The story of Kelly Marie Tran and her time with the Star Wars franchise is a tragic one that follows an up-and-coming actress looking for her big break and an absolutely toxic fanbase who bullied her off of the internet. With the recent Star Wars sequel trilogy where Kelly Marie Tran appeared as Resistance mechanic Rose Tico having wrapped up in 2019, her time in the Star Wars universe has come to a close. Do Tran’s fans have a chance of ever seeing the actress make a return appearance? According to the actress herself, a return doesn’t seem likely.
Tran’s Rose Tico first joined the Star Wars universe in 2017’s Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. She finds herself paired up with John Boyega‘s Finn on a quest to find the codebreaker they needed to take down The First Order. The two had excellent chemistry with one another on-screen and Rose was an instant fan favorite for a lot of people.
Unfortunately, much like many of the cast members from the recent Star Wars sequel trilogy, she found herself under constant attack by cyberbullies following her appearance in the film. Kelly Marie Tran was treated so horribly online by internet trolls that she shuttered all of her online social media for good after months of hateful, racist, and sexist posts that were directed her way.
While Tran had quickly become wary of how the Star Wars fandom could be in between films, she ultimately stuck around for Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise Of Skywalker in a vastly reduced capacity with barely any dialogue.
The toxicity of the Star Wars fanbase is a relatively small but very loud corner of the fandom. While plenty of people who love Star Wars embrace what makes these films great, the path to the dark side is a slippery slope. Tran is far from the only person to have been pushed to the brink by these people, with Star Wars sequel trilogy star Daisy Ridley also having erased all of her social media accounts following online harassment.
Sadly, this type of harassment of Star Wars cast members isn’t even something that recently began happening either. It doesn’t take more than about five minutes of online searching to find detailed accounts of what the Star Wars fanbase put Star Wars prequel trilogy actors Jake Lloyd and Ahmed Best through over the years. It is easy for the toxic corner of the fanbase to speak the loudest as they hide behind the anonymity of the internet, but that doesn’t mean that they are the majority.
Thankfully for Kelly Marie Tran and her fans, her career has continued past the Star Wars franchise. Tran has had roles in television projects like Sorry For Your Loss (2018) and Monsterland (2020) and film projects like The Croods: The New Age (2020). She is currently voicing the title role in Disney‘s Raya And The Last Dragon (2021); which is now in theaters and streaming on the Disney+ subscription streaming service (for an additional fee).
In a recent interview with IGN, Tran expressed that she was uncertain if she would ever be able to return to the role of her Star Wars heroine Rose Tico. She elaborated and further explained that who she is as a person has changed so drastically since she played that role and that she had grown “more jaded” since finishing work on Star Wars:
I miss Rose. I miss who I was when I played her. I feel like sometimes, I don’t know if I could play her now. I feel like I’m different. I feel like so many times in our lifetime we are constantly learning and growing. The realm of human experience is so limitless! You can be so many different people at one time. But when I think about Rose specifically, I think about who I was then, and how I was able to tap into certain different parts of myself, and I don’t know if I could play her again. I miss parts of her.
Whether or not Rose Tico is part of it, the Star Wars franchise looks to have plenty ahead of it with multiple new films and television series in the works. Late last year, Disney announced plans for a new Rogue Squadron–based film from director Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman), plus we still have previously announced untitled film projects coming from both Rian Johnson (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) and Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok).
Meanwhile, on the television side of things, Star Wars is still riding high following the success of the recently finished second season of The Mandalorian, which has proven to become one of the most successful projects the Star Wars brand has ever seen. The Mandalorian is the first-ever live-action Star Wars series produced for television and is already having such a lasting impact on the franchise that it is leading to not one, but three separate live-action spin-off series with Ahsoka, Rangers Of The New Republic, and The Book Of Boba Fett on their way in the next year or two. This is in addition to a third season of The Mandalorian itself, plus a limited series following the adventures of Obi-Wan Kenobi, and new animated series like The Bad Batch and Star Wars: Visions.
We aren’t sure exactly where Rose Tico would actually fit into any of these new Star Wars projects, but we know that plenty of people would love to see more of Kelly Marie Tran as the ever-hopeful member of The Resistance. It is truly a shame that the actress has been through so much in her time since becoming part of the Star Wars universe that she herself doesn’t believe she could ever find herself back in the right headspace to truly be Rose again.
Would you want to see Kelly Marie Tran return to Star Wars? If so, where would you hope to see her pop up? Sound off in the comments section below and be sure to stick around Geek Anything for more great Star Wars updates!
