With two and half months left until the release of the last film in the Star Wars Skywalker Saga, Disney may have played their final nostalgia card.
First, the cover of a The Rise Of Skywalker tie-in book titled Resistance Reborn hints at the familiar face on Dennis Lawson, the actor who played Wedge Antilles:
Then came this tweet from the Rebel Force Radio radio podcast, that seems to confirm it:
LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT THING. We just received a solid “YES” from a representative for the actor, Denis Lawson will be in #StarWars #TheRiseOfSkywalker reprising his role as Wedge Antilles. pic.twitter.com/ESoB0JhA1L
— Rebel Force Radio (@RFRRebelForce) October 5, 2019
If you read that more carefully than I did the first time, it says they spoke with a representative of the actor and not the actor himself, so it’s still “unconfirmed.”
Fuck it, play his theme song anyway, you can listen to it while we go over the details.
Hope?
The representation on the book cover is a dead ringer for the 72-year-old Lawson. I can’t imagine that isn’t the man himself.
Sure, this could be a situation where he was cast and then written out of the final script or Wedge might have been cut out of the movie during the numerous rumored reshoots and edits.
But I see no reason to keep Wedge out of The Rise Of Skywalker, as even one scene or a few seconds of screen time would ignite the dying embers of OT love in the heart of even the most jaded of fanboys.
After all, this is the only other X-Wing pilot to survive the Death Star Trench Run, the guy who put two photon torpedos into the reactor core of the second Death Star!
Why not bring him back for a brief cameo and then kill him off, Kathy?
After all, that’s the Lucasfilm way, isn’t it?
Do Not Look For Hope
On the other hand, it could merely be the likeness of the character on the book cover, similar to what we’ve seen on other Star Wars novels.
Lawson himself has been sending mixed messages, in one 2013 quote to Gary Mancini he sounds very much against playing a mere cameo role:
“We spoke to him when he was doing a signing last year and he said he wasn’t interested in just a cameo, but if there was a fully rounded and expanded role for him in the film, he would consider it, script and price pending.”
The next year in a hometown paper he seems to be above the whole thing:
“I’m not going to do that… They asked me but it just would have bored me.”
Yet, on a December 2017 BBC Radio 4 broadcast of Loose Ends, he said:
“That’s falsely recorded, they did ask me to do it, frustratingly I wasn’t free. I would like to set that record straight. I was shooting on something else, I’d have loved to have done it… ask me again!”
“Falsely recorded.” A very confusing conundrum, indeed.
By the way, If you are wondering why he’s posing with Ewan when he never appeared in any Prequel films, well… he’s the boy’s uncle!
This whole rumor is just another reminder of how the fans got fucked out a sequel trilogy that brought all the players back together for some final heroics.
What a stupid waste. I hate you, Kathleen.
