Coming into Andor season two, we learned the surprising fact that one big returning character in the season would no longer be played by their legacy actor. This week, we learned exactly who it was—and at a time when Star Wars has found itself on diverging paths when it comes to opening up classic characters to new actors, it proved exactly why sometimes that is the best opportunity to provide fresh perspectives and interpretations in the galaxy far, far away.
We learn, of course, in Andor season two’s second act that that legacy figure is none other than Senator Bail Organa, who, after being played by Jimmy Smits across the prequel movies and most recently Obi-Wan Kenobi, is played here by Benjamin Bratt (voice acting legend Phil LaMarr stepped in for Clone Wars and Rebels, so it’s not like this is the first time we’ve seen someone else take on Bail). Andor creator Tony Gilroy has already gone on the record for the simple reason for the recast—Smits’ schedule didn’t align with production on season two, so the recast was out of necessity due to Bail’s importance to the narrative, rather than out of a conscious decision to replace Smits.
While it might be a little jarring to Star Wars fans at first, Bratt effortlessly glides into Bail’s character in the brief moments we meet him talking to Mon Mothma in the events of the season’s sixth episode, “What a Festive Evening.” Even if it wasn’t a conscious decision, the recast comes at a fascinating time for Star Wars and its approach to legacy characters. As characters ping-pong between animated origins and live-action debuts, as the franchise becomes more and more willing to bring back actors to re-inhabit their legacy roles, Star Wars is always grappling with whether it needs to recast or return to a familiar face as it plays with these increasingly important characters. Of course, Andor itself has explored this already in some way with Genevieve O’Reilly’s Mon Mothma, herself paradoxically both a recast (replacing Return of the Jedi‘s Caroline Blakiston) and a returning legacy actor, having played Mon in cut scenes from Revenge of the Sith before returning in Rogue One, Rebels, and eventually Andor and Ahsoka.
But it is fair to say for as much as it has occasionally recast roles, Star Wars as of late is increasingly more interested in bringing people back, seemingly at any cost. Just as Rogue One has brought back O’Reilly’s Mon Mothma, it also gave us the first significant digital facsimiles in Grand Moff Tarkin and a young Princess Leia. As much as Ahsoka was defined by recasting live-action iterations of animated characters, it is now also a series intrinsically tied to Hayden Christensen’s return to the role of Anakin Skywalker. In similar ways, The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett went a step further in bringing back a post-Return of the Jedi Luke Skywalker as an amalgam of Mark Hamill’s performance, body double Scott Lang, and both vocal and VFX technology to create a digital facsimile of an era-appropriate Hamill.
In some ways, this school of thought is not even necessarily about keeping Star Wars storytelling in the orbit of these familiar figures from the Skywalker saga, but intrinsically keeping specific interpretations of these characters as the definitive version, no matter what has to be done to maintain that interpretation’s status. Even putting aside the narrative concerns of it all, would The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett lost anything in casting a new young actor as Luke Skywalker instead of these awkward digital homunculus we got? Was Solo really that much of a concern to Lucasfilm that the risk of recasting its most important figures was considered too much once more?
But Star Wars storytelling has likewise similarly thrived when it’s allowed new interpretations of legacy characters, out of necessity or otherwise, to sit along their classic counterparts. After all, without a desire to recast we wouldn’t have things like Sam Witwer’s Darth Maul, or Matt Lanter and James Arnold Taylor’s Anakin and Obi-Wan in Clone Wars, versions of those characters that are arguably now almost as important as their live-action progenitors. We wouldn’t have, as we said, O’Reilly’s re-imagination of Mon Mothma, or Forest Whitaker’s evolution of Saw Gererra. Not only did putting faith in these actors to lend their own spin to Star Wars stalwarts create new, similarly beloved interpretations of those characters, it also trained Star Wars fans to accept the logistical and storytelling reality that multiple versions and interpretations of these characters can, and should, co-exist alongside each other.
No one’s brains really broke accepting the fact that Clone Wars‘ Anakin and Obi-Wan were meant to be the same people we met in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. Bratt’s version of Bail Organa might be more of a shock simply because we’ve seen Smits in the role for so long, and so recently as well, but it is simply part of that same legacy. Sometimes it is nice to see those familiar faces: but if Star Wars is to thrive, and grow, and sometimes even move beyond those faces, we should always be open to the idea of another certain point of view.
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