Sitting in a theater last night, seeing Star Wars: The Force Awakens for the second time this week, I was struck by something. It was, within me, an awakening. A greater convergence of my two favorite beats: Star Wars and Game of Thrones. It came with the realization that there was not just one, but three Game of Thrones alums in The Force Awakens.
The first was confirmed by our friends at Pajiba this morning. Thomas Brodie-Sangster, who played Jojen Reed on Thrones, is credited as a First Order officer. He’s one of the people working on consoles in the background while Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren and Domnhall Gleeson’s General Hux are making very important decisions. His one line, “We have an unsanctioned departure from bay two,” takes place pretty early in the movie. So when you see it (or see it again), keep an eye out.
The second is Jessica Henwick, who played Nymeria Sand in Season 5. She shows up later in the movie (no spoilers yet, I promise) as a Resistance X-Wing pilot. Like many of Star Wars fandoms favorite minor characters from the original trilogy (like Wedge Antilles and Jek Porkins) she’s only on-screen for about 10-seconds in total and if my notes are right, she has the equivalent of one sentence of dialogue. Hopefully there will be more from her in future movies, as Henwick is quite talented.
The last is the most obvious, Gwendoline Christie as Captain Phasma. This one was disappointing for reasons that I’ll explore below this spoiler warning…
This is where I warn you that I’m going to talk about spoilers for The Force Awakens. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s a trap!
Thanks to her excellent work as Brienne of Tarth, Gwendoline Christie is the queen of the sapphire isles of my heart. She’s a wonderful performer who has the ability to be stunning, powerful and a driving force for drama. In The Force Awakens, Captain Phasma is relegated to Boba Fett territory. Cool costume, useless character. Her entire existence in the movie is built around failures. She’s basically just there to look cool, be incompetent, then get literally thrown into the trash. I had hoped for more. And I will continue to hope for more until it’s confirmed whether or not Phasma is coming back for future movies (All rumors suggest that she will be back.) That character, like Boba Fett, probably deserves better. Or at the very least, that character needs to earn the adoration she will receive simply because that’s a badass costume.
For more coverage of The Force Awakens, click here.
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