Bea Arthur’s Star Wars Holiday Special Character Turned into a Lesbian

Ackmena

In a new anthology of short stories titled, From A Certain Point of View, Star Wars writer Chuck Wendig makes Bea Arthur’s Ackmena a lesbian in his short story, “We Don’t Serve Their Kind Here.”

Wendig writes, “Wuher gave the cantina over to the night-shift barkeep, a tough old broad named Ackmena who lived out on the Delkin Ridge with her wife, Sorschi.”

In case you forgot or are too young to remember, Bea Arthur portrayed Ackmena in the Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978. Ackmena is a human female who works in the Mos Eisley Cantina on Tatooine where Obi-Wan Kenobi and Luke Skywalker first encounter Han Solo. After the Empire places a curfew on Tatooine, Ackmena offers the patrons one more round and sings to them “Good Night, But Not Goodbye” in order for them to vacate the cantina.

While Bea Arthur’s Ackmena never appears in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, her character was later added to be in the Mos Eisley Cantina the same day Luke and Obi-Wan meet Han Solo. She is negotiating for better hours with the Cantina’s owner, Chalmun, after she discovers the patrons like her much better than the daytime bartender, Wuher. You might remember Wuher, who famously says, “Hey! We don’t serve their kind here … Your droids, they’ll have to wait outside. We don’t want them here!”

Wendig’s short story goes on to explain the reason why Wuher doesn’t serve droids. His parents were murdered by Separatist droids during the Clone Wars. Fortunately, Wuher was saved by the Jedi.