A Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Character Almost Ended Up In Star Wars: Rebels

Star Wars: Rebels is an outstanding animated show…and, yes, we’re going to miss it when it enters its final season in a few months’ time. But for the time being, let’s appreciate everything that it’s become over the past few years…not to mention what it could have been.

The team at Gizmodo recently reported that the show almost saw the addition of a crucial character from the Star Wars video game universe – Starkiller. In case you forget, this twin-sabered would-be Sith served as Darth Vader’s apprentice across the Star Wars: The Force Unleashed game, before the story arc takes a turn and he decides to fight against him.

Sam Witwer, the voice actor who portrayed Starkiller across both games (and, by the way, also voices Darth Maul in the Rebels series, as well as Star Wars: The Clone Wars), confirmed this on a recent Twitch broadcast. “Dave (Filoni) did share with me, by the way, he considered making Starkiller an Inquisitor in Star Wars: Rebels,” he said. “It didn’t quite fit the story they were telling, but he did think about it because he thought that would be interesting.”

The question is if his inclusion in the Star Wars series would’ve broken the canon that it’s currently in. Gizmodo’s writer explained as such, explaining the events that occurred in the Force Unleashed games, and how Starkiller could possibly fit into the universe of Rebels, even though Darth Vader did get involved in the second season of the series for some time.

The writer, Julie Muncy, concluded, “Starkiller could’ve been a fun nod to the fandom, and placing him as an Inquisitor (they’re basically Vader’s personal army of anti-Jedi Force-using assassins in Rebels) makes a bit of sense. But to make him work in the more grounded Disney canon would’ve forced Filoni and co. to ditch almost everything that made the character so memorable and unintentionally funny.”

Hopefully we’ll see Starkiller pop up again in a future Star Wars game somewhere, since he made the Force Unleashed games so damn memorable. We’ll see what the next few years bring.

Hey, Dave, how about a Force Unleashed animated series? We’d watch!