Finn and Lando’s ethical realignments are further reenacted in Squadrons’ campaign: Captain Lindon Javes (Phil Morris) betrays his protégé Kerrill and switches sides to join the rebels, citing his principled objection to the Empire, preempting, surely, complaints of his being a poor cultural fit. Boyega’s FN-2187 in The Force Awakens soon adopts the more humanized moniker “Finn” after joining up with the righteous New Republic. The sole named Black character in the original trilogy, Lando Calrissian, played by the remarkable Billy Dee Williams, may have done deals with the Empire, but he is remembered most of all as a hero of the Rebellion. It has, after all, only ever been the rainbow-coalition Rebellion that’s been allowed to showcase any form of diversity in the Star Wars films. Despite the noxious racism behind these complaints, they contained an unintentional kernel of truth. The hashtag #blackstormtrooper racked up posts on social media as users registered their disbelief at the idea that a Black man could ever serve as a stormtrooper. When, in the first few moments of the trailer for 2015’s The Force Awakens, a familiarly white-suited stormtrooper removed his helmet to reveal himself as the Black British actor John Boyega, parts of the internet exploded in uproar. Though the New Republic is just as diverse, if not more so, and the character options for both sides of the conflict feature more minority characters than not, it’s particularly striking to see the classically white, male Empire being run by women of color, commanding diverse squadrons and answering to no one but themselves. Titan Squadron, the Imperial unit the player spends half the campaign flying in, is led by Captain Terisa Kerrill (Peta Sergeant), an Asian woman with a buoyant blonde pompadour, who reports directly to Grand Admiral Rae Sloane (Dionne Aduain), a Black woman.

The uniforms may be as crisply and meticulously arranged, the enormous hangars swathed in the same metallic gray durasteel, but its soldiers, and its officers in particular, rather than the wrinkled old white men we’ve come to expect, are mostly young people of color. Squadrons’ single-player campaign, which has you fly as a Rebel and Imperial pilot both, is set in the years immediately following the events of 1983’s Return of the Jedi, offering a new installment in the never-ending conflict between the resurgent New Republic and the creaking old Empire.īut the Empire of Squadrons looks, admittedly, pretty different from how it was depicted in Return of the Jedi, or any of the rest of the films from which it bases the majority of its aesthetic. In early October, EA released Star Wars: Squadrons, a shiny new, VR-ready homage to classic early Star Wars-branded space sims like LucasArts’ Star Wars: TIE Fighter and others.

Empire at war rebel campaign