With Chris Terrio’s script for Star Wars: Episode IX complete, director J.J. Abrams is now knee-deep in pre-production for the closer of the Sequel Trilogy. This includes beginning the casting process, and judging by a new casting call, it looks like one key character from the film has now been revealed.
According to That Hashtag Show, Abrams and his team are currently searching for “a female lead, 40-50 years old, to play the role of MARA.” Before we go any further, we’ll point out that it’s common for Lucasfilm – given how highly scrutinized the production of Star Wars movies are – to use codenames at such an early stage, so this might not be the name of the character in the finished product. If it is, though, they could be a massive addition to the film.
That’s because the name Mara will bring one person to mind for fans of the Expanded Universe novels, nowadays labelled as the “Legends” universe. We’re talking about Mara Jade, of course, most well known as Luke Skywalker’s Force-using wife in the alternate continuity. Once brainwashed by Emperor Palpatine to become his right-hand woman, Luke managed to free her from his control. They then went on to marry, have kids and train the next generation of Jedi.
Due to the many divergences between the movies and the EU timeline, it would be practically impossible to closely adapt Mara. For one, we’re pretty sure Luke, who’d been living as a hermit for years, isn’t married. That being said, they could use her as a template for a similar character in Episode IX. For instance, fans will know that Kylo Ren evokes Jacen Solo from the EU.
We could also speculate that this other strong female character with ties to the Skywalker family could be being brought in to broadly fill General Leia’s role in the narrative, seeing as Carrie Fisher’s untimely death back in 2016 means she’ll have to be written out, leaving the Resistance without its leader. Again, though, that’s just speculation.
What we can tell you with certainty right now is that Star Wars: Episode IX arrives on December 20th, 2019, by which point, we’ll surely have a much better idea of who this mysterious new character is.