EA Motive had dropped a fantastic CG short for Star Wars: Squadrons yesterday, and it gave us a look at new Imperial character Varko Grey. With the franchise slowly opening itself up to inclusion and representation, it's been revealed that Varko is actually a gay character.
As revealed in the official Star Wars databank, Grey is married to another man by the name of Emory. Here's the full description:
Varko Grey started his career as a police officer on Parkella, fighting to keep order in the face of corruption and injustice. In time he joined up as an Imperial TIE pilot, seeing the Empire as the only hope for a chaotic galaxy. Beating the odds to survive battle after battle — much to the relief of his husband Emory — Grey's skills and experience eventually earned him a promotion to Titan Leader. Over the years, Grey has wrestled internally with the Empire's methods, but he's seen too many TIE pilots sacrifice their lives for Imperial ideals to reject them now.
If anything, I don't really expect to see Varko's personal life explored in the game, so this one feels like a small piece of trivia with no real consequence. While we already have several gay characters in the franchise like Doctor Aphra, Lucasfilm and Disney are still very sparing on their inclusion of gay characters on the big screen; even that same-sex kiss in The Rise of Skywalker was cut out for some audiences. I guess baby steps are still steps.
Catch Varko Grey in Star Wars: Squadrons which comes out on Oct. 2 for the Xbox One, PC, and PS4.
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