**SPOILERS** If you have not seen “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” do not read this piece with director Rian Johnson discussing some of the events of the movie. “Star Wars” fans are spoilerphobes and we get that. However, we’ll not consider piece about Lando Calrissian’s absence from the movie a spoiler. Sorry, it’s already public knowledge and long been out there in our galaxy.
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There’s a lot of legacy characters in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” not counting the obvious ones of Luke, Leia, Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2D-2. Yoda makes a surprise appearance, Admiral Ackbar gets a scene or two (R.I.P. and thanks for your service), even Nien Nunb, returns after a reprise in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.” But his longtime captain, Lando Calrissian, the suave-est smuggler in the galaxy, is nowhere to be seen in the new “Star Wars” trilogy thus far.
Where is the character in the galaxy far, far away? That’s unclear, but ‘Last Jedi’ writer/director Rian Johnson did consider using Lando briefly.
“Of course I’d love to see Lando,” Johnson said. “In terms of Lando, I briefly considered — would he work in the Benicio [del Toro] part, [DJ].” If you’ve seen the movie you know DJ is the morally ambiguous hacker/codebreaker who helps and betrays Finn and Rose within the span of a few hours, helping them escape prison on Canto Bight, but then selling them out to the Imperial First Order forces when the first opportunity presents itself.
“I don’t think you would ever buy that Lando would just completely betray the characters like that and have that level of moral ambiguity,” Johnson explained. “Cause we love Lando and you’d come into it with that [expectation]. And also, DJ, the character that they met, for the purposes of Finn’s character, had to be a morally ambiguous character that you’re not sure about, that you’re guessing about, and we already know that we love the character of Lando so it just wouldn’t have played in that part story wise.”
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“You have to write organically,” Johnson said. “Otherwise it leads to contrived places. Which is just to say it’s all about the needs of the story and there’s only so much room on the table for… favorite characters to be in the movie.”
Will we ever see Lando Calrissian again? Is he back on Cloud City? Maybe he’ll return in J.J. Abrams’ “Star Wars: Episode IX”? It’s anybody’s guess at this point, but Billy Dee Williams has seemed eager in the past, so he’s probably just waiting by the phone.
Star your Lando petition now, since they’re all the rage. “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” is in cinemas everywhere.