Rogue One: Forest Whitaker’s Clone Wars-Inspired Character Revealed!
By Elaine Tveit
Forest Whitaker’s Clone Wars-inspired character in Rogue One has been revealed!
SPOILER ALERT: If you don’t want to know who Whitaker’s character is before you see the movie, please don’t scroll down any further. (Really, though, it’s not that big of a spoiler, and if you’re an Expanded Universe, AKA Legends fan, you’ll want to know who he is.)
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In the first round of character reveals from
, we got names and brief backgrounds for each of the main heroes, plus one of the villains. For Forest Whitaker’s character, however, EW promised another special post which would reveal the character as being familiar to what the article’s author, Anthony Breznican, termed “
Star Wars
completists.” The tease instantly spawned speculation on whether the new character would be from the Expanded Universe (the stories in which are now called Legends as they’re not officially canon), or one of the
Star Wars
animated shows,
The Clone Wars
and
Star Wars Rebels
, as these are all material supplemental to the original saga. Only big
Star Wars
fans, or “completists,” are aware these stories and characters exist and consider them an inextricable component of the franchise’s in-universe lore.
The fandom waited with bated breath. And when the revelation of Whitaker’s character finally broke, it did not disappoint.
Saw Gerrera is back.
via Entertainment Weekly
Who is Saw Gerrera? Gerrera was an insurgent who accepted training from Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano, and Obi Wan Kenobi to lead a resistance against the Separatist takeover of his planet. He’s a pusher and a shover, an extreme rebel who has come to only trust himself, EW says. His actions as a rebel during the reign of the Empire had long-term effects, as they were mentioned by the New Republic senate in the canon novel Bloodline, which takes place five years before The Force Awakens. Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy says he’s not a part of the Rebel Alliance or the Rogue One team; in fact, the Rebel Alliance is “concerned” about him because he acts in the extreme limits of rebellion, borderlining terrorism.
I think he and Jyn “I rebel” Erso will get along just fine.
via StarWars.com
The Death Star, apart from being a weapon of mass destruction, is also a unifying point in the fight against the Empire. The head of Lucasfilm story development, Kiri Hart, said the threat of the Death Star is one that brings the separate rebel groups together. Meaning, Gerrera will put aside whatever differences he has with the Rebel Alliance to stop this monstrous machine from terrorizing the galaxy.
Next: Rogue One: A New Droid, K-2SO, Revealed
Forest Whitaker’s version of Gerrera looks a bit different from the man we saw in The Clone Wars. But the differences are minor, such as a change in eye color and the scar on his eyebrow placed in a different spot (Whitaker also has hair now, and he didn’t in the first Rogue One teaser trailer). We’re just happy to see the Lucasfilm story group pulling from the lesser known branch of canon to insert fun little homages in the films.
Keep checking Dork Side for more Rogue One character dissections.