Star Wars has moved on – it’s time its toxic fans did too

The trolls hurling racist abuse at Obi-Wan Kenobi star Moses Ingram have no place in the universe George Lucas built – or the modern world

Star Wars fans have spent the past 10 years in an adolescent huff of galaxy-spanning proportions. Ever since Disney acquired the brand from George Lucas in 2012, their ire has had the ferocity of a fully operational Death Star closing in on Alderaan.

How dare Disney ruin their childhoods by turning Star Wars into something other than a romping space epic aimed at under-12s? What does the House of Mouse think it is at trying to add nuance to characters such as Luke and Leia, as it did in Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi? Where does the studio get off in making Daisy Ridley’s Rey – from the notorious “sequels trilogy” – a plucky heroine, with Jedi abilities and top-class piloting skills. They’d have never tried that with Luke. It’s outrageous!

Such views are ubiquitous among Star Wars veterans. In our man-caves we hold our Empire Strikes Back figurines to the light and we quietly rage. And this hate can lead to the dark side as we have seen with the horrific racist abuse directed at actress Moses Ingram, who plays the saga’s new villain, Inquisitor Reva Sevander, in Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Just to get it out of the way, the latest Disney+ Star Wars show is honkingly average and sinking further into mediocrity with each passing week. Episode three featured a penny-pinching confrontation between Kenobi and Darth Vader – the tragic Lone Wolf and Cub of George Lucas’s universe – that looked like something from Eighties Doctor Who. It was filmed in a quarry, the dialogue and special effects beyond abysmal. You half-expected a RADA-trained alien wearing bin-liner and a cardboard helmet to blunder into camera-shot. As the sorry fandango unfolded, another layer of Star Wars mystique was stripped away. (Nonetheless, Obi-Wan Kenobi is reportedly the most-watch series on Disney+.)

Ingram’s character, Reva, is pretty hokey, too – a slightly one-note baddie who, at least in the early episodes, comes off as a pale imitation of Star Wars antagonists such as Emperor Palpatine and Vintage Vader himself.

Moses Ingram as Inquisitor Reva Sevander in Obi-Wan KenobiCredit: Disney+

But that is not her fault, and nor is it any excuse for the onslaught the actress has suffered. And you have to wonder, where was the vitriol when Domhnall Gleeson likewise added to the stockpile of awful Star Wars bad guys as General Hux in those sequels movies? Or what about Bill Burr’s clunking turn as antihero Migs Mayfield in The Mandalorian? Those characters were every bit as undercooked as Reva. How much push-back did Bill Burr experience?

Ingram was told in advance by Lucasfilm that she would become a target of disgruntled Star Wars fans (how depressing that such should a warning is necessary). Even so, the volume of abuse appears to have caught unawares everyone involved with Obi-Wan Kenobi. That includes star and executive producer Ewan McGregor who decried the attacks on his co-star in an Instagram video filmed from his car.

“It seems that some of the fan base has decided to attack Moses Ingram online and send her the most horrendous, racist [direct messages]. I heard some of them this morning, and it just broke my heart,” said McGregor. “If you’re sending her bullying messages, you’re no Star Wars fan in my mind.”

Ingram, even after being forewarned, was shocked by the abuse. “There’s nothing anybody can do to stop this hate,” she said on Instagram. “I question my purpose in even being here in front of you saying that this is happening. I don’t really know.”

A personal message from Ewan McGregor. pic.twitter.com/rJSDmj663K
— Star Wars (@starwars) June 1, 2022

Every major pop culture brand – from the Marvel movies to Taylor Swift – has toxic fans. But Star Wars is in a category of its own, with a significant segment of the audience existing in a state of perpetual outrage. All the way back to 1999 and George Lucas’s Prequel trilogy – long before Disney’s involvement – we took a ghoulish glee in feeling offended whenever Star Wars departed from the tone of the original movies.

Venting about Star Wars is not the same thing as directing racist hate at actors, it is true. And yet this is surely a slippery slope. Look at the impact of those previous backlashes on former child actor Jake Lloyd – his childhood effectively ruined by reaction to The Phantom Menace – and Jar Jar Binks actor Ahmed Best, who considered suicide at one point.

The problem is that when toxicity becomes the default in a fanbase, extremes within that group feel they have permission to go one further and pivot towards racism. Ingram certainly isn’t the first to discover this. John Boyega was abused during the Disney trilogy (Disney did not cover itself in glory by turning his character into comic relief) while Kelly Marie Tran was hounded mercilessly after portraying Rose in Johnson’s The Last Jedi (after which Disney quietly downgraded Rose to glorified extra).

Rosario Dawson as AhsokaCredit: Disney+

Star Wars defenders will point out that many actors from a minority backgrounds have been welcomed – Giancarlo Esposito as Moth Gideon in The Mandalorian, and Rosario Dawson as renegade Jedi Ahsoka Tano in a forthcoming spin-off, for instance. Effectively, they’re expecting credit for their selective racism.

As Star Wars is buffeted by the latest backlash, some have suggested the franchise may be beyond saving and that it is unfair to constantly put actors in the firing line. “I love persity as much as the next person, but we gotta stop throwing black and brown creators and actors onto the buzzsaw of fandom,” wrote author Brandon Taylor in a social media post. “We keep… trying, but I think at a certain point, you just gotta be like, okay, so this text is not compatible with persity no matter how hard we try, so let’s just get a new text, lol.”

He deleted the post soon afterwards. And certainly many would disagree that Star Wars should be abandoned to the racists. Surely, though, it’s worth asking if Star Wars fandom has reached a critical mass of toxicity. It is clearly not welcoming to actors from minority backgrounds – while anyone who tries to expand the universe (as Johnson did with Last Jedi) is viciously hounded.

The majority of Star Wars fans are obviously not knuckle-dragging trolls. And yet, in our ranks we self-evidently shelter those who are “triggered” whenever someone from a background different to their own is added to the mythology. These people are unlikely to change. But the rest of us can.

And maybe the first step is to accept it is no longer 1981 and that the Star Wars of Empire Strikes Back, a quippy young Harrison Ford and an unsurpassably cool Carrie Fisher is gone never to return. Star Wars has moved on. And perhaps it is time elements within the fanbase finally grew up too.