‘Star Wars: The High Republic’: Disney announces new saga

It only seems shoehorned to someone who has a bias against gay people. It's a perfectly normal action that happens all the time, all over the world, and has been for millennia. I've heard others say that having a black actor in a lead role is a clear-cut case of an SJW agenda, and that sounds the same to me as what you're saying. To someone anti-gay, including gay characters is "an agenda," to someone racist against blacks, casting a black actor is "an agenda," to someone anti-female, casting a female in lead role is "an agenda," and so forth.

I believe that including normal behavior and typical people in films is by no stretch pushing an agenda. Where I see agendas being pushed are when blatant statements are being made, either verbally or via plot points, that push radical politics onto the audience. Example: I just watched Ragnarok on Netflix, and while I really, really enjoyed the imagery, the pacing, and the overall story an ideas, I had to overlook the in-your-fact climate change propaganda and the broad-stroke painting of big corporations as evil, the law corrupt to help the evil corporation, and the lowly, noble underdog fighting for social justice. To me, that show had a clear, "woke" agenda that made it far less enjoyable than if they had left radical politics out of it altogether.

I remember a high number of Asian and female characters in Rogue One but nobody claiming that the movie is 'woke', presumably because the characters were more concerned in advancing the plot rather than trumpeting their diversity. I wasn't bothered about it in TFA either. But LTJ... there's one shot panning shot of Hux (?) when there's a female Asian in an office's uniform shoved right in the foreground as to be impossible to miss. The only reason I can think of her to be so prominent in the shop is to promote the New Order as equal opportunities employers. And they're supposed to be the bad guys.

You can forget the narrow gantries in Star Wars now, like Obi-Wan shutting down the tractor beam or Han v Kylo ni TFA. They'll all be double-wide for wheelchair access with safety railings.