Who Could Ray Stevenson's Villainous Admiral Be Besides Thrawn

What Imperial Officer Could He Be?

By Culture SlatePublished 2 years ago • Updated 2 years ago • 4 min read

Lucasfilm’s next big live-action series, Ahsoka, is said to begin filming in April, after a push-back of a few weeks, as the production of Season 3 of The Mandalorian takes longer than anticipated.

Rosario Dawson will be reprising the titular role, which she has already played in Season 2 of The Mandalorian and more recently in The Book of Boba Fett. The cast also includes Hayden Christensen, who will play Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, Natasha Liu Bordizzo as the Mandalorian Sabine Wren, as well as Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Ivanna Sakhno in currently undisclosed roles. Rumored several times, but still not confirmed to date, are Mena Massoud as the Jedi Knight Ezra Bridger and Lars Mikkelsen.

The most recent addition to the cast is Ray Stevenson. The 57 year-old Northern Irish actor has appeared in several Marvel films, including all three Thor movies as Volstaag and as Frank Castle in Punisher: War Zone. Aside from the big screen, Stevenson has also participated in several TV-shows like Rome, Dexter and Vikings. In the Star Wars universe, he has provided the voice of the Mandalorian Gar Saxon, both in The Clone Wars and in Rebels.

It is not known which role Stevenson will play in the Ahsoka series, other than his character will be a villain. It is highly unlikely that he will reprise his role as Saxon, who was part of Maul’s Shadow Collective during the Clone Wars and later became the leader of the Imperial Super-Commandos under the Empire, as he was killed by Sabine Wren’s mother before the Battle of Yavin.

It is rumored that Stevenson’s part could be that of an admiral, but presumably not Grand Admiral Thrawn. The blue-skinned Chiss, who was created by Timothy Zahn for the 1991 Legends novel Heir to The Empire and later brought back into cannon in Rebels, is said to be the main antagonist of the Ahsoka series. In the final episode of Rebels, Thrawn and Bridger disappeared into the Unknown Regions, when Thrawn’s Star Destroyer was captured by whale-like creatures called Purrgils, that were able to naturally travel hyperspace.

The final scene of Rebels had Ahsoka return to Lothal to start the search for the missing Ezra, together with Sabine, sometime after the Battle of Endor. In Season 2 of The Mandalorian, the Togruta stated that she was still looking for Thrawn, presumably hoping that Ezra was either still with him or that the Grand Admiral at least knew where to find the Jedi.

With Thrawn rumored to be played by Mikkelsen, who also voiced the Chiss in Rebels, Stevenson’s character is still a mystery. As the Ahsoka series takes place in the same timeframe as The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, 5 years after the Battle of Endor, there aren’t that many admirals left after the final defeat of the Empire at the Battle of Jakku. Of course, it is possible that Stevenson will play an entirely new character, but Lucasfilm has shown a tendency to link its movies and TV shows more closely together, as shown by the inclusion of Cad Bane or Cobb Vanth in live-action Star Wars projects.

One interesting character Stevenson could play would be Brendol Hux, father of Armitage Hux, who would later become a general in the First Order and a kind of nemesis to Kylo Ren. During the reign of the Empire, Brendol Hux was the leader of the Arcanis Academy. He was a strong believer in the Empire, but thought that stormtroopers were inferior to the clone troopers of the Republic. So he created the idea to raise stormtroopers from birth, raising them according to a survival-of-the-fittest dogma. His plan was rejected by the Empire, but later welcomed and applied by the First Order.

The novels that Hux has appeared in, most notably in Delilah S. Dawson’s Phasma, paint Hux as a rather cruel and ruthless man, who despised weakness and had no love for his son, but was himself a generally weak character, who was both physically and psychologically inferior to other leaders of the Imperial Remnant like Admiral Rae Sloane or Gallius Rax.

So it remains to be seen if Stevenson, who has a strong physical presence, will actually get to play the man who was responsible for the creation of the First Order stormtroopers. But of course, with flashbacks becoming more frequent in Star Wars, anything is possible.

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