Cameron Monaghan's had many memorable roles over the years, from playing Ian Gallagher as part of the cast of Shameless (one of the best Showtime shows) for over a decade, to Cal Kestis in the single-player video game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and its sequel Jedi: Survivor (for which he was trained by the one, the only Mark Hamill). But if there's one role we really want to see the actor reprise, it's The Joker.
Monaghan recently revealed his wish of a potential live-action debut for his Star Wars character, telling The Direct while at FanExpo Vancouver 2024 that he would return to the role of Cal Kestis on the big screen under specific conditions:
It would have to be right. By that I mean, it has to continue the story or the character in some way. I don't want him to just kind of show up to stand around and be there. I want him to mean something and for there to be a significance for the character itself. So, it would have to make sense. But in the right context then, yeah, absolutely.
And while it would undoubtedly be cool to see Cameron's Jedi Knight on the silver screen and learn how the character would fit into the existing Star Wars movies, we can't help but selfishly want to see Monaghan step back into the shoes (or the suit, so long as it gets dry-cleaned first) of one of his other famous characters: Jeremiah Valeska, who serves as the origins of the comic-book supervillain The Joker on the Fox superhero drama Gotham.
Monaghan portrayed both Jeremiah and his nihilistic twin Jerome Valeska on the crime drama, until the latter's eventual death, with Jeremiah acting as the show's resident Joker equivalent through its end in April 2019.
The role of the Joker is no doubt a daunting one for an actor—both the late, great Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix earned Academy Awards for playing the Clown Prince of Crime onscreen, though Monaghan proclaimed that he actively avoided watching the latter for his own performance's sake. He has previously told CinemaBlend about portraying the famous villain:
There's no bigger shoes to step in than with a character like this. This is, in my opinion, one of the greatest villains of all time, period, bar none, in any medium. To be able to touch that mythos at all is incredible, and to have a character that has been portrayed by actors who I very deeply respect, I think, is incredible. To be able to be part of that conversation, I mean there's no way that I can show my appreciation for it.
Of course, with Gotham off the air, it's unclear in what project or even medium Monaghan's Jeremiah/Joker can crop up, especially now that we have an entirely new Joker in Barry Keoghan, who briefly appeared in 2022's The Batman and will likely reprise the role for The Batman: Part 2. But we're still holding out hope that, somehow, Cameron's crazy-brilliant Jeremiah Valeska will be back again. In the meantime, sure, a Jedi will do too.
