It’s time to talk about something Star Wars has been avoiding for some time: recasting its original trilogy characters. There have long been calls for the likes of Luke Skywalker to be portrayed by new actors (Sebastian Stan, anyone?) but it has, by and large, been something that the franchise hasn’t needed to properly confront – until now.
It is true that there’s now a big gap in the canon for the period after Return of the Jedi and before Force Awakens where in theory Leia, Luke and Han should be the protagonists of the universe, at the front lines against any threat to the Republic, where it’s awkward to tell big stories without including those characters. But that seems like more the role for an animated series where they’d have new voice actors as a matter of course.