By now if you have any sort of interest in Star Wars, you may have heard that Natalie Portman is potentially set to be returning to that franchise from a galaxy far, far away. Speculation is rife that she will, for the first time since 2005, reprise her fan-favorite role of Padme Amidala, deceased wife of Anakin Skywalker and mother to Luke and Leia.
So of course it makes sense to include her in Ahsoka season 2, as Lucasfilm is rumored to be doing, and I think I speak for us all when I say that I cannot wait to find out more about her previously unknown yet deep and vitally important relationship with Ahsoka Tano…
Natalie Portman as Padme Amidala in Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of The Sith – YouTube, Scenepack Library
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It turns out, however, that Natalie Portman may have already BEEN back to the Star Wars galaxy, but her triumphant re-emergence was inexplicably left on the cutting room floor.
Per scooper Jeff Sneider during his interview on John Rocha’s The Hot Mic about Natalie Portman:
“She previously did shoot some stuff for the Obi-Wan [Kenobi] show while working on [Thor]: Love and Thunder, but it didn’t make the final cut, so it’s too early to know…”
Unfortunately we have no further details on exactly what or how much Portman filmed, but if this rumor is indeed true it betrays an almost incomprehensible level of incompetence on the part of Lucasfilm and those involved in the production of Kenobi.
Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his eopie in a scene from Lucasfilm’s OBI-WAN KENOBI, exclusively on Disney+. © 2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & ™. All Rights Reserved.
One of the few positives to come from Disney’s Star Wars Sequel Trilogy has been a renewed appreciation for the Prequel Trilogy, with Disney unwittingly making people realize that, while the Prequels were flawed, they could have been much, much worse.
Regarding the Kenobi TV series, it was clear that fans were hyped by the news that Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen were returning to their roles as Obi-Wan and Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker, but completing the trifecta with a Padme cameo could have sent fan excitement through the roof.
Natalie Portman as Padme Amidala in Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of The Sith – YouTube, Scenepack Library
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Now, if Kenobi had ultimately ended up being a tightly-written, fast-paced and excellent mini-series then Lucasfilm could be excused for cutting out Portman’s parts. But we all know how the show turned out. I, for one, would have gladly traded in two minutes of Reva’s screen-time or even a full half of the infamous Leia chase sequence for a cameo by Padme.
But alas…
All we can do now is hope that someone at Lucasfilm has learned their lesson, and that they won’t waste Portman’s time again for Ahsoka. Or perhaps they will re-use the footage they cut from Kenobi somehow. Time will tell.
Do you believe that Padme was originally in the Obi Wan Kenobi Star Wars series? Could we still see Natalie Portman return to Star Wars? Sound off in the comments and let us know.
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Because that boring black lady needed more screen time?
She helped show us how pathetic and useless lightsabers are against women in Disney Star Wars when she survived getting impaled by Darth Vader not once but TWICE a decade apart. And she didn’t even need medical assistance or anyone to come to her aid.
Watching women fight in Disney Star Wars has all the stakes of watching men in the woods fight with sticks.
A non-Force user being included in something that takes place ten years after she died? How? Will someone go dig up her corpse?
Yeah. Cause the treatment of Padme is so much more egregious that of Luke’s.
Not a joke but I think Leia was actually the worst mistreated. They made her into a joke of a leader who sides with Holdo but can’t even manage to deal with Palpatine while he’s got one hand behind his back building an entire fleet. Only when she dies and they aren’t beholden to her orders do they manage to win.
Han and Luke both got it bad, but people don’t recognize it for Leia.