Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker gets flak for a lot of reasons, but mainly because the final chapter of the Sequel Trilogy opened the door to a lot of questions the franchise still has yet to answer. Fortunately, there's a chance that upcoming Star Wars movies and TV shows address that, and there's no shortage of podcasts that try and squeeze information out of stars in the meantime. In fact, someone did just that with Billy Dee Williams recently and tried to get some answers on the popular Lando Calrissian daughter theory.
As a guest on the Dagobah Dispatch, Billy Dee Williams was asked about the unresolved plotline where Lando talked about the First Order taking his daughter, and the theory Star Wars fans had that Naomi Ackie's Jannah was his child. The actor couldn't say one way or the other, but he did remark that the people behind the scenes on The Rise Of Skywalker were debating on the actual plotline:
They were trying to decide whether I should have a daughter. I don't know if they decided to follow up on that idea, I haven't heard any feedback or anything on where -- or what direction they want to take with that.
Reading between the lines of Billy Dee Williams' answer, it doesn't seem like anyone who worked on Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker had a final verdict on how to resolve that plotline either. There's a mild implication that Jannah could be Lando's daughter in the movie, but according to the actor, that's not confirmed.
Williams' answer tracks with past attempts to pull this answer out of others, as actress Naomi Ackie noted ahead of the movie's release that Lando likely had children all over the galaxy. If someone had the answer to the question, it doesn't sound like they informed either of the actors involved.
Jannah was presented as a strong warrior in Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, and she was also taken by the First Order and raised to be a stormtrooper. The framework is there to make her Lando's daughter if that's what a future project wishes to do, and I think there's precedent to ultimately make that happen.
While I've occasionally doted on it as a crutch, the Star Wars universe always seems to be a really small world for an infinitely large galaxy. Characters are brought together despite insurmountable distances between them, though that can be justified through the Force working to bring people together. Ultimately, we can only speculate, and with the upcoming Lando movie being focused on a younger version of the character, it feels unlikely we'll get the answers on his daughter there. Who knows when the true story of what happened to Lando's daughter will be told, if at all?
One thing we do know is that those with a Disney+ subscription can stream Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker right now. It's worth a rewatch for those who haven't seen it since it was in theaters, especially with the franchise finally pushing forward into what all happened after Episode IX.
