Edwardo Pérez
The original trio of Luke, Leia, and Han might've been played by White actors, but Star Wars has always been diverse, highlighting actors of color in various, often significant roles: not just heard (like African American actor James Earl Jones as Darth Vader, African American actor Ahmed Best as Jar Jar Binks, or Kenyan/Mexican actress Lupita Nyong'o as Maz Kanata), but seen.
In The Empire Strikes Back, African American actor Billy Dee Williams turned the trio into a quartet as Lando Calrissian (a role Donald Glover later effortlessly stepped into in Solo). Samuel L. Jackson’s prequel trilogy character, Mace Windu, was Yoda's equal, and wielded the coolest purple lightsaber the galaxy's ever seen. Indeed, Williams and Jackson did not just represent Black actors and the Black community as Lando and Jedi Master Windu: they gave fans heroic, consequential characters to root for, characters who instantly became as iconic and as legendary as the original cast.1
In The Last Jedi, we see Kelly Marie Tran and Veronica Ngo (both of Vietnamese heritage), following Chinese actor Ken Leung in The Force Awakens and Chinese actors Donnie Yen and Wen Jiang in Rogue One. The latter also featured Mexican actor Diego Luna, Riz Ahmed (of British Pakistani heritage), and African American actor Forrest Whitaker as Saw Gerrera. The sequel trilogy featured British Nigerian actor John Boyega and Oscar Isaac (of Guatemalan heritage), while Solo also featured Thandie (now Thandiwe) Newton of British Zimbabwean heritage – and we have not even covered the voice actors and characters from the animated series and Disney+ shows!2
Despite all of this diversity, casting Boyega as stormtrooper FN‐2187 (christened “Finn”) in The Force Awakens raised some interesting questions regarding cultural representation in Star Wars – because while we'd seen TIE fighter pilots (and later Death Troopers) with black armor, we'd never seen a helmetless stormtrooper with black skin. This fact wasn't lost on Boyega, who's criticized the treatment of his character, framing his criticism (and his experience filming the sequels) through a racial lens.
For Jamaican British sociologist Stuart Hall (1932–2014), viewing Black subjects like Finn through a racial lens requires “the recognition that ‘black’ is essentially a politically and culturally constructed category,”3 one rooted in “the common legacy of struggle and resistance that, as [W.E.B.] Du Bois put it, is the ‘social heritage of slavery,’ alongside the distinctive forms of life shaped by the subjection to a ‘common disaster,’ and the depth and intensity with which black expressive cultures have been formed by what [Du Bois] called ‘one long memory.’”4 If Hall and Du Bois are right, how can this lens help us see how Finn is constructed in the sequels? How does he represent the heritage/disaster/memory that Hall and Du Bois recount?
In the prequels, clone troopers were established as clones of Jango Fett, played by Maori‐descended actor Temuera Morrison in Attack of the Clones (who's currently Boba Fett in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett).5 Yet, in the sequels, stormtroopers aren't grown in a cloning facility – they are taken as children and indoctrinated into the First Order. So, we not only get Boyega's Finn, we also get former stormtrooper Jannah (played by Naomi Ackie, a British actress whose family is from Grenada) and others who defected from Company 77 and settled on Kef Bir. Regardless of whether they are cloned or taken from homes, the life of a stormtrooper is forced servitude. They aren't just military troops trained to follow orders – and shoot with really bad aim – they are slaves and are treated as such. Stormtroopers are free labor and can be replaced or reconditioned; they do not have autonomy or agency. This is the legacy Finn is thrust into and it's significant – not just because Finn is the first Black stormtrooper we see, but because of what being an enslaved Black man (who was taken as a child) means outside the Star Wars narrative.
For example, Hall observes that racism “creates a seductive black‐and‐white symbolic universe,” framed through the oppositions of “them and us, primitive and civilized, light and dark.”6 Seeing Finn as a Black stormtrooper recasts this symbolic opposition. On one hand, this sight creates some cognitive dissonance, especially if we consider how stormtroopers in every trilogy reference the Nazi Sturmabteilung known as the SA, Brown Shirts, or Storm Troopers (Sturmtruppen). It's difficult to picture Black men as Nazi soldiers. On the other hand, knowing that Finn was taken as a child and enslaved, his character references the Atlantic Slave Trade of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.
For African American writer Saidiya Hartman, “the most universal definition of the slave is a stranger.”7 This does not just describe the reality of a slave as a nonhuman living among humans in an existence that's always outside and othered. It's also the reality of how slaves are made; as Hartman observes, theirs is an origin rooted in loss, especially of their mother: “To lose your mother was to be denied your kin, country, and identity. To lose your mother was to forget your past.” Hartman adds that “the history of the transatlantic slave trade” could be summed up by the recognition that slaves were not just strangers, they were orphans.8 She notes that for fugitives of slavery, “old identities sometimes had to be jettisoned in order to invent new ones.” This meant that “your life just might depend on this capacity for self‐fashioning,” and that “naming oneself anew was sometimes the price exacted by the practice of freedom.”9
Finn's certainly lost whatever family he once had and he's definitely a fugitive, but it's Poe who names him. Finn accepts the name and the individual agency that goes with it – and while Finn initially lies to Rey and BB‐8 that he's part of the Resistance, this is an identity he ends up legitimately embracing. As Finn, he begins a journey that transforms him from First Order Stormtrooper FN‐2187 to Resistance General Finn. And since everyone in the First Order still recognizes him (albeit as a traitor!), his survival does not depend on his capacity to refashion himself. Instead, it depends on accepting his new identity and on defining that identity through his commitment to the Resistance – to the point that he becomes known to Rose not as Finn, but as “The Finn” in The Last Jedi.
He's “The Finn” not just because he helped the Resistance blow up Starkiller base, but because he embodies one of the most significant narrative aspects of the sequel trilogy – it's not just that stormtroopers are no longer cloned, it's that they are able to think for themselves. Finn is not part of a (mostly) mindless collective, blindly following orders.10 Rather, he's able to contemplate the morality of an order and choose not to follow it.
Sadly, this theme never really gets developed in the sequel trilogy. We do see Jannah, in The Rise of Skywalker, confess to disobeying an order in a way that's similar to Finn's disobedience in The Force Awakens. Yet the only explanation we get is that she had “a feeling,” which Finn, upon reflection, attributes to “the Force.” Finn, it seems – like Maz and “Broom Boy” Temiri Blagg from The Last Jedi – is Force‐sensitive. But like everything else with Finn, this never gets fully developed.
What's paramount, though, is that Finn's conscience speaks not just to his capacity to refashion himself, it also serves as a rebuke to how Black existence has historically been framed, especially in America. As Joe R. Feagin observes, systemic racism in the United States is rooted in persistent beliefs of Black inferiority and White superiority, what Feagin calls the white racial frame – “the dominant racial frame that has long legitimated, rationalized, and shaped racial oppression and inequality in [America].”11 Thus, in showing freedom of thought (or freedom of any kind), Finn claims equal status, a status that Kylo Ren acknowledges, that Rose idolizes, and that Poe (and Rey) embrace – but one that Boyega, in spite of all this, seems frustrated with.
In an interview on NPR's “Fresh Air,” Boyega expressed concern that the character of Finn was “bypassed,” not just in the films but also in the marketing – notably, when his image was minimized in the Chinese poster for The Force Awakens. As Boyega notes, “I was just like, well, I'm in the movie […] and I guess a lot of people forgot that, at the time, I was the only Black guy on the cast.”12 Or, as he put it in a GQ interview, “I'm the only cast member who had their own unique experience of that franchise based on their race […] nobody else had the uproar and death threats sent to their Instagram DMs and social media, saying, ‘Black this and black that and you should not be a Stormtrooper.’ Nobody else had that experience.”13 As Boyega explained in comments aimed at Disney, “Like, you guys knew what to do with Daisy Ridley, you knew what to do with Adam Driver. You knew what to do with these other people, but when it came to Kelly Marie Tran, when it came to John Boyega, you know fuck all. So what do you want me to say?”14
Certainly, there are plenty of criticisms that could be leveled about the sequel trilogy (if not the entire Star Wars saga), and Boyega's take on how Finn is treated is valid – not just because Finn is initially depicted in The Force Awakens as a co‐lead with Rey (and reduced to comic relief), but because Boyega is a solid actor whose talents, at times, are wasted. Nevertheless, while Boyega's frustration is aimed at Disney, it might also have to do with the issue of colorism.
Novelist and social activist Alice Walker coined and defined colorism as the “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same‐race people based solely on their color,” according to Kimberly Jade Norwood and Violeta Solonova Foreman.15 For Norwood and Foreman, colorism, at root, is concerned with the lightness and darkness of skin tone, with preference given to whiteness. Historically, Nina G. Jablonski explains, “Great meaning was attached to human blackness, because black had consistently negative connotations in Indo‐European languages, and darkness – such as the darkness of night – had a long standing association with evil.”16 So … in Star Wars … light side equals good and dark side equals … yeah, maybe Jablonski has a point, but does this really account for how Boyega's Finn has been treated? If so, is it intentional, historical, or just an unfortunate coincidence?
Colorism in the United States took root during the period of slavery, when the “coalescence of needs, beliefs, justifications, and practices had the effect of placing white skin at a premium and dehumanizing black skin.”17 Norwood and Foreman add, “These beliefs and preferences hold true today. The closer one's skin color is to white, the closer one is to being treated with elevated status.”18 This gives us an interesting take on Boyega's Finn and Ackie's Jannah, does not it? For how are we supposed to see them? Are we supposed to be surprised that they were Black stormtroopers? Is their color supposed to matter? Is it meant as a reference to slavery and slave rebellion? And given this history of servitude, is it appropriate (or maybe even racially insensitive?) that Finn and Jannah were Black stormtroopers?
While the parallels to slavery are clear, the sequel trilogy never explores how (or why) children are taken and trained to become stormtroopers in the First Order. It's not until the season one finale of The Bad Batch (“Kamino Lost”) that we learn the Empire destroyed Kamino and its cloning facilities, which at least explains why the First Order troopers aren't clones. Clones or not, what's key to the story is that Finn and Jannah claim their agency and an identity beyond an alphanumeric designation. Indeed, Finn and Jannah portray the humanization of the stormtrooper. They're no longer expendable clones, but unique individuals whose color should not matter.
Yet, if we laud Finn and Jannah for having the courage to claim an identity, we have to also criticize them (and every Resistance member in the sequels) for their indifferent treatment of every other stormtrooper in the sequel trilogy. Why is not one of the goals of the Resistance to assist other troopers in being freed or finding their autonomy? Why must every other stormtrooper besides Finn and Jannah be indiscriminately killed, or, for comic relief, shown to be weak‐minded through Rey's use of Force abilities? And given the stunt‐casting of Daniel Craig, Tom Hardy, Ed Sheeran, and Princes William and Harry (all White celebrities), how seriously are we to take the nature of stormtroopers and the issue of slavery?
Other than its being morally unjustifiable, slavery is problematic in Star Wars because of its inconsistent portrayal within the narrative. In general, it's all but ignored, even by the Jedi. So when it surfaces (whether in droids, humans, or clones) there is not any clear message. Droids are bought and sold, Clones are indiscriminately killed, and humans like Anakin are freed, but not his mother. L3‐37 leads a revolt and Finn and Jannah escape, but slave rebellion is not the type of rebellion Star Wars is about.19 This is what makes Finn (and later Jannah) perhaps the most interesting and compelling characters of the sequel trilogy – and the most wasted in terms of narrative potential, as Boyega observes.
Ironically, Finn's story is more of an “awakening” than Rey's, especially when she finds she's not Luke's daughter. Rey seems to be clearly positioned as Luke's daughter in The Force Awakens, but she's retconned to being “no one” in The Last Jedi, until she's retconned yet again to being Palpatine's granddaughter in The Rise of Skywalker. This is not interesting, it does not subvert expectations: it's lazy writing. Finn, as a stormtrooper who escapes the First Order and joins the Resistance is arguably a better (and more timely) story – or at least it was in The Force Awakens, because in The Last Jedi, Finn becomes inconsequential, as Boyega contends. Rose may refer to him as “The Finn,” yet he does not really seem to have a place in the Resistance (other than being a living encyclopedia of First Order knowledge) until he meets Jannah in The Rise of Skywalker. Still, his role in all three sequel films often drifts into comic relief – which, at times, borders on what's called “the minstrel stereotype.”
Jennifer Bloomquist writes that there is “a protracted history of Whites creating Black caricatures,” which includes “underdeveloped Black characters” in American entertainment.20 As Bloomquist explains, entertainers known as “Ethiopian delineators” were “all‐White, all‐male casts in blackface,” adding that the “comedy hinged on gross misrepresentations of what the actors determined to be (southern) Black culture, including singing, dancing, and delivering comedic speeches.”21 As Bloomquist notes, these shows were not only based on stereotypes, they were also used “as a tool to further malign Blacks and to promote justifications for slavery.”22 Among the archetypes developed in such shows are “Zip Coon, Jim Crow, Uncle Tom, and Sambo,” but the most potent weapon minstrel shows utilized to “demoralize, dehumanize, and subjugate Blacks” is so‐called “Black language.”23
To be fair, Finn is not dancing, singing, or delivering comedic speeches (though he does have some comedic dialogue) and he does not speak in a “negro dialect” or appear to be a caricature or stereotype. However, Finn could be seen as resembling an “Uncle Tom,” especially as defined by Folklorist Patricia A. Turner. She views “Tom” as “having a supposed identification with his masters/employers and … contempt for his own (black) kind … (having) racial self‐hate … willing to ‘sell out’ blacks in order to placate whites and improve his personal well‐being.”24 Is it a stretch that Finn is selling out First Order stormtroopers? That the stormtroopers who call him a “traitor” might as well be calling him an “Uncle Tom”? As for Finn's speech, it's worth noting that Boyega adopted an American accent rather than use his native British accent. Why cannot Finn speak with the same “received pronunciation” as Rey or Jannah?25 Much ado was made about Rey speaking in a British accent (with initial fan theories suggesting she was related to Obi‐Wan), yet her accent does not make sense on Jakku and Finn's does not make sense in the First Order either.
As Bloomquist notes, the so‐called “negro dialect” was exaggerated in minstrelsy “in an attempt to underscore widely held White beliefs about Black intelligence, integrity, and morality.”26 Included in this is the depiction of Black men as “always sexually preoccupied,” especially with White women. Finn is certainly enamored with Rey – to the point that it drives his narrative decisions in all three sequel films. Does this make Finn some sort of Mandingo stereotype who cannot control his urges for Rey? And consider how Rose, after calling Finn a hero, quickly turns to assuming he's a coward trying to escape. Or how Finn, especially in The Last Jedi, gets negated by Rose throughout the narrative. Being “The Finn” is not enough to give him the benefit of the doubt and speaking in an American accent perhaps makes it easier not to take him seriously. If so, is Finn the victim of linguistic racism?
Most heroic characters in Star Wars (Luke, Han, Lando, Mace, Poe, Anakin) speak in American accents. So, there's nothing inherently wrong or racist in having Finn speak in an American accent. Still, if Jannah could keep her British accent (which makes narrative sense) why could not Finn? Other than not wanting Rey and Finn to talk like two Brits in The Force Awakens (for American audiences' sake?), there's no good narrative reason. It might not be racist or an intentional effort to deny Finn any privilege that White characters enjoy. Yet, when taken into the fuller account of Finn's narrative, it at least seems like another missed opportunity to develop his character.
Ultimately, Boyega's concerns about Finn seem justified. Yet, Boyega overlooks the presence of culture and the representation of other races and ethnicities throughout the Star Wars films and even throughout the various television series. It's unfortunate that Boyega had such a negative experience, as Finn is a heroic, admirable character. It's also unfortunate that the sequel trilogy (especially The Last Jedi) squandered the opportunity to develop what could've been a more significant character and narrative. Yet, with shows like The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, Andor, and The Book of Boba Fett – which all feature prominent actors and characters of color – it seems like Disney might have heard Boyega's criticism and reacted. All they need now is a series that focuses on Finn and Jannah traveling through the galaxy helping First Order troopers reunite with the families they have lost. Maybe this could be the basis for a genuinely new order throughout the galaxy, one that remembers the horrors of slavery and makes sure that it never happens again – to humans, nonhumans, and droids.