Richard E. Grant has so far been doing a pretty good job at keeping the details of his Star Wars: Episode IX character under wraps, but the fans have done a whole lot of speculating in the last year, with one recent rumor being that the actor is playing a familiar character from the franchise.
The notion stems from an interview in which Grant recalled how “the room went upside down” when J.J. Abrams told him the name of his character. Obviously this isn’t a lot to go on, but one fan on Reddit has ventured an interesting guess regardless. User Rylonian has shared a series of images demonstrating how with the appropriate costume and makeup, Grant ends up looking an awful lot like Alec Guinness’s take on Obi-Wan Kenobi. And while you could probably apply the same effects to a lot of actors and yield similar results, you can at least imagine Grant pulling this role off if the occasion called for it.
Of course, most of us are going to need a whole lot more to go on than this one Photoshop job to start taking the idea seriously, and the internet has already offered a fair few contradicting theories. In particular, many fans believe that Grant has been cast in the role of a villain, which is hardly the most out-there of suggestions given the actor’s track record. For a while, there was even talk that he might be playing Grand Admiral Thrawn of Star Wars Rebels fame until Grant himself flatly denied the rumor last year.
In any case, given the intense spoiler security measures that the star recently recalled, Grant is probably in no mood to spill the details, but all will be revealed when Star Wars: Episode IX hits theaters on December 20th, 2019.
