Star Wars: New Official Character Card for Forest Whitaker's Saw Gerrera

When Forest Whitaker was announced as Saw Gerrera in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a group of fans got very excited. That's because he was a character jumping from the animated world of Star Wars: The Clone Wars into live action. Not only is it fun to see on a base level, it also sets a wonderful precedent that favorite characters from TV, comics, and novels can now make the jump with relative ease.

Today, Star Wars official twitter account released a new character profile card for Gerrera, reiterating his origins and officially revealing that the group of Rebels will be recruiting him on the new religious planet Jedha.

"A veteran of the Clone Wars and the rebellion against the Empire, Saw leads Rebel extremists on the ancient world of Jedha," the card says. "He's lost much in decades of combat, but occasional flashes of the caring man he once was shine through his calloused exterior. Saw's ailing health has not withered his resolve to fight."

The character of Saw Gerrera was actually created by George Lucas himself, meant to be one of the main characters of the live-action TV series that never came to be (but reportedly has at least fifty full teleplays written). When showrunner Dave Filoni needed a gruff and brash freedom fighter for The Clone Wars, Gerrera debuted, and it thrills the writer/artist/producer/director who now works on Star Wars Rebels.

"I have always thought of Star Wars: The Clone Wars as an extension of the Star Warsfilms, and now, here we are, seeing a character come to life in the flesh on the big screen," Filoni told ComicBook.com when the character was first revealed. "I think it's tremendously exciting, because it's fulfilling a promise to the fans, that this is one story, and the characters you know and love are throughout it, and influencing the story in many ways. I'm so proud of the Rogue One team, and everyone at Lucasfilm. It's a great day for Star Wars."

His role in Rogue One is a testament to the Star Wars Story Group, headed by Kiri Hart, that was developed for this very reason. The Story Group recognized the need for an "extremist" and brought up Gerrera. They've been describing him as such since June.

"He's sort of an extreme Rebel. He's definitely against the Empire, but he does things that morally push against the kind of things that Bail Organa and Mon Mothma stand for," Story Group's Pablo Hidalgo described Gerrera shortly after the announcement. While the team brought up the character from The Clone Wars, it was the Rogue One team that "took that character and ran with it."

In the trailers, we haven't seen much of Saw just yet, but we have heard him. The character's "flashes of the caring man he once was" have already been reflected in his dialogue, where he inspires the team to "Save the Rebellion, Save the Dream."

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story hits US theaters December 16, 2016. Directed by Gareth Edwards, it's the first of the new standalone features from Lucasfilm and Disney, which take place outside the core "Skywalker Saga" of films noted by an Episode number. Rogue Onetells the story of the small band of rebels that were tasked with stealing the plans to the first Death Star. The story spins directly off the opening crawl from the original Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. In that crawl, it read: "Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet." Tickets are on sale now.