Four years ago, we first heard a report that Amazon was crossing the 't's on a deal with EA and BioWare to make a Mass Effect TV series adaptation. Now, we know the deal went through, that Daniel Casey was tapped to write the show, followed by Doug Jung being selected to be its showrunner, and we've even had a confidence-boosting confirmation that the same production team of artists who excellently brought Fallout to life will also be working on Mass Effect.
All of that still leaves a whole pile of unanswered questions, but a recent leak might've just begun to answer one of the most major questions in the series: which Shepard will it be?
Spotted by Eurogamer, entertainment reporter and insider Daniel Richtman leaked five casting calls for Amazon's Mass Effect TV series. The calls don't explicitly say which character they're casting, but anyone familiar enough with the series can make educated guesses, and one of the calls points to Amazon choosing to go with Male Shepard for its iteration of the story.
The five calls are, per Eurogamer, "a young Colin Farrell-type male (30-39) with open ethnicity, a female co-lead alien character requiring prosthetics (34-39), a female human providing a parallel narrative from Earth, a Doug Jones-type male villain (40-60), and a male wrestler-type soldier (30-49)."
Fans of the series have speculated that the 'male wrestler-type' is a casting call for James Vega, while the villain casting call points to Saren Arterius. The female co-lead is very likely a casting call for Liara T'Soni, while the other female casting call could be Emily Wong, a reworked version of Ashley Williams story, or a twin Shepard, by fans best approximations.
Of course, it's the first call listed that's causing the most ruckus, as fans are speculating that it is pointing to the show's lead, Commander Shepard, and casting for a male means Amazon has chosen to go with Mark Meer's Male Shepard over Jennifer Hale's FemShep.
When Casey spoke about having the Fallout production team work on Mass Effect earlier this year, he confirmed that the writer's room has been in full swing since the beginning of 2025. Which Shepard they would go with was likely one of the earliest decisions they made, so unless they restart the process, if fans are correct in their speculation for these casting calls, then we are locked in to the series featuring Male Shepard.
How that'll go over with fans remains to be seen, since there are plenty within the community who look to FemShep as the canon choice. The other side to this is that deciding which Shepard it'll be is only one of the many decisions that Casey and Jung will have to make that could alienate fans from the series. Which former BioWare lead writer, David Gaider, predicted would happen three years ago.
In fairness, Gaider didn't need any prescient abilities to point out that some fans will dislike the decisions made for the coming adaptation, but as we learn more about the adaptation, it'll be interesting to see if by the time we're closing in on its premiere date, if it is starting on its back foot, needing to win over fans instead of successfully getting them excited for what's to come.
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