Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker actor teases Chewbacca's future in the franchise

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker looks like it will be a farewell for the main bunch of Rebels and Resistance fighters as Disney plans to shift the focus of future movies to other times and places in the galaxy far, far away.

But here's the thing: Wookiees can live to be upwards of 400 years old, while droids don't age at all. So does that mean that we could see characters like Chewbacca, C-3PO and R2-D2 in future movies or series like The Mandalorian?

Well, maybe.

Related: The Rise of Skywalker's new planet has been confirmed

Actor Joonas Suotamo – who took over the role of Chewbacca from Peter Mayhew in the sequel trilogy, as well as in Solo: A Star Wars Story – recently spoke to Radio Times about Chewie's Star Wars future.

"Well, we're going to have to wait and see," he teased. "I would love to see Chewie more, but everything depends on this next film and the story."

What do we reckon? Can we be quietly optimistic that we'll see Chewie again, or will The Rise of Skywalker also be our goodbye to the lovable fuzzball?

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Speaking about The Rise of Skywalker more generally, Joonas continued: "It's a great story, and we're gonna have to wait until December to see what that's all about.

"Everyone's back together, they're going on a great adventure together, facing the ever-growing danger from the First Order. And that's gonna be something to see."

Earlier this week, Star Wars fans were given a first look at Keri Russell's new character Zorri Bliss as part of the franchise's Triple Force Friday preview event.

"I can't wait for you to meet Zorri," Keri said earlier this year. "She's very cool and a little bit shady. She's kind of a criminal and sort of this old friend of Poe's."

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has a release date of Thursday, December 19 in the UK and Friday, December 20 in the US.

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Joe Anderton

Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish.