A kiss is just a kiss — unless it’s a same-sex smꦚooch in space.
Early viewers of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” spotted a scene with a significantꦡ kiss — but not between the characters fans were hoping for: Finn and Poe.
The smooch was instead between two minor female Resistance members who didn’t have huge roles in the film, . Still, the peck between them is reportedly the first same-sex kiss in the franchise’s history.
Director J.J. Abrams, who tells The Post he has ended his involvement with “Star Wars,” had previously teased that LGBT+ fans would be happy with an unspecified development in the new film, opening Friday.
“In the case of the LGBTQ community, it was i𓂃mportant to me that people who g🐈o to see this movie feel that they’re being represented in the film,” he earlier this month.
When pushed on what he me♑ant, heꦜ gave a vague response punctuated by a smile, according to the trade publication.
“I will say I’m giving away nothing about what happens in the movie,” Abrams said. “But I did just say what I just sa💎id.”
ꩲAnd in the same interview, Oscar Isaac, who plays Resistance member Poe, said he regretted that a relationship wasn’t de♍veloped between his character and BFF Finn, a former stormtrooper played by John Boyega.
“Personally, I kind of hoped and wished that maybe that would’ve been t💝aken further in the other films, but I don’t have control,” Isaac told Variety. “It seemed like a natural prog🧸ression, but sadly enough it’s a time when people are too afraid, I think, of… I don’t know what.” He added that it “would have been fun” to make them “boyfriends.”
Boyega seemed to back that up, saying that while the characters are currently “platonic,” their bromance is 𒐪“quite loving and open” and “it wouldn’t be too weird if it went beyond it.”
Boyega to Finn and Poe’s crack�🌠�ling chemistry in a 2017 interview with Metro. “I think that Oscar is always looking at me with love in his eyes, and I guess that the fans saw it,” he said. “And then they realized that either he needs to chill or come out.”
And plenty of fans, , would have liked for to consummate their “swoon-woﷺrthy romance saga set in space that even Jane Austen could get down with.”
But it’s also worth n🐷oting that the “Skywalker” kissers aren’t the first same-sex couple actually depicted in the fran🌄chise.
The animated, Emmy-nominated series “Star Wars Resistance” beat “Skywalker” to the punch with inter-species lovers Flix (Jim Rash, “Community”) and Orka (voiced by “Saturday Night Live” alum Bobby Moynihan). The starry lovers’ relationship was confirmed in September by executive producer Justin Ridge on the “”𒈔 podcast.
“I think it’s safe 🌸to say they’re an item,” Ridge said. “They’re absolut♔ely a gay couple and we’re proud of that.”
It remains to be seen whether that amorous animation and the “Skywalker” smooch are enough to sustain LGBTQ fans until the next franchise installment. But that doesn’t stop some from .
And viewers in the Middle East may be out of luck anyway: The Hollywood Reporter writes that theater-goers in Dubai, the city in the United Arab Emirates, say the scene , presumably due to religious and cultural concerns about homosexuality🏅, which is illegal in the Middle East. Meanwhile, routinely conservative Chinese censors the lip-lock intact.