Tom Hardy Will Reportedly Have a Cameo in STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII

Warning — possible spoilers ahead for Star Wars: Episode VIII.

Here's an interesting piece of Star Wars news from the UK. A website called Express is reporting that Tom Hardy has joined the cast of Star Wars: Episode VIII, but he'll only play a small role as a Stormtrooper that'll be similar to the size of Daniel Craig's part in The Force Awakens. (If you recall, Craig played the trooper who was Jedi mind tricked by Daisy Ridley's Rey when she was in captivity.)

According to the site, Hardy will play a trooper who recognizes John Boyega's Finn as FN-2187 from before Finn defected from the First Order. Then this happens:

Finn will get quite the surprise as Hardy slaps him on the behind, completely unaware that he’s been spotted.

Thinking’s he been captured, Finn actually finds Hardy’s stormtrooper just remembers him from the First Order’s training days, and wants to catch up with his old friend.

Hardy then congratulates Finn on his apparent promotion as a Resistance Infiltrator, when actually he’s on their side.

The site speculates that Hardy's face will be covered by a helmet the whole time, just like Craig's was, so this will probably just be more of an Easter egg for fans than anything else. Production has been underway on the movie for a while now in London, so it makes sense that a UK paper would be the one to uncover these details. A lot of UK newspapers tend to lean toward the gossipy side of things, so I'd normally caution taking this "news" with a grain of salt, but Carrie Fisher herself retweeted this story, which lends it a bit more veracity than it would have had otherwise.