Some people were born to play villains: Christopher Lee, Alan Rickman, and Jeremy Irons, for example, are all memorable for their evil turns. A more recent entry to this list, Matt Smith, turned a career as the kookiest iteration of Doctor Who into a string of adversarial roles, from Prince Philip in The Crown to Daemon Targaryen in House of the Dragon to Morbius in Morbius.
At one point, Smith came close to securing the ultimate villain role: a Star Wars baddie. He was rumored to play a villain in The Rise of Skywalker, a rumor Smith later confirmed, but his role was cut before he could even get on set. Now, years later, he’s getting a second chance in the Star Wars universe — and, yes, he’s playing a bad guy.
Deadline reports that Smith has been cast in Shawn Levy’s upcoming Star Wars movie, Star Wars: Starfighter, as a major villain. This positions his character opposite Ryan Gosling’s hero, and he’ll probably align himself with the similarly villainous character played by Mia Goth.
Doctor Who and House of the Dragon actor Matt Smith will play a villain in Star Wars: Starfighter.
While we don’t have any details as to what this role could be, we do have some precedent. We never found out exactly what role Smith would have played in Rise of Skywalker, and he’s never confirmed or denied the rampant fan theories that he was meant to play a version of Emperor Palpatine. Theories as to how he would’ve been related to Sheev vary, with fans suggesting he would’ve been a clone, a young Palpatine in flashback, or even Palpatine’s son.
Could this still be true in Starfighter? The movie is set five years after The Rise of Skywalker, so while Palpatine won’t somehow return, there are still possibilities. Rise revealed that Palpatine created multiple “failed” clones that were then set loose on the galaxy, and one of them went on to father Rey. Hypothetically, Smith could be playing another one of these clones. But Rise gave us a brief look at a clone played by Billy Howle, so unless Smith is a clone who looks different, that’s not too likely.
Zooming out, it’s probably a safe bet that Starfighter won’t touch on Palpatine at all. Bringing the iconic villain back to the sequel trilogy became one of the era’s most laughable choices, and now lives on as a meme. If Star Wars is going to truly move on from its mistakes — like removing Matt Smith in the first place — it should give him an original character to make his own.
