Obi-Wan Kenobi Almost Featured the Long-Awaited Return of a Star Wars Prequel Character

There’s no shortage of rumors circulating about Natalie Portman’s potential return to Star Wars. Now that Hayden Christensen and Ewan McGregor have returned as their Prequel era characters Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, respectively, there seems to be an even greater desire from fans to see Portman to reprise her role as Padmé Amidala in a future Star Wars project. While most of the current rumors revolve around her making an appearance in Ahsoka season 2 as Christensen did in the first season, a new rumor suggests Portman was actually originally slated to appear in another Disney+ series in 2022.

According to industry scooper Jeff Sneider in a recent episode of The Hot Mic podcast, Portman filmed scenes for Obi-Wan Kenobi. “Apparently, she previously did shoot some small stuff for the Obi-Wan show while working on Love and Thunder,” Sneider said, “but it didn’t make the final cut and my source wouldn’t stake their life on [her appearing in Ahsoka season 2].”

If Obi-Wan Kenobi did film scenes with Portman, it makes sense that they were scrapped in the final edit. As wonderful as it would have been to see her again, Padmé’s death in Revenge of the Sith means that these scenes would have been flashbacks, something the six-episode miniseries didn’t have a ton of extra time for. 

That said, the return of Padmé at some point in the future isn’t such a far-fetched idea. In fact, Portman has expressed interest in returning in the past. In a 2023 interview with GQ, Portman said, “I have no information on this. No one’s ever asked me to return, but I’m open to it.”

In some ways, it would make more sense for her to appear in Ahsoka. The show has used flashbacks both in the traditional sense and through the strange limbo space the World Between Worlds to show characters and moments from Ahsoka’s past. We saw Ahsoka (Rosario Dawson) interact with Anakin, her former Jedi master, last season, so it’s not outside of this show’s purview to find a way to bring back Padmé from the past for new scenes.

In the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Tales of the Jedi, Padmé and Ahsoka are shown to have a close relationship. Just as Anakin is like a brother to her, Padmé is like an older sister. After Padmé’s death, Ahsoka even risks potential capture just to attend her funeral on Naboo. She not only had the loss of Anakin to deal with in the aftermath of Order 66, she had to deal with losing Padmé too.

While bringing characters back from the dead for the sake of nostalgia is something we truly believe Star Wars should take a step back from, we will make an exception to see Portman again, especially after her smaller, grim role in Revenge of the Sith. Just as Christensen and McGregor have had a chance to step back into their Clone Wars-era roles and build Star Wars legacy outside of the Prequel films, Portman should have a chance to do that with Padmé. She is such an interesting character, and unfortunately the prequels don’t entirely do her justice, despite Portman’s best efforts. 

If Obi-Wan Kenobi really did almost bring Portman back, it’s a shame we didn’t get to see it, even as deleted scenes. Hopefully if and when she does return to Star Wars, she’ll get the fanfare she deserves from Lucasfilm and fans alike.

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From https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/star-wars-obi-wan-kenobi-padme-cameo-natalie-portman/