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You can use a lot of words to describe Star Wars, with many of them being positive. However, you cannot say that it has handled its various romances well. In fact, each Star Wars trilogy handles romance in such a uniquely baffling way that I start to wonder if it was always meant to be bad romantasy. The idea of Star Wars as terrible romantasy is one that has been bouncing around in my mind for a while and I think I've figured out why I feel this way. 

Let’s start back in the original Star Wars trilogy, which set up both the fact that this was a fantasy story dressed up as sci-fi and the fact that George Lucas didn’t think about the repercussions of making major changes to his lore halfway through. The bulk of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back sets up a love triangle involving Leia, Han, and Luke, despite the fact that the three of them are barely at the same place at the same time throughout the movie. A New Hope introduced the idea of Luke being into Leia, which is reinforced in an early Empire scene where Leia gives Luke a very unchaste kiss on the lips. 

The thing about love triangles is that it is difficult to set them up where all three characters remain friends at the end. Barring some sort of throuple situation developing, someone is walking away from that plotline with a broken heart. Now, this could have been avoided if Luke had been seen to dedicate himself to his Jedi training and decide he didn’t have time for romantic entanglements, paving the way for Leia and Han’s relationship to blossom, but that’s the way George Lucas’ mind works. No, he went the Estranged Incest route to make sure everyone gets to stand together smiling as the Death Star explodes. Instead of giving Luke a little more character development, he made Skywalker family dinners infinitely more awkward by making sure both Leia's brother and husband know what her tongue tastes like.

Then came the prequel trilogy, which made a valiant attempt at an early Shadow Daddy in Anakin Skywalker. He’s broody. He’s haunted by a dark past. He’s got mysterious powers that make him both a bad decision and incredibly alluring. This trope is constantly popping up in romantasy fiction and is a big reason why books like A Court of Thorns and Roses and Fourth Wing have gotten so popular. Romantasy readers love to make some bad decisions for themselves. 

The problem here comes not from the trope itself but from its setup. George Lucas’ decision to make Anakin a literal child when he and Padme meet each other makes any possible romance between them err on the icky side of things. It is like a kid having a crush on his babysitter or his teacher, which would be normal for Anakin, considering he was taken from his mother and trained as a space wizard child soldier. It only becomes a problem when the older figure, in this case Padme, reciprocates that affection and acts on it. The age gap here gives it some weird context that the plot simply didn’t need if they’d just made Anakin a little older in The Phantom Menace.

But it isn’t just George Lucas who doesn’t understand romance or how to write it. J.J. Abrams also fell into the terrible romantasy hole in the sequel trilogy. Specifically, with whatever the heck was happening with Rey and Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. It was a kiss that came out of nowhere, with no setup or justification to it. Just a guy who was dying shooting his shot with the girl he’s spent most of the past 2.75 movies trying to kill and her being too polite to tell him no.

You see this in some bad romantasy books, which we won’t name since people still put time and effort into them and we gotta respect that. If your main characters don’t have at least a touch of chemistry together, you can’t force the romantic payoff at the end. The closest thing that the sequel trilogy does is set up Kylo Ren and Rey as a dyad of the Force, which gives them a connection but not one that ever feels particularly romantic. The fact that J.J. Abrams thought that any sort of connection had to eventually become romantic shows a frankly juvenile understanding of human relationships, another hallmark of terrible romantasy stories.

This isn’t a “Star Wars is bad” piece by any means. I love Star Wars, and I have a lot of corroborating fanfiction on my hard drive. But the decisions made in every Star Wars trilogy make them feel like bad romantasy in hindsight. There are a lot of things that Star Wars does well, but romance has never been one of them. Unless some of the new voices coming to the franchise can change that.

Get to know, understand, and love the Star Wars franchise more with our Star Wars watch order, guide to all the upcoming Star Wars movies & TV shows, and all the Star Wars movies and Star Wars TV shows ranked.