With Star Wars: Starfighter, the beloved franchise is shattering a long-standing tradition by introducing a villain unlike anything seen before in the saga's history. The upcoming film, directed by Shawn Levy and starring Ryan Gosling, is set in the aftermath of The Rise of Skywalker and follows an entirely new cast of heroes and villains. Slated for release during Memorial Day Weekend 2027, it arrives one year after The Mandalorian and Grogu, which brought Star Wars back to the big screen for the first time in seven years.
No actor in the franchise's roughly fifty-year history has been officially cast as a villain in a Star Wars film, had that role cut before anything was shot, and then returned as a completely different villain in a completely different film. Until Starfighter.
Matt Smith (Morbius, House of the Dragon) was initially cast in a major role in Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker, which was made "obsolete" before filming began. Smith also described the abandoned villain as a "transformative Star Wars story detail" and a "big shift in the history of the [Star Wars] franchise."
Now, with Starfighter, Smith has been given something the galaxy rarely offers: a genuine second chance.
And in the process, Lucasfilm has quietly broken a rule the franchise has held, consciously or not, for half a century. No villain actor from a Star Wars film has ever been officially recast in a different villain role in a different Star Wars film, and Smith is now the first to hold that honor.
The closest Star Wars parallel is Benicio del Toro, who was rumored to have been originally cast as Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace but chose not to pursue the role after George Lucas cut much of the Sith Lord's dialogue, with the part then famously given to Ray Park. Since then, Sam Witwer has been voicing the character for 15 years, most recently in Maul - Shadow Lord.
Del Toro ultimately made his Star Wars debut in 2017's The Last Jedi as the morally ambiguous character, DJ. Del Toro has disputed the Maul casting claim outright (via Happy Sad Confused), but even if it were true, DJ was more amoral than a clear villain.
Smith's situation offers no such grey areas, and fifty years in, and it's genuinely unprecedented.
What exactly Smith's role in The Rise of Skywalker would have been remains one of the Sequel Trilogy's more intriguing unanswered questions, especially given that most fans despise the final creative choices in that film.
When asked whether Smith might have been playing Dathan (the character revealed in the finished film as Palpatine's cloned son), Smith neither confirmed nor denied it.
Given the rage-inducing creative changes The Rise of Skywalker underwent during development, it's entirely plausible that Smith was attached to an early iteration of the Palpatine bloodline storyline that was reconceived before filming began in 2018. Whatever it was, that "transformative" nature of the character Smith described paints a picture of a villain who would have mattered to the entire mythology.
While official details are still limited, it's unlikely that Smith will be playing a character with the same amount of Force-pull, but could still be steeped in the Dark Side.
Who is Matt Smith Playing in Starfigher?
Warning - potential Star Wars: Starfighter spoilers are in the rest of this article
As for Smith's new villain, insider Jeff Sneider has said that the Force will not be with him in Starfighter... he is reportedly playing some kind of military general, and the character will not be a Sith or a student of the Dark Side.
A warlord operating in a post-Rise of Skywalker galaxy, where the First Order has crumbled, is a notably different flavor of Star Wars movie villain, especially compared to who he was meant to play in 2019.
Joining him is Mia Goth, who will reportedly be playing a Force-sensitive (probably leaning towards the Dark side), lightsaber-wielding character working for Smith's villain and is on the hunt for Ryan Gosling's nephew. Rumors suggest that Goth's character is not a Sith cultist (per ComicBookMovie); she is more of a mercenary with ties to Smith's character, but also with her own motivations.
Smaller stakes (compared to the Skywalker Saga) and potentially full character arcs should be expected in Starfighter, as a trilogy based on this film isn't expected, but remains a possibility.
Starfighter's kick-off point is rumored to center on a Force-sensitive boy (Flynn Gray) whose mother (Amy Adams) is killed to open the film. She gives her son her lightsaber and tells him to find his uncle, whom he has never met... then audiences, and the boy, will meet Gosling's Star Wars character.
Despite poor box office numbers for The Mandalorian & Grogu, there's still hope that Starfighter could breathe new life into the theatrical space for Star Wars. Gosling is coming off his most impressive success at the box office, acting alongside an alien puppet most of the time; Project Hail Mary has earned over $679 million at the worldwide box office.
