Cameo was practically The Last Jedi’s middle name, but one old favorite didn’t make it into the movie, and now we have to wonder what could have been.
There was another rather more significant cameo in Star Wars: The Last Jedi too, but we won’t get into that one here, for those who haven’t seen the movie and those who have who don’t want that particular can of worms opening right now.
Whether you’ve seen the movie or not however, there’s one cameo we can confirm doesn’t happen. Rian Johnson told Entertainment Weekly back in November that Lando Calrissian wouldn’t be making an appearance in the new installment.
"He’s not in the film and it was never really something that came up,’ he said. “I mean, I loved that character. It would have been fun to see him, but it’s just not something that ever really had a place in the story."
However, it turns out that the idea of including Lando in The Last Jedi did actually occur to Johnson. io9 points to an interview with The Playlist in which Johnson says he thought about writing him in during Finn and Rose’s trip to Canto Bight.
‘“In terms of Lando, I briefly considered — would he work in the Benicio part, ,” Johnson said.
This would have certainly changed things. As The Playlist points out, DJ is a character that the audience don’t really know what to make of. We’re never entirely sure about which side he’s on.
Lando, on the other hand, may have had his moments, but his heart was always good. He didn’t sell his friend Han Solo out lightly and he plays a big part in helping get him back in Return of the Jedi, as well as helping the Rebellion to victory in the final act.
Simply put, we like Lando. It would be a very different story if Finn and Rose met Lando because we’d trust him implicitly. Any betrayal wouldn’t sit right with us or the character.
“I don’t think you would ever buy that Lando would just completely betray the characters like that and have that level of moral ambiguity,” Johnson asserted.
He concluded that Lando’s inclusion would ultimately feel contrived and that “it’s all about the needs of the story and there’s only so much room on the table for… favorite characters to be in the movie.”
We think this is fair. Whether you liked The Last Jedi or not, it was veritably stuffed with characters, old and new, and there’s no room for shoehorning in characters that don’t serve the story, especially ones as great as Lando. If we’re to see Lando again in the main saga, he deserves more than that.
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Anyway, there are plenty of characters we want to know more about. At least we’re getting more Lando in the Han Solo movie. What about poor Nien Nunb? Even Johnson’s acknowledged that one’s “fair.”