Here's who plays villain Gozer the Gozerian in the underrated Ghostbusters 2, making the franchise essentially his family business.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is indeed full of characters, reused props, dialogue references, visual gags, and other elements designed to bring a huge smile to anyone who's spent countless hours watching and re-watching Egon, Ray, Venkman, and Winston take down a giant marshmallow man in New York City. The apex of Afterlife's callbacks to the original movie is the final act, in which the characters from the original Ghostbusters team return to help Afterlife's new leads once again return Gozer to whence it came.
Gozer, just as they were in the original, is quite visually striking. While the creature is genderless, Gozer again takes a visibly female form, one which closely resembles their appearance in the 1984 movie. Unconfirmed reports prior to Ghostbusters: Afterlife's release alleged that Olivia Wilde (House, Vinyl) would be playing Gozer. Those rumors did turn out to be true, as Wilde does indeed play Gozer. However, her performance is actually combined with two other actors to create Gozer's complete character.
Wilde plays Gozer in their solid, corporeal form, but Canadian dancer and choreographer Emma Portner plays Gozer's CGI spirit form, presumably through motion capture. Portner hasn't done much movie work, although she's well-known to many due to being the former spouse of Umbrella Academy Vanya actor Elliot Page. Meanwhile, Shohreh Aghdashloo (The Punisher, The Expanse) provides Gozer's distinctive deep, crackling voice, which makes sense, since Aghdashloo's gravelly voice is one of her most memorable qualities as an actor and most distinct voices in all of Hollywood.
Notably, Wilde goes uncredited for her work in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and given the amount of make-up she's under and just how different she looks overall, one could be mistaken for not immediately realizing it's her. However, once one knows it's Wilde, her presence becomes impossible to ignore. This is presumably a one-off gig for Wilde, as Gozer has been defeated, and it seems doubtful the ancient monster would be used again were a Ghostbusters 4 to happen. Never say never, though, as Ghostbusters: Afterlife's containment unit sequel tease suggests another potential world-ending catastrophe could be imminent.
