Another week, another discussion thread for the new episode. What did y’all think? Lots of opinions last week, not all of them good
I can always do with more Mon Mothma, but I thought it was odd that it makes her visual appearance inconsistent with RotJ. She’s reverted back to her pre-OT hairdo (and seemingly hair color) and went from looking like Genevieve O’Reilly (RotS, Rogue One, Andor) to looking like Caroline Blakiston (RotJ) to later going back to looking like O’Reilly in Ahsoka. I recognize the limitations of live action story-telling and the use of actors’ likenesses, but to have consistency in-universe there seems to be three options:
Either:
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All depictions of Mon Mothma that take place during or around RotJ are animated instead of live action
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All live action depictions of Mon Mothma that take place during or around RotJ have Caroline Blakiston’s likeness digitally added onto the actress stand-in (à la Peter Cushing’s likeness for Tarkin in Rogue One or Mark Hamill’s likeness in The Mandalorian/BoBF)
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Blakiston’s appearance in RotJ is canonically replaced with a new performance by O’Reilly (à la The Emperor in TESB Special Edition or Anakin’s Ghost in RotJ Special Edition)
None of these options would be easy for me to swallow, but I’d like to know your thoughts on this matter. Am I just overthinking and fretting about nothing? Do you think Genevieve O’Reilly was briefed about when the Ahsoka series takes place?
Edit: Come to think of it, there is precedent in live-action for what happens when a character is first portrayed by an Actor A and, by necessity, later portrayed by an Actor B in scenes which take place each before and after Actor A’s scenes (sort of). In TESB Special Edition, Boba Fett’s voice was redubbed by Temuera Morrison for the sake of continuity with Morrison’s portrayal of Jango and his clones which incidentally also yields continuity with Morrison as Boba in The Mandalorian & BoBF. The semblance of original (voice) actor, Jason Wingreen, was removed from canon.
I don’t think continuity in actors is anywhere near as absolutely critical as you seem to think it is. It was a neat touch that they dubbed in the digital appearance of Mark Hamill / Carrie Fisher / Peter Cushing, but I don’t think that means they need to do it every time - I see that as more akin to an Easter egg. When they’ve done this, it’s mostly for characters with small cameo roles, like Luke showing up in The Mandalorian. And I certainly wouldn’t approve of yet more retrospective tinkering with the OT - that time has passed.
I think most fans’ immersion can cope just fine with Genevieve O’Reilly, who we’re plenty accustomed to playing Mon Mothma, continuing to be her visual appearance in post-OT media. The same way we cope just fine with Vader with mask off in RotJ looking like Sebastian Shaw, and not a digitally-aged Hayden Christensen.
Yeah, the visual continuity is something that I can look past in this case. It would be a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have. Retaining the actor also isn’t relevant for cases where a transformative event or an extended period of aging has occurred (ex. unmasked Vader in RotJ, Anakin growing up between TPM and AotC, Obi-Wan between Kenobi and ANH, Boba from AotC to The Mandalorian)
That hairstyle was just a phase. Maybe the rebellion didn’t have the best hair stylists.
Lmao yeah she couldn’t get to her usual stylist when she was with the rebellion. Rest assured they were waiting for her when the empire fell.
