Rogue One: The Identity of Forest Whitaker's Character Revealed

A lot of exciting Rogue One: A Star Wars Story news came in today. We already saw the Entertainment Weekly cover featuring the characters of Rogue One, and the confirmation that Darth Vader will be appearing in the spin-off film. EW also released character profiles, and now, more details have been released about Forest Whitaker's Rogue One character.

Forest Whitaker's character, who was seen in the Rogue One trailer released months ago, has been shrouded in mystery, and EW just revealed the identity of his character, and it's not the one you were expecting.

Forest Whitaker is portraying Saw Garrera, whom fans of Star Wars: The Clone Wars will recognize asthe one of the Onderon freedom fighters seen in Season 5 of the animated series. However, Whitaker will be playing a much different, much older version of the Saw Gerrera, who was voiced by Andrew Kishino in The Clone Wars.

EW provided this description of Whitaker's character:

"The eyes are different — the animated show featured vivid aquamarine eyes, while Whitaker's are brown — but they maintained the scar that slices up over his left eye. (In the cartoon, it bisects the eyebrow, but in the live-action film, the cut arches just above it.) In this new image of Whitaker, he also looks fairly different than what we first saw in the trailer. Here, he has a full head of hair, while in the previous footage he was shaved."

Since we last saw Saw, things didn't seem to o well for him. What he went through in the Clone Wars seemed to have driven him to lead a resistance that was less than honorable. In the Star Wars Rebels episode "The Honorable Ones", Agent Kallus tells a chilling story of his run in with one of Gerrera's mercenaries. In the ecent novel Star Wars: Bloodline, set just a few years before The Force Awakens, "the campaigns of Saw Gerrera's Partisans" was mentioned in passing. Saw has developed a reputation, and our new Rebel heroes in Rogue One are well aware of it as Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy explains:

"Consider him kind of a battered veteran who leads a band of Rebel extremists, He's on the fringe of the Rebel Alliance. Even [they] are a little concerned about him.... He's off on his own."

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits theaters on December 16.