Carrie Fisher’s Daughter Could Join Mom In Star Wars: Episode VII

By Brent McKnight | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Princess LeiaThe Star Wars saga spends a great deal of time on family. There’s the families we’re born with, the families we choose, and now, J.J. Abrams and company have added a touch of real life family to the proceedings, casting Carrie Fisher’s daughter Billie Lourd in Episode VII.

The Daily Mail reports that the 21-year-old Lourd, still a relatively unknown commodity, has joined the highly anticipated space opera, and that she will play a younger version of her mother’s iconic Princess Leia. According to the article, Lourd was chosen because of a striking physical similarity to her mother—imagine that, mother and daughter look a lot like each other. As this is unofficial, we can neither confirm nor deny the authenticity of this bit of news, but it’s a fun little piece of speculation.

According to the Mail’s unnamed source, “She [Lourd] will even have her hair tied up in Princess Leia-style buns,” and apparently “Carrie backed the move as she wanted somebody in her family to play her most famous role.”

Daughter of Fisher and entertainment agent Bryan Lourd, the aspiring singer and actor will supposedly appear in a flashback, or flashbacks. That sounds pretty obvious, unless the plot also happens to involve time travel, but then this becomes an entirely different movie.

But this isn’t the only bit of speculation that involves Lourd and Star Wars that is currently making the rounds. Good Morning Britain, a British (duh) talk show reports that she will not play a young Leia, but will in fact play Leia’s daughter. Again, this makes a certain degree of sense, considering she is, in fact, Leia’s daughter in a manner of speaking. When you think about it, this incarnation of the rumor actually makes much more sense than the other version. Star Wars, as a franchise, has never been one for flashbacks. They’re big on history, certainly, but Luke never stares wistfully into the distance as wavy lines dissolve into a remembered scene from his childhood. We’d hate to see them start using this tool six movie in, and it would feel like lazy storytelling.

Lourd could possibly lend her voice to a young Leia in the upcoming animated series Star Wars Rebels, which would also make a degree of sense. The action in that series takes place between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, and features the origins of the Rebel Alliance, an organization in which the character plays a prominent role. But nowhere in any of these reports does anyone mention Rebels, so that’s on the shelf for now. It just makes much more sense that she would play Leia and Han’s daughter. We’ve heard rumors that newcomer Adam Driver could play their son, and the duo often has two kids, a son and a daughter, in the expanded universe, even though that is not necessarily a part of the official canon.

Like everything else with Star Wars: Episode VII, we’ll have to wait and see what is and is not true. And more than likely, we won’t actually learn anything concrete until the lights go down in the movie theater on December 18, 2015, assuming that still is the date.

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