Last week, it was announced that British actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag) had joined the cast of the Han Solo Star Wars spinoff. At the time, the only details accompanying the report indicated that she’d be playing a “key CG character” in the film, but now we might just have a little more to go on.
Former The Wrap reporter, Jeff Sneider, reckons his sources have confirmed that Waller-Bridge is actually going to be playing “the first significantly-featured female droid in Star Wars history.” Though there’ve been several background droid characters that were designated a female gender in various Star Wars media over the years, if this is on the level, Waller-Bridge would indeed be portraying the only principal girl-droid character in the storied history of the galaxy far, far away. You may recall rumors that The Force Awakens‘ BB-8 was female, but even though the designers always imagined the cute little ‘bot as a girl, director J.J. Abrams ultimately decided to make him male in gender and cast Ben Schwartz and Bill Hader as the voices of the character.
So, assuming this is true, whose side will she be on? “Bad” droids have never really featured heavily in the Star Wars movies (though Rogue One‘s K-2S0 was a reprogrammed Imperial droid), so it might be interesting to go down that road and maybe give one of the villains a robotic sidekick. However, it’s much more likely that this will be a new pal for the budding space-smuggler and his motley crew, which will also include younger versions of Lando Calrissian and Chewbacca.
At any rate, until this is made official, we’ll have to take it with the usual pinch of salt, but we’re bound to find out more in the coming weeks as production is now underway on the standalone Han Solo movie, which hits theaters in 2018.
