Fans have been clamoring for Billy Dee Williams to reprise his role as Lando Calrissian on the big screen and it almost happened in ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi‘. Sure, we’ve been having fun seeing him again in both the Marvel comics as well as a much younger take on the character in ‘Star Wars Rebels’ but he hasn’t been seen in the flesh in the recent outings.

According to director Rian Johnson, he had almost used the infamous owner of Cloud City to play another part in the movie:

“Of course I’d love to see Lando. In terms of Lando, I briefly considered — would he work in the Benicio [del Toro] part, [DJ].

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. Cause we love Lando and you’d come into it with that [expectation]. And also, DJ, the character that they met, for the purposes of Finn’s character, had to be a morally ambiguous character that you’re not sure about, that you’re guessing about, and we already know that we love the character of Lando so it just wouldn’t have played in that part story wise.”

While it is sad that we didn’t get to see Lando back, it wouldn’t have made sense to include him for the very reason above. I don’t think anyone could see him making that kind of deal with the First Order. As Johnson says, “there’s only so much room on the table for… favorite characters to be in the movie.”

Hopefully, we’ll have a chance to see Billy Dee Williams back in ‘Star Wars: Episode IX’. It would be interesting to see if he is still running things in Cloud City or if he has moved onto bigger and better things, or, thrown out and started fresh.

Are you hoping that we’ll see a return of Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian in ‘Star Wars: Episode IX’? Do you feel that Johnson was correct in not including him in the film? Share your thoughts below!

Source: The Playlist