How 'Star Wars' And Marvel Made The Same Exact Mistake With The Same Actress
This may seem to come out of left field, but it is something that is interesting to say the least. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier recently wrapped up on Disney+. Erin Kellyman appears in the show as an antagonist to the heroes named Karli Morgenthau, who is a member of a group called Flag-Smashers. Rewind three years, and Erin Kellyman also makes an appearance in another Disney-owned movie, Solo: A Star Wars Story. In that movie, she plays Enfys Nest, a secondary antagonist to a young Han Solo and the crew he are joined by. The intriguing thing about this is that Kellyman plays almost the exact same character in both stories.
As said above, Kellyman plays a character called Enfys Nest in Solo. Enfys Nest is a (somewhat) villain in Solo who leads a group of pirates known as Cloud-Riders. However, it is later discovered that she is a resistance fighter who is going up against the crime syndicate known as Crimson Dawn. The Cloud-Riders have a mission to steal coaxium, which makes her an opponent of Solo, who also needs to obtain the coaxium. Kellyman also plays Karli Morgenthau in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, who has an incredibly similar arc. Karli is the (somewhat) villainous leader of a group of terrorists called the Flag-Smashers. It is revealed that during the "Blip" event, the nations of the world band together, and there are thousands of people who take up refuge in other countries. When everyone returns from the "Blip," the refugees begin to be forced out of of their new homes, and Karli and the Flag-Smashers decide to fight back against it. Obviously, there are some differences between the characters, but there are also some pretty glaring similarities, especially in the execution of their story arcs.
Both characters start out as merely antagonists to the heroes in the story. Then it is revealed that they may have noble reasons for their antagonistic behavior. The Cloud-Riders' entire reasoning and backstory is just used for a rallying fight at the end of the movie with the other villain organization Crimson Dawn. In fairness, Karli gets a little more time to explore her arc and develop as a character. However, toward the end, it feels a bit like she loses a lot of her motivation and just becomes a villain for the heroes to stop.
Aside from the slight irony of Kellyman being cast as the same character in two separate series, there are two other big concerns with this approach to that character arc. One is that Disney seems to be obsessed with giving us these villainized freedom-fighter stories but do not give it enough time to have real impact on the story or explore the complexities of that dynamic. It is a shame because that storyline could lead to some really interesting conflicts and resolutions between those antagonists and the heroes. The conflicting ideals can create some compelling defeats or redemptions for either side. Karli could have easily returned in the future as a villain with a deeper reason for her method. She could also have returned as a hero since, in the comics, Flag-Smasher is a a character with a loose redemption in a couple of issues, but it doesn't seem like that will happen in the future MCU stories.
There were rumors that Solo would have been a trilogy of movies. That could have been one way to continue Enfys' story, but it seems highly unlikely that any sequels to that story will happen now. The other point is that these arcs are used in plots that already have a lot goin on in them. Both Solo and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier have multiple villains and subplots in each story. Each one could cut a villain or subplot here or there and the story would still largely make sense.
This is by no means a negative review of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or Solo: A Star Wars Story. I think both of them are done incredibly well, and I think they both introduce new ideas to the universe they are set in. It is just really peculiar they cast the same actress, as the same character, and utilized that character in a similar way.
Source(s): Screen Rant