Mary Elizabeth Winstead to join the Star Wars universe with Ahsoka
The Kate star will appear alongside Rosario Dawson and Hayden Christensen in the Disney Plus series
Aux News Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Mary Elizabeth Winstead has just scored her first regular TV gig since starring in the third season of Fargo way back in 2017, with THR reporting that the Kate star has just joined the cast of Disney+’s upcoming Star Wars series, Ahsoka.
Winstead joins a cast list that has previously focused on just two names: Rosario Dawson, reprising her Mandalorian role as the titlular not-quite-Jedi, and Hayden Christensen, who’ll be returning to the part of Ahsoka’s old master Anakin Skywalker. (Ivanna Sakhno and Natasha Liu Bordizzo have also been listed as members of the cast.)
Details about Ahsoka are being kept at “many Bothans gotta die” levels of secrecy, including the identity of the character Winstead will be playing. She’s no stranger to genre fare, though, having starred in projects like 10 Cloverfield Lane, BrainDead, The Thing, Gemini Man, and many other high-concept sci-fi material. She’s also been on something of an action movie warpath, including Kate and Birds Of Prey.
Ahsoka is being written, unsurprisingly, by Dave Filoni, who’s not only carved out a solid space for himself as the master of Disney’s streaming Star Wars shows, but who also co-created the show’s title character back in 2008, with her appearance in animated feature Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The Mandalorian’s Jon Favreau will also serve as an executive producer on the project.
The series is the second of two major Star Wars shows currently in the works for the streamer, with the other being Obi-Wan Kenobi, starring Winstead’s old Fargo pal Ewan McGregor. Both series will feature appearances by Christensen, who’s returning to the role of Skywalker/Darth Vader for the first time since Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith came out in 2005.
No word yet on when, exactly, Ahsoka is expected to debut on Disney+, although the series is reportedly set to go into production this spring.
107 Comments
Doctor Aphra. It’s gotta be Doctor Aphra.
That makes three really excellent roles she could play. Four if you include Ventress. D.A. … Hera … Barriss… any would be awesome. Hera Syndulla would be kind of a mom-ish role (though b.a. pilot) at this point in the story Hera & Kaanan’s kid would be a teenager(?) so who knows. Mary has been on a lone-wolf kick-ass trajectory career wise. So a solo adventurer/villain fits.
I could see her playing Hera or Barriss, especially Barriss. I’m not sure what Barriss Offee’s status is in this timeline but when I saw Mary’s header pic, that was the first character that came to mind.
Maybe its just me but I would actually cast actors of Middle Eastern or North African descent if I’m casting Barriss Offee
Considering her design, you could cast from a fairly broad range but Winstead’s round head and puffy cheeks just reminded me or Barriss.
You can almost feel Disney resisting the urge to cast Karen Gillan as Ventress.
Ventress would be older than Ahsoka by a decade, so there’s that. But alien … plus makeup = ? All bets are off for casting.
I think Ventress died pre-Battle of Yavin, but I don’t know if that was the pre-Disney, purged EU or the new EU
Anakin fights her to the death and “defeats” her in the Clone Wars Movie by Genndy Tartakovsky … but it’s one of those “never saw the body” situations.
I think the last Ventress story (Dark Disciple) is post-Disney acquisition, based on an unproduced Clone Wars story arc, and so canon. It has her dying at Count Dooku’s hands. If I remember right, however, the book does have a tease suggesting that the Night Sisters might somehow manage to bring her back from the dead.
And from what I’ve heard, she hooks up with surfer-bro Jedi Quinlan Vos
Not just hooking up (did she and Obi Wan ever hook up on that show, or did they just flirt so hard it seemed they must have?) but outright falling in love, and turning out to be a better romantic partner for a Jedi than Padme was…
I don’t recall a whole lot of flirting between Obi Wan and Ventress, other than Kenobi getting sassy with her while fighting.
let’s not pretend the recent comics have produced anything of value
Um there’s a pretty big difference between Aphra and MEW.
Although this is a fictional character in a fictional universe, it would seem weird that they’d cast a non-Asian actor for a character who is not only Asian-looking but has been officially described as such and has consistently maintained said look throughout the comics.
Disney does not seem to give a sht about this type thing when it comes to casting. Just look at moon knight where Disney went out of their way to cast someone who is not only Pakistani and Muslim for the part of Kamala khan but then they got an actor who has been doing woody Allen Cosplay for most of his career to the point that he has been called out over and over again about it by his peers and fans alike…. Disney studios as soon as they got their hands on the marvel comic properties before they knew if they were going to get the full Fox toy box….went and told their writers to retcon the maximoff twins’ origin story including race/religion so it would fit better into their film universe….this is the same company that thought it would be ok in 2013 to let a whole white man to play a Native American in full regalia in the Lone Ranger…It’s almost as if Disney only green lights productions, casts them, etc… with the almighty dollar in mind and nothing else. Sorry for the poor grammar am using talk to type and I’m pretty sure it all comes out like I’m an angry drunk teenager whispering in the wawa bathroom.
It’s a shame they already cast Sabine, because looking at Winstead with (I’m guessing) her Kate hair, that would’ve been a great fit for her, and would capitalize on the solid chemistry she and Dawson had in Death Proof. Aphra’s probably the next best thing, a character they’re likely to spin off with her own show eventually.
Both Aphra and Sabine have Asian features, so no.
And Ahsoka was clearly drawn as South Asian. So maybe?
Um, well, no. But even if that were true, an orange-skinned alien is one thing. Humans with very specific, identifiable racial characteristics are entirely different, now more than ever. So, yeah, I think we can say with 110% certainty that Aphra, if/when she comes to live action, will be played by an Asian actress.
Must be fun, thinking we can say anything with 110% certainty…
Must be no fun at all, being a pedant like you.
Sounds great except for, ya know, the whole Hayden Christensen end of things…
“Are you mad at me?”
I thought Christensen was really good in that movie (Shattered Glass, for anyone who doesn’t recognize the quote). Sure, a lot of it is that he was cast in a role that fit him but he was still able to carry the film while up against some very good actors, including one Rosario Dawson. The guy can act in the right circumstances.Of course, it seems like most of the acting ol’ Hayden has been doing for the last decade has been in low budget direct-to-video action movies and christian dramas. It also looks like he’s been panned in all of them so … possibly the right circumstances are exceedingly narrow.
I think it’s a good movie, but one issue I had was that I find it hard to believe that laying on the sad puppy act that thick would get people on his side. Would you be more inclined to like someone who’s that desperate for you to like them?
I think what made it work IRL was the combination between that projected weakness and the confidence he had in spinning his stories. You don’t expect the pathetic eager-to-please guy you kind of pity to be able to lie right to your face. My favorite scene of Christensen’s is where he’s editing one of his colleagues’ pieces, and after a single “Don’t hate me” all the smarm of his Glass act drops away, and suddenly he’s all business, rattling off fact checking problems with the piece.
I think it’s interesting to compare that film with Breach, another Billy Ray film based on a real person, considering that in that movie Robert Hanssen’s demeanor is pretty much the opposite of Hayden Christensen’s Stephen Glass.
Yeah, that’s a great double feature. Both films feature career-best performances by maligned young actors of the era (Christensen in Shattered Glass, Ryan Philippe in Breach). Even though Hanssen’s in many ways the opposite of Glass, the stories are very similar. In both cases, the information that Billy Ray gives us about the lying character is often unexplained and sometimes seems contradictory. Aside from the “Don’t be mad at me” whining, with Glass you have the weird detail that his parents are going to “force” him to go to law school, and his constant denials that he’s gay, even while he’s describing making out with other men, but those details aren’t shaped into a narrative to explain the stories he made up. With Hanssen, there’s no real attempt to reconcile the Opus Dei catholicism, porn, and Soviet/Russian spy aspects of his character. They’re just things we know about him, and the puzzle pieces don’t all have to fit together.
In Breach one contradiction I thought was interesting was that when we first meet Hanssen he seems like an asshole but when we get to know him better he seems more like a kind family man at heart, so it’s one of those cases where our surface impression is more accurate than our “deeper” impression.
I’m still here for the Haydenassiance
Him returning is probably one of the most popular excitements for fans in two decades. The prequel trilogy has had a new life in memes for several years.
I’m excited to see him do his acting job under better conditions. Like, I have two kids, unstable childcare and a demanding job. The fact that I’ve been able to be remotely successful in my work is due in very large part to the fact that I have a competent, understanding supervisor with whom I have a good rapport. If I didn’t, my life would be a goddamn disaster and my job performance would be a lot worse. How you do at work depends on a lot of different external factors. Working under George Lucas torpedoed Natalie goddamn Portman, an actor who could otherwise claim among-best-in-generation status. Ahmed Best is, far as I can tell, an extremely talented performer. Imagine if you only knew Sam Jackson from “Heeeee is the traitor!” Hayden Christensen got fucked over by being in the prequels and I’m on board to see a version of Anakin/Vader supported by a director with more than zero competence working with sentient life forms.
Winstead’s old Fargo pal Ewan McGregor.
That’s an interesting way to put it.
No kidding. I’m not one for celebrity gossip, but I think the fact that they’ve been a couple for a few years and have a child together would be worth mentioning.
It’s the AV Club. No one does any research whatsoever in these news items.
Psst, I think they’re being tongue-in-cheek with that one.
Maybe. I’m not giving them the benefit of the doubt considering how many times it turned out to be the wrong move.
What is this . . .”ree-serch” you speak of?
If only the AV Club had an L.A. presence where all the movie stars lived they’d be more up on their personal relationships.
Well, it’s always nice to see Windstead getting work. Ashoka is a little too into the Prequel/Clone War spectrum for me to be interested. But I hope it’s good for the people it is aiming at.
Judging by the structure of The Book of Boba Fett, assuming Hayden Christensen is going to be heavily feature in flashbacks and not some sort of Force ghost.
I actually want a full episode of just Ahsoka complaining at Force Ghost Anakin for his stunningly bad life choices and how she almost killed him on Malachor.
I just want to hear Hayden Christensen attempt to say ‘snips’ and not sound awkward or cringe.
I’ve asked this before and never got an explanation, why is that her nickname?
Because she gets snippy with him. Seriously. That’s why Anakin calls her “Snips.”
Wow. Thanks! I’m not sure how that went over my head when I watched Clone Wars.
I think it comes up once in the Clone Wars movie, when they first meet, and he snaps “don’t get snippy with me!” or something like that. Then he calls her Snips and she calls him “Sky Guy,” and that’s probably why none of the fans liked her at first.
Oh god I had forgotten about “sky guy” why did you do that to me.
That was just Annakin’s little nickname he gave her when Ahsoka made her debut in the Clone Wars movie that kicked off the series. She was a young and precocious padawan whom Annakin was tasked to train under his wing. Obviously she matured over the course of the show’s run but Annakin would still use it from time to time as friendly term of endearment.
Thanks, but to be clear I’ve seen the Clone Wars, I could just never figure out where that name came from. I even thought “is he threatening to cut off her weird alien hair with his lightsaber?!”
Is “Annakin” a clone?
Nah, Papa Palpatine just did some finger-wavin’ nasty with the force, resulting in Annakin’s conception. He’s good with his fingaz.
ew
I mean, she must have had a ton of questions and it’s not like she wouldn’t be justified in asking them.
I mean, she must have had a ton of questions and it’s not like she wouldn’t be justified in asking them.
Judging by the structure of The Book of Boba Fett, it’ll all be flashbacks.
oh please…no!
Dave Filoni really, really, really loves this character (and all of his original characters) I think if he could reframe the SW universe around Ahsoka and Ezra Bridger he’d do it in a heartbeat. But they’re not great characters. So even though Filoni gets the universe more than most, I hope he never controls it outright.
I don’t have a problem with Ahsoka and Ezra as characters (outside of the bizarre introduction of Ezra as being exactly Aladdin) but Filoni is way too trope-y for me to be comfortable with him being as in charge as people seem to want. I mean SW IS trope-y, but he really goes hard on it. It works well for cartoons but I think both Mandalorian and Boba (which tbf, he doesn’t seem as involved in) are really noticeably overloaded with cliches. I’d be curious to see what would happen if Filoni and Rian Johnson worked together on something, the master of tropes and the subvert everything guy – would it push things into brilliance or be a complete mess? Who knows, but it’d be fascinating.
Winstead may be the most beautiful woman in the world.
it’s weird that hayden is back playing vader at all, but it’s so weird that he’s gonna be playing him at completely different time periods, too.
Vader has NO place in an Obi Wan series. Ugh.
I dunno, as long as they don’t meet it could work. I do really want to see Obi-Wan hearing about this scary new sith lord and then having the realization.Which probably works better if we get some scenes of Vader out there looking for him.
Obi Wan already knows Anakin is Darth Vader.
Remind me?
The name “Darth Vader” was introduced mid-way through Revenge of the Sith. Both Obi Wan and Yoda know it. So if even if they don’t recognize the suit, they know the name. They also know that Anakin is Palpatine’s apprentice, so there’s no mystery about where Vader came from.
I’ll take your word on that, I just remember Palpatine saying it, I did not realize obi and yoda ever heard the name. I do not watch the prequels much.Still there’s the realization that Anakin is alive. Plus it’s not like vader goes around saying his own name as he kills Jedi. I think it still works.
Well, not watching the prequels is probably a good policy. But, to refresh:
Yoda and Obi watch a video of Palp and Anakin talking and Palp calling him “Vader.” Yoda then says “Anakin is gone, only Vader remains” or something. (weird that the Jedi would have security cameras in the chancellor’s office, but whatever.)Palp later tells Yoda that “Darth Vader will be more powerful than either of us.”
It’s unclear whether they know Anakin is alive at the end, but certainly once Darth Vader starts parading around the galaxy, they’re gonna know exactly who he is. So Obi Wan “discovering” this years later (at the time frame of the Obi Wan show) really doesn’t fit.
Thanks! I still think it works though if the name isn’t used and obi-wan just like overhears at a bar about this lightsaber battle and Jedi killing that someone witnessed. Like on Rebels he’s a shadowy figure. Like they face him barely escape and are like “who the fuck was that!?” not “this must be that Vader guy” I’ve always assumed Obi-Wan left him for dead and would not have learned that palpatine saved him until later.
Right, but who else would be out there killing Jedi? And I don’t even really know the motivation behind keeping it a secret. So they can share a scene and Obi Wan wouldn’t know it’s Anakin? I don’t really think that would happen. He’d be able to tell via the Force and Vader wouldn’t exactly keep it a secret from him. If they never meet face-to-face, it’s a moot point anyway.
Frankly, I think the idea of Vader and Obi Wan meeting between ROTS and ANH is just a horrible idea and can’t really be justified in any way. No matter what else Disney does with SW, I would hope they would at least respect the established canon of the older movies and not deliberately retcon them or undermine them.
Some new apprentice? If you think someone is dead you’re probably not going to assume it’s them.I don’t want them to share a scene, the first line of my first post was “I dunno, as long as they don’t meet it could work.”The point would just be to have a dramatic scene where Obi-Wan has the horrifying realization that his old padawan is still alive and is this horrible new sith people are whispering about.
I dunno, maybe. But it feels like that would have to happen very shortly after the end of ROTS, not the “years later” timeline of the Obi Wan show is presumably set. It’s not like the Empire was taking pains to hide Vader.
Well this is probably before Rebels right? and they had no idea who he was while actively resisting the empire. Obi-Wan is living the hermit life on a backwater planet. I know they’re not hiding him but like I said before it’s not as if he introduces himself or wears a name tag.
to be fair, it seems like he forgot his own name was obi wan in a new hope so maybe canonically he just gets very stupid.
and more and more dishonest!
People acting like there isn’t time travel in Star Wars
There isn’t. The whole “World between worlds” crap should stay firmly in the ghetto of the animated series. Fortunately, Fan Fic Filoni isn’t involved in the Obi Wan show.
You’re telling me that there’s going to be time travel in an Obi Wan show so what….? He can fight Vader in a different time frame? Uh, no.
Get ready for it to show up a hell of a lot in the next few years as Ezra gets brought into the mix…
Dear god. Let’s hope not. While I liked the Filoni shows (though I didn’t quite love them), nothing depresses me more about current and upcoming SW projects is the endless strip-mining of the lore and the endless spinoffs and sequels featuring old, established characters. ESPECIALLY if those characters only existed previously in Filoni’s animation.
Well then you don’t have to watch… I’m not sure where you thought these shows where going plot wise? But, it’s very obvious that is the direction.
I thought the shows were not going to all just be shitty fan fic. Obviously my expectations were way too high.
I’m not really one of the deep Stars Wars people beyond the core movies, but when does all this take place?? Wasn’t Anakin sliced in half and burned near to death at like 25? When was he someone’s Master doing all this stuff? Dawson and Christiansen are in their 40s.
uh have you seen Dawson as this character? You’re telling me you can the age?
Well yeah her age in character makeup doesn’t really matter. Although the other commenter said it takes place around Mandalorian anyway, so after OT. Anakin will have to be dead.
YOU CAN THE AGE!
can tell her age*
Pretty sure Ahsoka is a character during the Clone Wars, so between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. This Ahsoka show is a spin off of the Mandalorian, though, which is set between Return of the Jedi and Force Awakens, ie after Vader’s death. So Anakin will appear in flashbacks or as a ghost. Either way, Hayden Christensen is “actor 40,” so he looks very similar to the way he did 18 years ago.
I don’t care about the age nearly as much as I do about Anakin not being the best Anakin (and more importantly, Ahsoka’s Anakin), Matt Lanter.Maybe it’ll be sufficient if Filoni has this show’s directors just tell Christensen “You remember that whiny James Dean thing George had you doing with your voice in Clones and Sith? You don’t have to do that anymore. You really don’t.”
Looks to me like this Matt Lanter’s resume is voice acting and being in those terrible mid-2000s parody “[Word] Movie” films. Christiansen is the live action Anakin.
He was the star of the show “Timeless”, FWIW.
The facts you state are true, and yet Lanter is still the better Anakin, by a mile.
Accurate.And that’s saying a lot, considering how terrible a character Anakin is overall, regardless of who plays him.
I guess it depends what you mean by terrible character. I mean, under any circumstances Anakin’s terrible, in that he’s tragically doomed to eventually betray his friends and his order and become a cold blooded murderer. But in the prequels he’s a terrible character in a different sense because his motivations are thin and he’s so obviously a villain in waiting at all times that anyone near him who overlooks that fact seems dumb as hell (“So Anakin betrayed us? You mean the creepy guy who always looked like he was keeping secrets from us, that Anakin? What a surprise…”). Clone Wars managed to present him as a genuinely good guy—loyal friend, kind person, better-than-expected mentor—whose tragic flaws (mainly, a ruthlessness that makes him better at war than a Jedi should be) lead him to choose the wrong side. To me, that’s a good character even if the person he’s doomed to become is awful.
It helps that he’s since gone through puberty.
Dude was, what, 20 when he shot Attack of the Clones? That’s a long while waiting for your balls to drop.
I’d watch for either a twenty-something cast as Young Ahsoka in flashback (or a de-aged Dawson – yeah yeah – Dawson is ageless, but they can do it fairly convincingly, and Ahsoka, as presented in animation, was a pretty slight teenager. Dawson looks like a beefed up 40-something with 20 years of athleticism on her frame) … and/or an Anakin force-ghost. Ahsoka could do a flashback to sometime pre-A New Hope and encounter a Hayden-Vader, but the loop seems pretty closed thanks to their scenes in Rebels and Clone Wars.
So are many of us.
I really have so little interest in the endless spinoff series of legacy SW characters, especially considering how fucking awful “The Book of Boba Fett” is. Good god, it’s a huge galaxy, can we at least try to do something remotely fresh with the sandbox?
The only SW show I’m looking forward to is “The Acolyte” since it’s in an all-new time frame, doesn’t involve previously established characters and is from an interesting creative who is new to SW.
Anakin, either via flashbacks or a Force ghost, makes sense for this series.Vader in the Obi Wan show makes no fucking sense at all.
Maybe he just appears in a ‘previously on Star Wars’ intro in the first episode.Cut to Anakin saying how much he hates sand and then Vader saying “Nooooooooo” when someone says they think his son on Tatooine. Then title screen.Anything else doesn’t make sense.
BrainDead was a seriously underrated show. The opening credits songs were worth the price of admission alone.
♫My God you monsters not the cat…♫
Why are you not posting my comments???? I will not be ignored!
Are they still going to make Star Wars films? It’s pretty amazing how quickly Star Wars fell from one of the biggest franchises of all times to a Disney tv show that isn’t actually on TV?
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