Willow: Is Val Kilmer in the Finale?

The first season of Willow has officially come to an end on Disney+. During the show’s eight episodes, a few actors from the original film appeared, including Warwick Davis (Willow), Joanne Whalley (Sorsha), and Kevin Pollak (Rool). Originally, Val Kilmer was going to return as Madmartigen, but the actor struggled with his health after a battle with throat cancer, and filming during COVID felt too risky, so they ended up writing him out of the series. However, in the show’s sixth episode, Kilmer and Whalley’s real-life son, Jack Kilmer, provided Madmartigan’s voice in a scene. In the finale, “Children of the Wyrm,” Madmartigen is heard once again speaking words of wisdom to his daughter, Kit (Ruby Cruz). While you don’t actually see the character, it was a nice way to honor Kilmer and his beloved role in the movie. 

“Jack has been a great friend to Willow all along, you know,” showrunner Jonathan Kasdan previously told Decider. “Between Joanne and Val he basically is the child of the Willow franchise.” He added, “We actually recorded with Val and we used his performance as a guide track. Then Jack was given Val’s performance to listen to and then copy what his dad had done in terms of you know, the performance elements of Val’s thing.”

Did Top: Gun Maverick Influence Willow?

While Kilmer wasn’t seen in the new Willow series, he did reprise his role as Tom “Iceman” Kazansky in Top Gun: Maverick last year, and Kasdan recently told The Hollywood Reporter that the Top Gun sequel influenced Willow. 

“Not only did it give us food for thought, but my executive producer, Tommy Harper, was the executive producer of Top Gun: Maverick, so he worked with Val then,” Kasdan explained of the film. “I had already met Val when we were setting out to do this thing. We’ve been talking pretty consistently every day of our lives about how to bring Madmartigan back and how that character can continue to live within the Willow universe. And much of the first season asks the question of what happened to Madmartigan. And when there was a real shot at getting him out to Wales during our first season, we had a very specific moment when that question was going to be answered. But when it became clear that we weren’t going to get him out there because of the restrictions that Covid was putting on all of us, we simply pushed the question a little further down the road and continued to build it out in ways that we thought were tantalizing and fun.”Will Willow Get a Second Season?

The first season of Willow is now streaming on Disney+.