Dave Filoni Discusses the Connection Between "Rogue One" and "Star Wars: The Clone Wars"

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has an interesting connection with the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It was revealed a while back that Forest Whitaker's character is Saw Gerrera, who fought alongside Anakin Skywalker in the cartoon. Clone Wars showrunner Dave Filoni is happy with the decision and has plenty of thoughts on it, SlashFilm reports.

In Rogue One, Saw is described as a ""a battered veteran who leads a band of Rebel extremists". Filoni thinks this is fitting. "I like the reaching back into Clone Wars, because obviously for personal reasons, but Saw is a character that makes a lot of sense for the type of story they were telling. And I like that it seeds off of the ideas that we had at Lucasfilm in the very early days of Rebellion story, which is that it is rooted out of Jedi's training these groups on a small planetary scale."

He talked a bit about what this means for the continuity of the Star Wars universe, saying "I feel that as the productions have moved along, you think about Rebels was up and running and we're figuring what all of that is and Rogue One is up and running and they're telling that story, I feel there's a nice bit of continuity between the two pieces. I think that they are going to fit really well. And of course I know John Knoll well. And I've met [director] Gareth Edwards several times and [screenwriter] Gary Whitta as well. So, we as a bunch of fans can conspire for little things"

Filoni goes on to say that the toughest part of collaborating is " I never wanna put something out ahead of its appearance in say Rogue One. I want it to be special when it's on screen there. And they don't wanna ape anything that we're doing. So we try to collaborate to figure things out. "

He approves of the casting, saying "I think Forest Whitaker is pretty exciting as Saw Gerrera". He says he knew this was happening early on and the Rogue One people did talk to him about it. "But for me it was easy, I was like yeah, go watch the episodes. You know, go watch the episodes. Then if you have questions, let me know. And I think that it's like anything. It's gonna find its own footing and as a character, it's so many years later. They had a lot of room to decide who is this man now."

However, he did talk to them about how he thought the character would be affected by various events and talked a lot especially to Kiri Hart, who serves as the Development Lead for the Lucasfilm Story Group.

Filoni finishes up by saying, "But yeah, we'll see. It's exciting. And you never know what ends up in these films. You know, so we'll have to wait and see."

It's interesting to see the different aspects of the Star Wars universe being tied more closely together. What do you think of Saw joining Rogue One? Are you excited to see what will be done with him?

Read: Pablo Hidalgo Shares Insight Into Forest Whitaker's Rogue One Character

Read: Dave Filoni on Forest Whitaker's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Role