Lupita Nyong'o and Gwendoline Christie will be in Star Wars VII!

Photo from the starwars.com announcement

What a time to be alive!

The folks at starwars.com have announced Lupita Nyong'o will indeed be joining the cast of Star Wars Episode VII, and will be joined by Gwendoline Christie. Christie, known for playing Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones, will bring the total number of new women characters to three. When you add Carrie Fisher's return as Princess Leia to the number, you get four major roles for women, which is four times the number found in both the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy.


I had really hoped Nyong'o would be in Star Wars, but when rumors switched from Nyong'o to Maisie Richardson-Sellers, I resigned myself to hoping that the new casting announcement would be for any woman of color. Still, I could not help daydreaming about how great it would have been to have Lupita Nyong'o in Star Wars. I wondered what the alternate reality with Nyong'o in Star Wars would be like... and now it seems that we actually live in that world!

Now we just have to wait for the announcement of who these characters will be, and hope that their roles will be as major as the roles for the other members of the cast. I have to say, Episode VII looks to have a pretty huge cast list, so J. J. Abrams and co. had better find great roles for these actors!