【Michael Maien】

Spoiler alert: This post contains a key detail from Solo: A Star Wars Story.

We're now in the second weekend of the first Star Wars movie since 2005 to feature a male lead. And we still don't know whether it will turn a profit -- unlike the prior three movies of the Disney-Lucasfilm era,Michael Maien all of which had female leads.

The question is, will the Mouse House take a hint?

To be sure, Solo's financial woes have little to do with Alden Ehrenreich's gender. They have more to do with the boyish antics of its first directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who butted heads with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who summarily replaced them with Ron Howard, who deemed most of their footage unusable. That ballooned the budget to the point where a $100 million opening weekend was a disappointment.

SEE ALSO: 'Solo' had the biggest opening ever ... for a heist movie

But on the other hand, here's a counterfactual to ponder: What if Disney CEO Bob Iger had greenlit a movie about young Leia Organa instead of young Han Solo?

In the era where Wonder Woman($820 million international box office) outperformed every other DC movie, the era of badass princesses in Frozenand Moanaand Beauty and the Beast, does anyone doubt that a prequel about the original badass Princess of Alderaan would have lured more people into the theater than a prequel about the no-name kid from Corellia?

After all, the character that seems to be generating the most buzz among Soloviewers on Twitter, the one causing people to change their avatars and their plans for cosplay outfits, isn't Han or Lando or Chewie. It's Enfys Nest, the mysterious bounty hunter who is revealed at the end of the movie -- surprise! -- to be a young red-haired woman.

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Meanwhile Star Wars critics, who never agree on anything, have come to a consensus on the other women of Solo. It's clear that Val (Thandie Newton) was underused in the film -- the first black woman in the Star Wars galaxy is killed off in the first act. And that Qi'ra (Emilia Clarke) was somewhat boxed in by her role -- she's a femme fatale, a century-old movie cliche.

While it's taking stock of all this feedback, Lucasfilm, which reportedly has Boba Fett and Kenobi movies in the works, may want to hit pause on more movies with male leads.

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Who run the galaxy?

There remains one consistent fact about the Star Wars universe since 2015. Disney executives who thought they'd bought a "boy's franchise" -- to the point where they actually licensed a T-shirt superimposing Luke Skywalker over Princess Leia in a scene from the original movie -- have been proven wrong over and over.

Ignoring the fact that Rey was the lead character in The Force Awakens, these execs tried to flood stores with Kylo Ren merchandise -- only to run into one of the biggest merchandising backlashes of the 21st century, the #WheresRey movement. Where Rey figures were available, Target and Toys R Us both reported, they were "flying off shelves."

The following year, Felicity Jones won widespread praise for her lead role as Jyn Erso in Rogue One. But the internet couldn't help but notice how little she was given to say compared to her male counterparts -- a problem that was made worse by Tony Gilroy's extensive re-editing of the film, which cut almost all Jyn's dialogue from her opening scenes. Including, ironically, that classic line from the trailers: "This is a rebellion, isn't it? I rebel."

SEE ALSO: 'Rogue One' wasn't all that empowering for women, data says

The Last Jediupped the ante on strong female protagonists. As a recent study revealed, women get 43% of screen time in the film, bringing it closer to equality than any other Star Wars movie.

That certainly didn't hurt the box office. Last Jedimade more than twice Solo's opening weekend haul, tiny minority of whining (and mostly male) fans be damned.

While retaining the previous episode's focus on Rey and her light-side/Dark Side dilemma, writer-director Rian Johnson also gave us Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) and Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern). Both Rose and Holdo had scenes in which they were right and their knuckle-headed, suicidal men (Finn and Poe Dameron, respectively) were wrong.

Tragically, Carrie Fisher never got to star in a movie where General Leia was the main focus. (That was the original plan for Episode IX, Lucasfilm has confirmed). But Leia did at least get to use her Force powers for the first time in Last Jedi, not to mention getting the sassiest line of the film (to Poe: "Get your head out of your cockpit.")

SEE ALSO: Princess Leia was a rebel at 16: What we learned from her new YA novel

Other leading indicators: Forces of Destiny, the short animated series in which the women of Star Wars are the heroes, is about to enter its third season. And then there's Women of the Galaxy, a forthcoming Lucasfilm-licensed book about 75 female characters from across the franchise, which won widespread praised when it was revealed this week.

Clearly, this is no "boy's" franchise, and never has been. It is, rather, a franchise designed by and for progressives, one that made waves with feminists when it landed in 1977; one where the good guys are drawn from a diverse array of worlds and genders. (Never forget, the Rebellion against the Empire was led by a woman, Senator Mon Mothma.) Audiences were primed to expect equal rights long before Solodroid L3 started explicitly calling for them.

Perhaps it's not too late for that Leia prequel, either. There's already a great YA book -- Leia, Princess of Alderaan, by Claudia Gray -- whose storyline about 16-year-old Leia and Holdo heading off a galactic crisis seems ready-built for a screenplay.

Oh, and it has an obvious star. One who has already volunteered for the role, in fact.

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Will Lucasfilm and Disney stop and listen? We can only hope.

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