With the return of The Mandalorian after last week's season three premiere on Disney+, the controversy surrounding Gina Carano and burning questions about the fate of her character Cara Dune came back. After Carano was taken out of the series, so was Dune, and now both have been written away with no thoughts or discussion about what had happened. This article contains potentially disturbing content, but it deserves another look, even a few years later, especially after the unjust treatment of Carano.
Gina Carano was considered the "face of women's MMA" with an impressive victory streak before she turned to acting, appearing in Deadpool, Fast and the Furious, and The Mandalorian, until she was famously fired after the second season for stating controversial opinions. Carano is still acting, most notably in Daily Wire's Terror on the Prairie, but she was unjustly fired and treated wrongly and deserves to return to Star Wars.
What Did Carano Say to Be Fired?
Below is a screenshot of the controversial post which led to Carano's exit from The Mandalorian.
Carano is (in)famous for posting many controversial opinions on her social media, especially about today's political landscape, from election integrity to transgender identity. A #fireginacarano was trending for a long time because of her beliefs. However, it was an Instagram post that led to her ultimately being canceled, which read:
"Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors...even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don't realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them for simply being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?"
Many started calling Carano anti-Semetic and hateful because of her post. A week later, Lucasfilm responded to the online outrage against Carano by stating that “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
Did Carano Say Anything Wrong, Factually or Morally?
Lucasfilm obviously has the right to work with who they want and not rehire an actor for later projects, though the reason why Lucasfilm fired Carano is questionable. Carano says nothing hateful or even negative about Jews in her post but instead highlights that the Jewish hatred in WWII Germany did not appear out of nowhere but was the product of the Nazi's long campaign demonizing Jews before the war, which allowed them to get away with incredibly horrible evils against Jews for decades. It's a truth recounted in Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial of the Holocaust, with exhibits and records explaining that the Nazis taught the German public to fear and protect themselves from Jews, allowing them to get away with whatever crimes they wanted because no one would even think to help a Jew.
Carano's analogy is overwrought, as comparing this kind of racial and religious hatred that brings the torture and killing of millions to the internet's whininess is a stretch at best, but there's nothing wrong with her post factually or morally; it simply tries to remind us in today's very turbulent and divided political landscape, that demonizing others leads to us justifying demonic actions ourselves.
Firing Carano Proved Her Right
Bill Burr, a famous comedian and another star in The Mandalorian, stood up for Carano, stating that while he didn't personally agree with her on specific issues, he noted how the ones who canceled Carano "proved her point. They just use outrage because they don't like your politics." Burr also said that he had to watch what he says because "someone somehow will take [what I say] and they'll make me say something else and try to get rid of my bald action figure...It's how it is out there...People just waiting, laying in the weeds."
Gina Carano's Cara Dune was lined up for her own Disney+ series in Rangers of the New Republic and was a fan favorite that promised to appear more before the show was canceled alongside Carano by Lucasfilm, and yet many fans have petitioned the studio to bring her back. Carano did nothing wrong in stating her opinion and yet suffers for being her own person. Carano deserves to have her role offered back to her in reparation for her unfair and unreasonable firing (though it would be her choice to come back or not) because the big lesson of Star Wars is that heroes are the ones who stand up against the popular tide to do something right, and we should always stand by them, whether they're popular or not.