Ahmed Best's Jedi to return in future Star Wars projects, boss teases

For a long time, actor Ahmed Best looked destined to be forever associated in the minds of Star Wars fans everywhere with Jar Jar Binks - perhaps the most-hated character in the entire Skywalker Saga.

Best played Binks in the divisive prequel trilogy and, while it's clear he did everything he was asked to do by the people making the movies, it was Best who ended up taking the brunt of the hate for Jar Jar. And as I'm sure you know, Star Wars fans can be quite an angry bunch, to put it mildly.

Yet Best remained an ambassador for the franchise through it all, even returning to Star Wars as a Jedi called Kelleran Beq in the 2020 children's game show Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge.

What a treat it was, then, when season three of The Mandalorian not only made Best's Jedi canon, but ensured he was the one to save Grogu from Order 66 and the Empire's attack on Coruscant. Many fans said this was Best's redemption. This is nonsense, of course. Best never needed redemption. This was Star Wars offering him a long-overdue apology.

While Kelleran Beq didn't get a huge amount of screen time, he certainly left an impression on fans. It's no surprise that we're all desperate to see him pop up again in a future project then, is it?

The good news is that it sounds like we'll almost certainly reunite with Beq somewhere down the line. At least that's what we're inferring after Star Wars producer Dave Filoni teased as much in a recent interview with EW.

"It's always a possibility," Filoni said. "We love Ahmed, and he did such a great job. It was a real thrill for us to get him involved. We talked with him about it. We come up with these ideas and we think: Who might work with it? We make sure before we get too far to bring them into the process, so it's not just like, 'Here's who you're going to play.' It's like, 'What do you think of this? We want you to be this person. What are your thoughts on it?' [We try to] make it a real collaboration and think it's really key to the success of it."

So there we are then. The petition to get Best his own solo Star Wars series starts here, people.

Topics: Star Wars, Disney, TV And Film