.

After the crash, we don’t see Poe for a good chunk of time; he was originally supposed to die at this point in early drafts of the script, so I guess I can’t really complain about his underuse, considering he’s alive at all by the end of it. Once Finn awakens and realizes he’s still in fact alive, his first instinct is to run back to the wreckage. He yells Poe’s name, grabbing his jacket from the cockpit and desperately trying to find a sign of the pilot before the ship sinks into the sand.

Fast-forward to the scene at the Resistance base, and Finn realizes that Poe survived. They don’t jog to each other and half-hug with a wisecrack. No, they run towards each other, going for a full embrace before hastily getting caught up. Poe comments that Finn’s wearing his jacket, but stops Finn as he tries to take it off and return it with the line that launched a thousand ships, “keep it, it suits you.” While this is more or less the extent of their interactions in the film, it says a lot about the characters and the chemistry between them that they already act so close, despite knowing each other for barely any time at all.

By the end of the film, they’ve already run through a good chunk of the tropes that movie couples are expected to; but a lot of it ends up flying by most viewers. Two men don’t register as a potential romance unless the film is marketed as the ‘gay _____ movie,’ or the characters expressly show intimate interaction. LGBT relationships are rarely given the subtleties of straight ones in film, so unless you’re looking (or desperately hoping), Finn and Poe probably just look like good buddies at the film’s close.

Now, let’s get into why it would be so incredible for the relationship to become something more than a typical ‘bromance.’ The elephant in the room is, of course, that it would be one of the only gay romances in such a large-scale franchise without strings attached. LGBT representation has ever-so-slowly been crawling into bigger films, but it’s still absent in any really huge movies. However, only one film in, the new Star Wars trilogy already has no qualms with avoiding many of the pressures of the industry; women in traditionally-male positions of power, two-thirds of the new Star Wars trio being non-white, and a lead female role existing without a romantic interest. Hell, we finally even got female Resistance pilots.

It goes deeper than that, though. Interracial couples occupy another small sliver of relationships in cinema, and even less common are interracial couples that don’t involve one white actor. Being black and Latino, respectively, both John Boyega and Oscar Isaac would be pioneering a new level of representation in such a massive and influential franchise. They (along with Rey) would be the action movie heroes to be idolized by a new generation of children, after all. It’s nearly impossible to walk into any store without seeing at least one of their faces plastered on something, and the influence The Force Awakens has is already well above what Star Wars had back in ‘77.

That might sound idealistic, but speaking from personal experience, it really would be a huge deal. I never grew up with a hero I could identify with; as much as media is superficial, it’s also a major influence on how children develop, because it influences society so heavily. If I was raised with even one real gay hero (let alone couple) to look up to, it would’ve probably changed how I approached the subject with myself years later. Star Wars is a universal thing; you see kids running around flying toy X-Wings and adults keeping playing cards and lunch boxes from their childhoods alongside each other. So how incredible would it be to see such a major cultural influence start a new wave of big-budget films — ones not based on the same old standards and character tropes, but films that aren’t afraid to take steps outside of what we’re accustomed to? Films that can raise new generations with characters and relationships that reflect the society they live in, not just Hollywood’s narrow scope of acceptability?

In terms of speculation outside the film itself, we’ve gotten a few breadcrumbs from both John and Oscar, as well as this curious tweet by Rian Johnson (director of Episode VIII), in which he posted some fan art — the contents of which I’ll let you see for yourself.

We know that everyone from the executives at Disney to the cast of the films themselves have heard fans crying out for this; in the weeks following Episode VII’s release, it was kind of a big deal around the Internet. For crying out loud, the first Google autocomplete suggestion for ‘Poe Dameron’ is ‘Poe Dameron gay.’ At this point, for Episode VIII to not at least continue dropping hints at a relationship, it would have to be a deliberate decision on Disney’s part. Sure, there’ll be some backlash from people stuck in the last century; but just like the petty few who angered over a black Stormtrooper and female First Order captain in the months preceding Episode VII’s release, the praise Disney would get for the move would be yet another addition to the pile of reasons people have to love Star Wars now, and into the future.

I only hope that Disney is brave enough to do it.