Natalie Portman Actually Returning To Star Wars?
Natalie Portman is willing to come back to Star Wars as Padme.
These days, it seems like everything old is new when it comes to Star Wars. Not only are shows like Obi-Wan Kenobi bringing us new stories from classic characters, but the upcoming Ahsoka show is also introducing a live-action version of Grand Admiral Thrawn. We didn’t think the nostalgia could get any wilder than Daisy Ridley returning as Rey, but this may have that news beat: in a recent GQ interview, Natalie Portman said she would be “open” to returning to the Star Wars galaxy.
Before you start cheering (or maybe jeering), you should know that Natalie Portman isn’t dropping any bombshell announcements about an official return. She was simply responding to the interviewer’s questions from internet fans, including whether she’d return to Star Wars (a franchise that once drove off Sequel Trilogy star John Boyega). To this question, Portman clarified that she had no information on her character returning and that nobody had asked her to, but that she would at least be open to reprising her role.
At first, the idea of Natalie Portman reprising her role as Padme Amidala may seem absurd. After all, we saw her definitively die onscreen, complete with a funeral service, and her passing helped cement the fact that Darth Vader would never truly be able to return to his life as moody Jedi Anakin Skywalker. Then again, this is a franchise that showed us Emperor Palpatine falling into a shaft, blowing up, and then blowing up again with the Death Star, and he was resurrected by just having Oscar Isaac say that “somehow” he had returned.
Fortunately, there are a number of ways to bring Natalie Portman back to this franchise in ways that aren’t completely stupid. The easiest way would be to have her voice Padme as an animated character. The anthology series Star Wars: Visions could certainly give us a Padme-centric episode, for example, and Tales of the Jedi has already revisited the time period both before and after Padme’s death, so it would be relatively easy for Portman to return for a future episode.
Perhaps the most obvious way for Natalie Portman to return would be in a flashback in the second season of Obi-Wan Kenobi. In the first season, we got a flashback (complete with CGI de-aging) to a time when Obi-Wan and Anakin sparred together. Even though a second season of the show is not in development and may never happen, we’re still convinced we’ll see Ewan McGregor suit up as Kenobi once more, and it would be easy to have another flashback that incorporates Portman as Amidala.
These are, of course, just our ideas for more substantial appearances by Natalie Portman, but she could always pop up as a voice on a broadcast, as a holographic recording, or even as data stored inside one of the mysterious Jedi holocrons. However, whether we ever see Portman return will likely come down to whether Disney wants to focus on more characters they introduced over 20 years ago or more on newer characters such as the Mandalorian. As for us, we think Disney should go with the funniest possible option: cast Portman as Cara Dune and never acknowledge why the character is so much smaller or why she suddenly looks like Luke Skywalker’s mom.
