Willow Showrunner Teases Future Madmartigan Stories

Now that the first season of Willow has come to an end on Disney+, fans are eagerly awaiting news about a second season. While Lucasfilm has yet to announce any future plans about the series, showrunner Jonathan Kasdan has shared that there are a lot of ideas in place after the finale's big cliffhanger and that includes more details about Madmartigan. Originally, Val Kilmer was going to return as Madmartigen from the original Willow film, but the actor struggled with his health after a battle with throat cancer, and filming during COVID felt too risky. They ended up writing him out of the series, but the character can be heard speaking to his daughter, Kit (Ruby Cruz), a couple of times during the season. In fact, Kilmer's son, Jack Kilmer, provided Madmartigan's voice for the scenes. During a recent interview with io9, Kasdan teased future Madmartigan stories.

"No," Kasdan replied when asked if Madmartigan's story is now complete. "We hope not, in a lot of ways. One of the challenges of this thing is you have a very clear idea in your head of exactly what you'd like to do, and then you hope you have the opportunity to do that thing. And so for him particularly, in the idealized version of how we continue this story, it's far from over. And we've got a lot of stuff we'd like to do because there's this deep love for Val, not just in the world, but from within our family here at Lucasfilm and I think nothing would give everyone more joy than to see him on the set, you know?"

Did Willow Actors Study Val Kilmer's Performance? 

During a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Cruz talked about watching the original Willow film and learning about her character's father as well as her mother, Sorsha (Joanne Whalley), who does appear in the new show. 

"As an actor, it was a really cool opportunity to have footage of my character's parents meeting, and it also allowed me to understand their personalities. So instead of having to come up with this whole backstory for myself, I could watch the original movie and see Madmartigan's sprightliness. He's very outspoken and very confident, and Sorsha is defiant, strong-willed and unafraid to go against the grain. So those were definitely things that I put into my character, but I also envisioned how those people would raise a child. What parts of them would Kit get annoyed with? What parts of them would Kit want to reject? So it was a really cool experience to be able to play with that," Cruz explained.

Are you hoping Willow gets more seasons? Tell us in the comments!