While Star Wars fans are looking forward to the Ahsoka TV show hitting Disney+ later this month, there are a lot of upcoming Star Wars movies and TV planned for the months and years ahead. Some of them, like The Acolyte, will introduce us to brand new characters, while other projects will see the return of previously established characters. And now it looks like one of the OG Star Wars heroes may be on his way back as Billy Dee Williams, the original Lando Calrissian, is teasing something Star Wars related. So his Lando may be one of character we'll see again.
Billy Dee Williams is exceedingly vague in his announcement tweet, saying simply that “something” is coming. He’s involved in some sort of project that he calls a “dream come true,” which certainly makes it sound like a big deal. And while the actor doesn’t give us many indications of what he’s talking about, he does end the post by saying “May the Force be with you” seemingly confirming that whatever this is, it’s Star Wars related. Read his full post below.
pic.twitter.com/P2yw5IJt3yAugust 1, 2023
The most obvious connection to draw here is that Billy Dee Williams has closed a deal to return to the galaxy far, far away as Lando Calrissian in some capacity. He previously reprised the role from the original trilogy in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Considering that we recently learned that the previously announced Lando series for Disney+,which had seemingly died was back on (with Donald Glover set to not only star but write) it’s hard not to believe there’s a connection.
Just because we expect Donald Glover’s younger version of Lando to be the main focus of any Disney+ series doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for Billy Dee Williams. It would be easy enough to use the older Lando as a framing device, setting up the episodes of the show as flashbacks. Or perhaps we could get a story set in two different time periods that seems Lando dealing with a related adventure as a young and older man.
Of course, just because of the timing, it doesn’t mean Billy Dee Williams will be back in the new series. Disney has yet to confirm the news regarding the new Lando series at all, and it seems pretty early to be signing on the cast for the project, especially considering there’s a WGA strike happening right now, and so nobody is going to actually be writing any episodes for the time being.
Perhaps the actor will be bringing Lando to life in some other Star Wars project. Or it could be unrelated to Lando Calrissian directly. Maybe Billy Dee Williams is going to narrate a Star Wars documentary. The actual possibilities are nearly endless. Based on Williams’ post, it sounds like we’ll be hearing about what’s going on before too long.
