Christopher Lloyd Is Joining A Major Star Wars Series
Christopher Lloyd of Back to the Future, Clue, and Dennis the Menace has just joined a major upcoming Star Wars series, and we're excited.
This article is more than 2 years old
Christopher Lloyd has joined the cast of the upcoming season three of The Mandalorian. The legendary actor will be playing an unknown role on the immensely popular Disney+ streaming show, but even word of his casting is pretty exciting. The Mandalorian has been one of the most successful Star Wars projects in years, beginning with its premiere in 2019, and anticipation for the next season is hitting a fervently high point. As more rumors and details about the upcoming installment of the adventures of the masked bounty hunter and his adorably tiny ward leak, the upcoming season just sounds all the more interesting. And now that the star of Back to the Future is on board, we especially cannot wait.
While the part that Christopher Lloyd will be playing is being kept tightly under wraps by Disney, it fits with the trend of the show thus far. Lloyd has played many varieties of roles in his long career in television, film, and theater, but is primarily known for comedic roles. His perhaps most famous role is in the trilogy of time-travel comedies known collectively as Back to the Future, in which he played the frequently aghast, absent-minded genius scientist Doctor Emmett Brown. Prior to that, he was well-known for his role as the burnt-out hippie cab driver “Reverend” Jim Ignatowski on the 1970s ABC sitcom Taxi (along with his One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest co-star Danny DeVito). He also starred as Fester Addams in Barry Sonnenfeld’s The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, Professor Plum in the cult board game adaptation comedy Clue, and as the child-terrifying Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. All in all, a pretty legendary career.
The Mandalorian casting Christopher Lloyd is in keeping with the Jon Favreau-led series tendency to cast comedic actors. While the Star Wars franchise has always had a tendency to humor (albeit not always intentionally), The Mandalorian specifically has brought in talents like Saturday Night Live alumnus Horatio Sanz, Strangers with Candy’s Amy Sedaris, and the very accented standup comedian Bill Burr as a former Imperial sniper turned ally of Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin. While the show primarily functions as a kind of episodic space-western focusing on the bond between the titular Mandalorian and the pint-size Baby Yoda/Grogu, there is a deep vein of comedy that runs through the series.
Of course, we do not know for certain that Christopher Lloyd will be playing a comedic role in the third season of The Mandalorian. While that is his best known talent, the Dennis the Menace actor can certainly be terrifying when he puts his mind to it, so maybe he will be a genocidal Imperial regent or something. The upcoming season is expected to bring the Mandalorian and Grogu to his ancestral home planet of Mandalore (which has yet to be seen in Star Wars live-action universe) and maybe even give the tiny Force-user his very own Ripley-style battle mech. The show has reportedly been filming since October 2021, and is expected to land on Disney+ sometime in 2022.
