As the audience rose to applaud at Rogue One’s 2016 world premiere, Joshua Yehl remained in his seat, sobbing so hard his body shook. Yehl had spent years lining up for Star Wars showings with his best friend Drew Leinonen. But this year, for the first time, he was alone. Leinonen had been shot to death six months prior, one of the 49 victims of Omar Saddiqui Mateen’s brutal attack on an Orlando gay club.

After the massacre, Yehl had petitioned Lucasfilm to introduce a gay Star Wars character in tribute to Leinonen. #PutDrewInStarWars amassed nearly 12,000 signatures, an endorsement from Mark Hamill, and extensive global coverage. One journalist invited Yehl to the premiere of Rogue One—where, despite being “an absolute mess of nerves,” Yehl introduced himself to Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy.

“She had heard of my petition,” Yehl recalls. “She said she would consider putting a gay character in Star Wars if it was the right story and the right character.”

It’s a sentiment that Kennedy has voiced before. “The demographics within our business don’t reflect society, and they certainly don’t reflect the audience,” she said in a 2013 interview. “There should be many, many more faces of color, many more women, many more gay people.”

The new Star Wars films unquestionably succeed in creating new icons for women and people of color. Diverse heroes like Finn (played by John Boyega), Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), and Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) are deeply validating to viewers who seldom see themselves rendered with such humanity. “In 2015, I was still grappling with the complexities of my trans identity,” says __ Alejandro,__ 18, a Colombian-American Star Wars fan. (Alejandro is not his real name; we’re using a pseudonym because he isn’t out to his entire family yet.) “Then I experienced Poe Dameron. I saw the man I wanted to be.”

But despite Kennedy’s call for “many more gay people,” the Star Wars films have thus far failed to introduce a single L.G.B.T.Q. character, let alone a central gay couple. Queer fans have lobbied since 2015 for a romantic relationship between Poe and Finn—a move Boyega would support, as he indicated in an October 2017 interview. “Oscar is always looking at me with love in his eyes, and I guess that the fans saw it,” the actor said. “And then they realized that either [Poe] needs to chill or come out.”