Will Rogue One Character Saw Gerrera Get a Star Wars Spin-Off?

When it was learned thatRogue One: A Star Wars Storywould be set betweenRevenge of the SithandA New Hope, most fans already assumed that they’d be seeing some familiar characters in this galaxy far, far away. One of the big surprises, though, was the reveal thatForest Whitaker’s mysterious character is none other than Saw Gerrera, who was first seen in theStar Wars Clone Warscartoon series. Today we have word from LucasFilm presidentKathleen Kennedy, who reveals that fans haven’t seen the last of Saw Gerrera.

It was recently confirmed thatForest Whitakerwill return to provide the voice for Saw Gerrera in the next episode ofStar Wars Rebels, which debuts Saturday, January 7 on Disney XD. Since the timeline forStar Wars Rebelsis quite behind the events ofRogue One, it makes sense that Saw Gerrera would return in this series, since it is believed that he was blown up when the holy planet of Jedha exploded inRogue One.Empirecaught up with LucasFilm president and producerKathleen Kennedy, who teased that they originally had bigger plans for Saw Gerrera, who will likely return in future projects, perhaps even his own spin-off movie.

“WithSaw Gerrera, we just became very intrigued with him as a character [from The Clone Wars] and how he fits inside this story. To be honest, we originally thought we were going to develop Saw into something much larger, but we couldn’t accommodate it. So he is not in the movie as much as we would like to have him in the movie, which creates the opportunity to explore his character even further in our future development.”

WhileKathleen Kennedyhasn’t confirmed when Saw Gerrera may return in theStar Wars universe, it’s possible that we could see him in the nextStar Warsspin-off, centering on Han Solo. That movie, which starsAlden Ehrenreichas Han Solo andDonald Gloveras Lando Clarissian, is set in roughly the same time frame asRogue One, betweenRevenge of the SithandA New Hope. Though Han Solo is reportedly set 10 years before A New Hope, the Rogue One prologue that introduces Saw is set 16 years before that movie, so it seems logical that Whitaker is capable of playing the younger version of the character. The next Star Wars movie centers on Han Solo before he was first introduced inA New Hope. While we’ll have to wait and see where he’ll surface next,Forest Whitakeris excited to see what will happen next with the character.

“I’m curious about what else they’re about to do. Because they seem to really like the character, which is great!”

We reported earlier this year that Disney is planning on releasing a newStar Wars movieevery year, indefinitely, so there will likely be no shortage of movies for Saw Gerrera to return in. Its also interesting to note that Saw Gerrera is a character that was created by George Lucas.Kathleen Kennedyhas also teased that, after this new trilogy concludes withStar Wars 9, the rest of theStar Warsmovies will be stand alone projects from then on out. That was never confirmed, nor have plans to bring back Saw Gerrera in a future movie, but hopefully we’ll have confirmation quite soon.