Star Wars set to make Lando Calrissian ‘canonically pansexual’ in special Pride Month release
Donald Glover portrays Lando Calrissian in Solo: A Star Wars Story. (Lucasfilm)
Fans believe Star Wars’ Lando Calrissian is about to be confirmed as canonically pansexual, with the iconic character set to star on the cover of a Marvel Star Wars comics Pride Month issue.
Fans of the saga have believed Calrissian to be pansexual since the release of Solo: A Star Wars Story, which saw Donald Glover take on the role made famous by Billy Dee Williams.
Many picked up on Calrissian’s flirting with Han Solo, with Solo story writer Jonathan Kasdan telling HuffPost in 2018 that Calrissian is indeed pansexual.
Now, the Marvel Star Wars comics appear to be making Calrissian’s sexuality canon, announcing he will appear on a special Pride Month cover.
“This Pride Month, gay and transgender artists will pay homage to some of the LGBTQ+ characters inhabiting a galaxy far, far away in a special line of variant comic book covers,” the official Star Wars website announced, with Calrissian among the line-up.
Wait Lando canonically pansexual?? 😳😳 ik this was supported by creators but did not know it was confirmed pic.twitter.com/JLDy9rc8k5
— Ethan 🦎 (@sheevthan) March 18, 2021
According to Marvel, the six covers feature Lando Calrissian, Doctor Aphra, Sana Starros, Rae Sloan, Yrica Quell, and Terec and Ceret.
They’ll appear on the titles Star Wars #14, Darth Vader #13, Doctor Aphra #11, Bounty Hunters #13, The High Republic #6 and Star Wars: Wars of the Bounty Hunters #1 – which are all set to hit shelves in June.
The official Star Wars website confirmed that Lando Calrissian will be featured on the cover of Star Wars #14, illustrated by Stephen Byrne. However, there’s been no hint as to what the Pride cover will look like.
Calrissian is introduced in Star Wars as a friend of Han Solo and was the original owner of the Millennium Falcon. He made a career as a con artist and a gambler before he eventually became an administrator of Cloud City and betrays Han Solo to Darth Vader. Calrissian eventually helps rescue Han from Jabba the Hutt and becomes a general in the Rebel Alliance.
Billy Dee Williams portrayed Calrissian in the original Star Wars trilogy as well as in The Rise of the Skywalker in 2019. His portrayal of Calrissian has become synonymous with the character, and it’s often his likeness that is used in other media in the Star Wars franchise.
Donald Glover portrayed a younger version of Lando Calrissian in the 2018 standalone film Solo: A Star Wars Story. There has never been any explicit classification of Calrissian’s sexuality in the original trilogy, story writer Jonathan Kasdan Kasdan emphatically agreed that the character would identify as pansexual.
“There’s a fluidity to Donald and Billy Dee’s [portrayal of Calrissian’s] sexuality,” Kasdan said.
He added he would have “loved to have gotten a more explicitly LGBT character into this movie”, and he loved the “sort of the spectrum of sexuality” that Glover appeals to.
Glover also weighed in on if he considered Calrissian pansexual. In an interview with SiriusXM, Glover iconically declared: “How can you not be pansexual in space?”
He continued by saying there are “so many things to have sex with” in space and that he didn’t consider Calrissian’s pansexuality “that weird” because “he’s coming on to everybody”.
“It just didn’t seem that weird to me cause I feel like if you’re in space it’s like the door is open,” Glover said. “It’s like no only girls or guys. No, it’s anything. This thing is literally a blob.”
