Actress Gina Carano has been all over the internet news cycle for about a week now--and for all the wrong reasons.
Carano, who plays the character Cara Dune in Disney Plus' smash hit The Mandalorian, first grabbed headlines when she was fired by Lucasfilm—the studio that produces the Star Wars spin off series—for offensive comments she made on Instagram.
Carano was axed because in a pair of Instagram stories she compared the current divisive political situation in the US to Nazi Germany, and then went on to belittle a person wearing face coverings.
Lucasfilm's statement regarding Carano's ouster was as decisive as it gets:
"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."
But the sudden departure of a key star from a massively popular television franchise is no small task. Carano's disappearance from the Star Wars universe has already had a ripple effect.
The street value of Cara Dune action figures has skyrocketed, for example. ,
The figurines flew off the shelf when originally released, and until Carano's fall from grace, the corporation had plans to release even more. Preorders for those anticipated figures were piling up.
But now, Hasbro—who manufactured the action figures—has cancelled those orders. Evidently, those first Cara Dune figures will also be the last.
The impact on supply and demand isn't hard to see.
So, as Daily Dot reported, people on Twitter immediately begin to wonder what would happen to the value of the now very limited edition Cara Dune figures.
A quick eBay search (as of the morning of 2/17) showed that most still-in-box Cara Dune action figures were, on average, up to over $120.
That's about six times the value of the original retail price tag of $20.
People on Twitter were feeling all kinds of ways about the value increase.
Some were kicking themselves.
Others lamented the decision to halt production would only increase the influence of the character and by proxy, the problematic Carano.
The unfolding saga of Gina Carano has shown that nothing occurs in a vacuum, especially not in Hollywood.
And if we're to make anything of Carano's recent hobnobbing with Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, and her tweet vowing that "this is just the beginning," we should expect that the saga will only continue.
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