Tom Selleck as Indiana Jones, Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly, Dustin Hoffman as Michael Corleone: Hollywood history is littered with could-have-been moments. Billy Dee Williams, who is set to return to the role of Lando Calrissian in Star Wars: Episode IX, has a few of his own, not least his replacement by Tommy Lee Jones as Harvey Dent/Two-Face in Batman Forever.

Williams had played the upstanding Gotham City district attorney in 1989’s Batman, his first real moment in the spotlight since Star Wars, but audiences never got to see his transformation into Dent’s nefarious alter-ego. First, Christopher Walken was hired to play the big bad (Max Shreck) of sequel Batman Returns in 1991. The part, as originally conceived, would reputedly have seen Williams as Two-Face – and then Jones was brought in to play the chance-obsessed villain for 1995’s Batman Forever.

Some might argue that Williams missed a bullet – or perhaps, more appropriately, death by electric snog. But playing Dent without getting to play Two-Face is a bit like playing Gandalf the Grey without getting to return as Gandalf the White. Williams undoubtedly missed out on the juicier half of the role, and his career in Hollywood suffered as a consequence. For if Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher’s acting work continued largely away from the limelight following the release of the original Star Wars trilogy, the man who gave Calrissian such unmistakable charm in The Empire Strikes Back has been notable by his absence from major big-screen roles ever since Batman.

Now we know he will be back for JJ Abrams’ Episode IX, and the immediate thought is that Star Wars’ renewed popularity might offer some autumnal redemption for an actor who may not have got the breaks earlier in his career. “You win some, you lose some,” Williams once said of his failure to win the role of Two-Face – a video of the actor discussing the omission, in a back room at an unidentified fan convention, is on YouTube - and if that much is true, then the return of Lando is probably comparable with Han Solo getting his hands on the Millennium Falcon.

Billy Dee Williams in The Empire Strikes Back. Photograph: Cine Text / Allstar/Sportsphoto Ltd. / Allstar

The fear is that Disney-owned Lucasfilm is only wheeling out the 81-year-old actor because it desperately needs original-trilogy cachet, and has exhausted the potential to cast Ford, Hamill or Fisher in yet another episode. Cynics will also complain – and have – that Williams ought to have been front and centre in Abrams’ earlier effort, The Force Awakens, when he might have been paired successfully with his old buddy Han. But Lucasfilm has made a habit of keeping its classic cast apart in the new era, as if too much of a good thing might overwhelm us. Perhaps the idea is to retain the focus on fresher faces such as Daisy Ridley’s Rey and John Boyega’s Finn, so it is probably fair to say that the ploy has proved successful, more or less.

Now that Williams is returning, Lucasfilm will be under pressure to ensure this is a reasonably weighty part. Studio president Kathleen Kennedy previously revealed that the late Fisher would have been the major original-trilogy figure in Episode IX, just as Ford and Hamill took centre stage in the two previous episodes. Might Lando now replace Leia as the key veteran in the new movie?

There have also been reports that director Rian Johnson considered bringing back Williams for The Last Jedi, with Calrissian betraying Finn and Rose after encountering our heroes in the casino city of Canto Bight. That role was eventually reconfigured as DJ, the amoral “slicer” and codebreaker portrayed by Benicio del Toro, which may be a hint as to how we might see Lando return in Episode IX. Certainly, if this is to be more than a glorified cameo, it would make sense for Calrissian to have returned to his self-serving ways in the years following the destruction of the second Death Star, rather than emerging as yet another identikit Resistance leader.

The saddest thing about watching Williams in Batman is that the actor is quite clearly holding something back, perhaps aware that doing so will make his eventual transformation into Two-Face that much more memorable. Or perhaps he is simply at his best when playing charismatic scoundrels. Certainly, the forthright Lando of Return of the Jedi is a lot less fun than the sneaky Calrissian of Empire’s Cloud City, who mercilessly sells out Han and his friends to Darth Vader and almost gets choked to death by Chewie for his pains.

It is perhaps worth reminding ourselves that Williams did eventually get to play Two-Face, as a voice-only cameo in 2014’s The Lego Movie. Unfortunately, by the time this role arrived it was too late to really matter.