New merchandise announcements have kicked off speculation on who else we might see in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, other than the usual suspects.
With the Jedi down to just Luke Skywalker — and that apparently from the mouth of Rian Johnson himself, per Slashfilm — one has to wonder if the qualifying language might actually be closer to “last living Jedi.” Business Insider, citing some new merchandise announcements from Hasbro, has started to openly wonder if we’ll see either or both of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda as ghosts in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, since they’re both getting new pieces of merchandise.
We’ll start with Obi-Wan. BI notes that Ewan McGregor (though it misses that Lucasfilm also used clips of the late Alec Guinness as well) did do some voice work for Rey’s vision in The Force Awakens, but voice work is not the same as actually getting McGregor in front of the camera. There’s a second option here, though. That would be to work up a digital version of Guinness, as was done for a couple characters in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
That would jive with how Obi-Wan appeared after death in the original trilogy, unless he’s suddenly decided to give himself a ghostly makeover and start looking younger and more handsome, which would probably require some awkward explanation. (Not that we could blame Obi-Wan for wanting to look fine in the afterlife, but it just doesn’t seem like something that would be a priority of his so many years after his death.)
No, it seems like Yoda might be more likely to show up in non-corporeal fashion, just because it’s far easier to deal with his appearance, and Frank Oz did do some voicing for The Force Awakens as well.
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Presumably, this isn’t something we’re going to get more details on before the movie premieres.