TFW You Remember That Your Initial Reaction To Cara Dune Was “Wow, Guess Someone Thought Lucy Lawless

TFW you remember that your initial reaction to Cara Dune was “Wow, guess someone thought Lucy Lawless was too old bc that’s some goddamned Xena Warrior Princess action right there.” And all I can do now is kind of laugh at that weirdness of that. I don’t even think anyone would notice if Lucy Lawless just showed up in S3. It would be business as usual and someone who hadn’t been paying attention might just wonder if the lighting was weird. 

So yes, I’m totally on board with the Xena vs. Mando casting fantasy, even though I know that Cara will likely be written out due to unavoidable HR conclusions. (And no, I’m not going there with anyone…considering large portions of my professional background–e.g. real, grown up job–are directly related to HR, DEI, and employment law.) I will don my tin hat Mandalorian helmet and stan this fantasy recasting. By mentally editing Lucy Lawless into every Cara Dune scene, I still stan CaraDin. Because sometimes it just be like that with a ship. 

And because I’m also a fic writer, I’m going to have an obligatory fanwank right here. I mean I’ve already admitted to embarrassing heteronormativity wrt this ship, so why the eff not. Let’s talk about how hot the casting choice of Lucy Lawless would be. Real, imagined, the stuff of utter wankery, and carrying the baggage of ten bazillion sexuality-confusing Xena fantasies from the 90s… But, I digress. Back to one of my favorite fandom tropes: Old People in Love. (There’s an imaginary song that goes with this.) 

Related sidebar: My nascent Pedro Pascal obsession. Whooo Daddy. As I’ve pointed out in comments: we’re the same age. I should not react this way. Given my usual MOs, I should be completely turned off. I am a thousand percent sure I have probably seen him on the street or in a bar or in bodega at 3am getting a shitty coffee and a egg and cheese on a roll or that he’s been in my way to get to my seat the Metrograph or onto/off a train and I never effing noticed him. I should recoil in horror with my usual assessment of single men in their 40s, but there actually appears to genuinely be nothing wrong with him, so he clearly hung the moon. Again: whooo Daddy. It took Mando to get me here. I have negative interest in GoT. I just want to watch him Dad (that’s a verb) in other things. 

Back to the wank: You know what’s hotter than a hot middle-aged man? A hot middle-aged man seeing eye to eye, deep in trust and respect with a hot middle-aged woman. A man who sees that the experience and fortitude he’s confronted with is deeply connected with the mature body in which it’s contained. Lucy Lawless would give us that with zero suspension of disbelief. 

In my head, Din Djarin is already at the place of middle age where he’s surprised and pissed off that his body doesn’t work like he expects it to or remembers it doing. He’s not spending any time looking in the mirror or worrying about if the hot boys and girls think he looks old because those things are literally not The Way. He is raw power and devotion in a container. He is a camtono of faith and creed and detachment from the material. But because stuff is starting to change, he’s at the very beginnings of anxiety regarding the abstract concept of age and decrepitude, and that anxiety is deeply intertwined with Grogu, and the experience of taking on a foundling. Slowly becoming a father gives him peace and purpose and a way to honor the traditions of his people in a way that is deeper than performative devotion. Grogu gives him a legacy, and a safe way to settle into his body. Din will always have to provide, but no longer in the abstract. 

A middle-aged Cara Dune powered by the divine fandom energy of Xena (e.g. Lucy Lawless) would have taken that first look at Mando oozing out of his International Harvester space pickup and into the Joe’s Krill Shack of Sorgan with a baby on his hip, and her immediate reaction would be “holy shit, he moves like a middle-aged man who’s been driving for eight hours.” That hot mud scuffle? Her internal monologue would be like “Why am I still doing this? My back hurts and his is even worse.” She’d clock every move he makes and she’d realize that yeah he’s a totally deadly mother fucking badass beroya, but that he isn’t young, and that he hurts all over, and that he’s so, so tired. She’d also look at all the places she’s been between Alderaan and the Rebellion and the fact that she’s laying low in a little shit river town in a backwater skughole and know immediately that whatever has a middle-aged man and his baby parking on the edge of town is a 1000% bad news. She would also 1000% thumb-wrestle him for a chance with Omera, but she knows that as good as it sounds, she’s not any more into the reality of it than he is and that being stuck with either of them would be really bad for Omera and Winta. 

A middle-aged and self-aware Cara Dune would also do some powerful self-examination after her I See You moment with Mando. Even with the original casting choice, we get some of that, but the Cara Dune we get is mostly secure in her own baddassery and that she and Mando are meeting as equals. “Until our paths cross” is delivered with no innuendo or expectation. But I think a Cara Dune that’s a little more sun damaged and saggier in the tits is going to have a slightly different takeaway. She’s going to feel that physical anxiety too. She’s going to walk away from Mando knowing that they’re two people out there in the Outer Rim going it alone, and aging, alone, with no safety net. That all they’ve got is their bodies and their badassery and the hope that someday that there will be a big enough haul of credits to buy enough security to slow down and figure out the next steps. It’s a risky assumption about the sexual politics of the Star Wars universe to also suggest that a middle-aged Cara would also know that the stakes are different for men and women when thinking about next steps. But I also think that the introduction of Peli Motto underscores this. She’s a middle-aged woman (arguably teetering into the next stage of maturity), running a big repair hanger, alone, in a notorious space port on a mostly barren planet. Her concerns are kind of the same: how long can she keep doing what she’s doing and get by? At some level, this is arguably a central concern for a lot of Mandoverse types: Omera, Kuiil, Cobb Vanth, Greef Karga. They’re all people, alone, just sort of making ends meet. The only people who have anyone are Fennec and Fett (and oh, how I love this), and Bo-Katan’s crew who are suffused with the kind of energy that leads to fights in the Denny’s parking lot. Oh! And Mr. and Mrs. Frog Lady!

Maybe this is all my wank in general. That I’m projecting my own middle-aged worries (and powerful lust for a middle-aged man in his grizzliest incarnations) on Cara Dune. But Criminy, is it easier to imagine embodied by Lucy Lawless. Just thinking about a middle-aged Cara Dune who’s still strong in body and spirit having a long look at Mando and knowing, really knowing, that what’s inside that gorgeous, menacing can is a middle-aged man who is really and truly a stand-up dude who is living his life, literally in a container, going through exactly the same shit she is. (Trauma, I also see you.) The rest of it plays out pretty much the same. Of course the stakes change when any Cara Dune learns that the man in the can is Din Djarin, and then that the baby is Grogu. Names make it different. Names make it personal. 

And also, given pan fandom math and actor math and accordant concepts of character ages, this middle-aged Cara Dune would actually be older than Din. And that’s kind of hot on a different level. 

I could go on, but I won’t. That’s for the domain of fic. But there’s my half-baked fanwank. Mostly about the deep, bodily knowledge of middle age, and ultimately, mortality. That bodily knowledge just isn’t going to be…embodied via a casting choice that’s in the recognized prime of “mature” hotness. It takes something, someone older. Then again, it might also be that after all these years, I’m still a little in love with Xena, and thinking about the way that Xena would have aged. And that maybe I just want to see Xena carry Gabrielle again. Only this time, Gabrielle is a man named Din who’s the same size as Xena is and he’s wearing a helmet. 

That is all.