Anna Daniels
Rosario Dawson is, at last, coming to Star Wars.
The Star Wars saga, it seems, just cannot satisfy its fandom. Ever since Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2012, the discourse surrounding the “galaxy far, far away” has been divisive at best and toxic at worst. Throughout the sequel trilogy, fans have debated how well directors J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson followed the original trilogy’s story.
Then came The Mandalorian. As the films take a break, this first live-action Star Wars series promised a new beginning. The show’s first season introduced new heroes and villains, expanding the saga in interesting ways. But now The Mandalorian has added a very recognizable face as a beloved Star Wars character.
Rosario Dawson joins ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 2
Dawson will debut in The Mandalorian Season 2 as Ahsoka Tano. The character was introduced on Star Wars: The Clone Wars as the young apprentice to Anakin Skywalker. But over the course of both that series as well as Star Wars: Rebels, Ahsoka has developed a powerful following among fans.
And Dawson’s casting certainly doesn’t come out of nowhere. For a while, both fans and Dawson herself have been very outspoken about wanting her to play Ahsoka in live action. Plus, with Dawson’s past work on the Marvel Netflix shows as Claire Temple, she already has an in with Disney. And, as she mentioned on Entertainment Tonight in October 2019, she has since gained a ton of more experience on television.
In the past couple of years, Dawson has not only appeared on five of the six Marvel Netflix shows, including main roles on Daredevil and Luke Cage. She has also appeared on two seasons of Jane the Virgin and the new USA Network show Briarpatch. So the pieces all seem to be lining up for Dawson to enter the Star Wars saga on its first live-action TV series.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgXb9FkSKCY?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]
She appeared in lots of movies in the 2000s
But of course, Dawson has been working steadily within the industry since the late 1990s. Over the years, she has appeared in all manner of film projects. These include a number of cult classics, such as 2001’s Josie and the Pussycats. She’s also worked with Kevin Smith in 2006’s Clerks II and with Quentin Tarantino the following year in Death Proof.
However, one of the roles Dawson is perhaps best known for is Gail in director Robert Rodriguez’s 2005 release Sin City. She reprised that part for the 2014’s sequel Sin City: A Dame to Kill for. And now that Rodriguez is confirmed to direct at least one episode of The Mandalorian, fans are speculating he might reunite with Dawson in the Star Wars universe.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBsDWiL3-DA?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]
But 2002 saw her movie career reach both extreme highs and lows
Yet, despite Dawson’s many credits over the past couple of decades, she never experienced quite as polarizing a year as 2002. Just one year after Josie and the Pussycat‘s box office failure, Dawson starred opposite Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as the female lead of Men in Black II.
That film might not be widely beloved or anything, but it does still stand as the biggest financial success of Dawson’s career. Men in Black II earned $190 million domestically and $441 million worldwide. Her second biggest hit is another comic book property, as she voiced Barbara Gordon in 2017’s The Lego Batman Movie, a $310 million worldwide hit.
But the very next month after Men in Black II hit theaters, Dawson also appeared in The Adventures of Pluto Nash. That Eddie Murphy sci-fi comedy became one of the most notorious flops of all time. Against a production budget of $100 million, the movie only made $7 million worldwide. Thankfully, both Murphy and Dawson’s career bounced back. But only one is about to join the Star Wars saga.
Written by: Cheat
