Exclusive: Mark Hamill And Hayden Christensen Are Force Ghosts In Daisy Ridley’s New Star Wars Movie
Mark Hamill and Hayden Christensen will return as Luke and Anakin in the upcoming new Star Wars movie.
Star Wars fans have something new to get excited (or alternately, extremely mad) about: Mark Hamill and Hayden Christensen will appear as Force Ghosts in the recently announced upcoming installment in the franchise. According to our trusted and proven sources, the two actors will reprise their roles as Luke and Anakin Skywalker, respectively, in the new, Daisy Ridley-led movie, despite having died in previous episodes. Of course, Star Wars being what it is, both Mark Hamill’s and Hayden Christensen’s characters have already come back from death, so why not another time?
We previously broke the news that Lucasfilm was bringing back Daisy Ridley’s Rey for a new film some months ago, which was later confirmed by other sources. We have also reported that Kathleen Kennedy has said that the new film will take place about 15 years after The Rise of Skywalker, with Rey attempting to rebuild the Jedi Order and apparently messing everything up. As such, it would make sense that Mark Hamill (who has some experience in failing at bringing back the Jedi) and Hayden Christensen (who has significant experience in, uh, another aspect of Jedi not being around) would appear in some capacity.
While we do not yet know whether Mark Hamill and Hayden Christensen will be interacting in some capacity as Force Ghosts in the new Star Wars movie, this certainly raises the intriguing possibility of father and son Jedi face-to-face for the first time. Although both actors have appeared in multiple Star Wars projects over the years, they have never actually been in a scene together; Return of the Jedi’s ex post facto insert of Hayden Christensen doesn’t really count, nor does both having a voice cameo at the climax of The Rise of Skywalker. At the very least, the two Skywalkers might have a discussion about why the elder of the two’s Force Ghost is decades younger than his own son.
Most recently, Mark Hamill reprised the role of Luke Skywalker in the relatively disappointing Book of Boba Fett, after having first reappeared via a combination of CGI, archival footage, and voicework in The Mandalorian. For his part, Hayden Christensen starred in the more critically well-received Obi-Wan Kenobi as both Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker.
As the Disney+ breakthrough series The Mandalorian has been slowly losing both viewership and critical goodwill, it makes sense that Lucasfilm would look for a big new project to excite fans. With Mark Hamill being perhaps the most beloved figurehead of the Star Wars franchise and Hayden Christensen’s prequel films in the process of being critically reclaimed, bringing them both back is an understandable ploy.
On the other hand, repeatedly bringing back deceased characters to pop in to give Daisy Ridley support can be perceived as diminishing the sacrifice of their heroic deaths, so Lucasfilm might want to tread this line carefully. We’ll be happy to see Mark Hamill and Hayden Christensen back, but we don’t want them to get trotted out every time ratings drop.
