'Clone Wars' star Matt Lanter says his Anakin Skywalker will return to 'Star Wars' (original) (raw)
"You'll see Anakin again," the actor tells EW.
Published on April 27, 2021 05:02PM EDT
While Anakin Skywalker will return in live-action form by way of Hayden Christensen in the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi Disney+ series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars voice actor Matt Lanter says the character will also be returning to animation.
Lanter shared with EW during an interview for Jupiter's Legacy on Netflix that he's been quietly working on some projects for Lucasfilm Animation after Clone Wars concluded with its series finale last year.
"There's some new Lucasfilm Animation going on. I've been a part of some things I can't talk about yet. You'll see Anakin again," Lanter promises. "I never quite put Anakin down, whether I'm doing a video game or something new for Lucasfilm Animation."
A good guess would be some kind of cameo or lengthier appearance in Star Wars: The Bad Batch, the spinoff series to Clone Wars that will premiere on Disney+ this May 4. The show will focus on Clone Force 99 and feature a number of characters in Star Wars canon, including Ming-Na Wen's The Mandalorian character Fennec in animated form.
Matt Lanter and Anakin Skywalker. Emma McIntyre/Getty Images; Lucasfilm
Disney+ didn't immediately respond to EW's request for comment.
The seventh and final season for Clone Wars was a welcome surprise for the cast and crew. They had multiple cancellation scares over the years, but then creator Dave Filoni, a George Lucas padawan, finally got the chance to wrap up the show the way they wanted.
"[The series finale] didn't come as much of a shock as that first time because that first time we felt like we didn't get to finish," Lanter says. "Now, we properly got to finish. We got to send off the show in an emotional way in the way that Dave wanted to send it off. I actually think it was really cool that it premiered when everyone's spirits were down [because of the pandemic]. For Star Wars fans, it was exciting to have something new. I think it lifted everyone up a bit."
Ashley Eckstein, another superstar among the Star Wars fandom who voiced Ahsoka Tano on Clone Wars, previously teased to EW that she will always be up to reprise her role when needed — even as Rosario Dawson now portrays the character in live-action for the new Ahsoka series.
"I do wonder about Ahsoka's journey," she had said. "In my hopes and dreams, [the show] is just Ahsoka's ending for Clone Wars. She gets such a beautiful, incredible ending, one that I feel this character truly deserved. In my opinion, there's so many more Ahsoka stories to tell and it's my hope that we continue to get those stories no matter the medium, whether it be animation or film or television or books or video games."
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