Recasting Luke, Leia, And Han Solo In The Star Wars Universe
With all signs pointing toward Dave Filoni making a Star Wars movie based on Heir to the Empire, Lucasfilm faces a big decision: replace the heroes of the rebellion or recast them with younger actors. Ahsoka presented some viable alternatives for the big three—Hera in the Han Solo role, Ahsoka as Luke, etc—but with Han, Luke, and Leia being such a big part of the original story, fans might be expecting to see the real deal instead of stand-ins. In that case, we have some ideas for who Disney should cast as the new big three.
We give our picks for who could play Han, Leia, and Luke in a rebooted version of Star Wars.
Before we dive into our choices, though, we just want to stress that recasting is absolutely the right way to go. While Disney has already digitally de-aged Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and the late Carrie Fisher for different Star Wars projects, the results have varied from OK to “Be right back, I just need to wash my eyes out with bleach real quick.” Solo (2018) may not have been the most successful Disney Star Wars movie, but it had the right idea in casting a new actor to play young Han Solo.
The New Han Solo
Speaking of Solo, the easiest role to recast would be Han. There’s no reason not to continue with Alden Ehrenreich in the role. He captured Harrison Ford’s plucky spirit without doing a straight-up impression of the Indiana Jones actor.
The only downside is that Ehrenreich is just now around the age Han Solo was in Star Wars: A New Hope, making him over a decade too young to play a time period-accurate Solo.
In that case, the best choice would be Chris Pratt. We hear you groaning, and trust us, we get it. The dude is everywhere these days. But when you stop and think about the swagger Pratt had as both Peter Quill in Guardians of the Galaxy and the Raptor Whisperer in Jurassic World, it’s easy to see him playing Star Wars’ cocky scoundrel.
The New Luke Skywalker
A bit harder to nail down is who should play Luke Skywalker. The obvious choice, thanks to years of fans pleading on the internet, would be Sebastian Stan. The problem with casting Marvel’s Winter Soldier as the Star Wars’ most famous Jedi, however, is that Sebastian Stan comes off as too cool.
We love Luke Skywalker as much as the next person, but at his very core, the character is a dork. A lovable, dopey, farmboy dork. Return of the Jedi shows us a Luke who’s trying his hardest to be a badass Jedi Knight with a cool head, but the whiney kid from A New Hope still shows up here and there.
That’s because Mark Hamill is, in fact, also a loveable dork whose talents as an actor are outshined by his sheer likeability. The perfect Luke would have to be another actor whose success is more of a result of their loveable demeanor than actual talent. Someone like Daniel Radcliffe.
Radcliffe might seem like an odd choice for Star Wars, but Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker are more alike than you think. Both are naive kids who are plucked from their small worlds and thrust into a larger universe where they find out they have secret magic powers. Both were raised by an aunt and uncle who lied to them about their parents.
Daniel Radcliffe would make a perfect Luke Skywalker in his early thirties. All he would have to do really is just play it like a grown-up Harry Potter. That just leaves Leia.
The New Leia
Despite being the actor with the least roles outside of Star Wars, Carrie Fisher is easily the hardest to replace. You need an actress that is assertive without coming off as abrasive. Sarcastic but diplomatic. In short, you need the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
Rachel Brosnahan might be scheduled to play Lois Lane in the upcoming Superman: Legacy, but honestly, all the things that make her a good Lois would also make her a good Leia. If Disney and Warner Bros. could play nice enough to share a star, then Brosnahan would be the perfect Leia.
In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Rachel Brosnahan proved that she could talk circles around the boys and advocate for herself in the thick of the patriarchal ’60s. Carrie Fisher proved that she could do the same in the largely male-dominated Star Wars universe as it stood in the ’70s and ’80s.
Brosnahan would look right at home in military fatigues, holding a blaster, but she would look equally comfortable in a fancy evening gown attending some fundraiser gala for the New Republic.
Who knows if Lucasfilm will recast Han, Luke, and Leia or if the characters will even have a part in the Star Wars story Dave Filoni is telling? One thing we do know is if they decide to recast the roles with younger actors, they could do a lot worse than our picks.
