During the filming of Star Wars: Episode VIII we heard some interesting rumors about the new characters in the film. We’re going to share our preliminary findings from back during the filming of the movie and the rumors sources have given a quiet thumbs up to. While this information is not particularly deep, it at least fills in tiny details to who they are on the surface in the next episode of the Star Wars saga. While we are in full Rogue One mode here at MakingStarWars.net right now, we are constantly asked about the three new characters in the film played by Benicio del Toro, Laura Dern, and Kelly Marie Tran. We have heard lots of interesting things and those rumors need a little verification still but we know you want to know some details now.

Benicio del Toro has been described as a classic “man in black.” As in he wears all black and he’s dangerous. His character is clean shaven with hair not unlike Poe Dameron’s in length. While The Wrap let us know he was up for the role of the bad guy in the film sometime ago, it doesn’t appear the heroes see del Toro as a bad guy, at least not at first. We think he’s connected to the casino set we talked about sometime ago. On paper it sounds a little close to Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back but before you panic, there are some details we’re still working on that make that appear to a bit of a stretch. We’ll have more to report on Episode VIII’s “man in black” in the future.

Laura Dern is probably the most bombastic of the new characters from the rumors we’ve heard. She is very aristocratic and fancy in a way we haven’t really seen in Star Wars before. Her look is unique. Someone compared her design to The Hunger Games-meets-Star Wars. Dern wears a “fancy” dress and her hair is like something out of the prequels. The biggest defining detail of this new character played by Laura Dern is that she has pink hair in Star Wars: Episode VIII. Sources are at a loss for words when they tried to describe her hair which is very ornate, almost like something out of the Outlander Club in Attack of the Clones.

We suspect Dern’s character has something to do with this woman from the Dubrovnik set last year. People that saw her believed she was something important in the film and sent us this photo. While we can’t speak on the certainty of that, it does seem strange to have more than one woman with purple/pink hair in a movie unless they’re connected somehow. But then again, it might just be a hair cover or something. We considered she could be Dern’s stand-in but the costume we can glimpse under the black robe makes it uncertain.

In the near future we will have details to share on a jumpsuited Kelly Marie Tran and her role in the film and how she ends up tangled up with Finn in their shared story. Her look is almost the opposite of Dern’s character. She’s just very normal looking but her situation is supposedly really cool. We’ll have more on Finn and Kelly Marie Tran in the near future we can share.

Star Wars: Episode VIII is about a year away and I could not be more excited to see where this all goes. We’re in the fun stretch for the next episode where the details are exciting but not entirely movie spoiling either. I hope these details satiate your Episode VIII thirst a little for now.