We’re only a handful of weeks away until Star Wars: The Force Awakens hits the theaters and it seems almost every day we get new bits of information about the film, theories on plot and revelations on characters. While a lot of us are still speculating on what the movie will turn out to be – we hope it’s the Sith Jar Jar theory – and a fair amount of unsubstantiated rumors out there altogether, it’s hard to know what’s actually going on. We can at least rest easy on one debate as we now have confirmation on the gender of the newest addition to droid-dom.

There’s no question that BB-8 is the front-runner for “coolest droid” and according to Neal Scanlan – head of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens creature shop – he’s a bouncing baby boy! In an interview with EW, Scanlan was apprehensive at first but continued “BB-8 was female in our eyes. And then she became male. And that’s all part of the evolution, not only visually, but in the way they move, how they hold themselves.”

This comes as a general surprise as earlier this month it was reported that director J.J. Abrams was always determined to have BB-8 be female. Ultimately, we doubt the success of the film will hinge on the gender identity of a soccer ball droid, but it remains rather important. It’s been hinted that BB-8 will play a crucial role in the film and it would have been nice to see that role – even in droid form – played female.

Not all droids in SW are male, though. The Resistance has protocol droid PZ-4CO and, with the blasters she seems to have as part of her Hasbro action figure, we can only hope she plays Leia’s bad-ass right hand woman.

What do you think of the news that BB-8 is a boy? Let us know – politely – in the comments below.

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HT: Slashfilm
Images: LucasFilm, Disney, Hasbro