Where Cal Kestis Fits Into Live-Action Star Wars Canon

This is a great week for Star Wars fans as May the Fourth approaches (or is perhaps already here for you, I’m still a couple of hours out from the celebrations myself) between new merch releases, the 25th anniversary re-release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Celebration 2025 tickets going on sale (did anyone else look at that little man move across their screen for way too long?), and so much more. It’s easy to miss somethings in all of the excitement, so you might not know that Star Wars Jedi: Survivor celebrated its first birthday over the weekend!

It’s hard to believe that Jedi: Survivor‘s one year anniversary is already here – even harder to realize that its predecessor Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order will turn five this year. Thankfully, the game franchise and its characters continue to grow in popularity and spread themselves across even more forms of Star Wars media. For instance, Cal Kestis and the Mantis crew had a book set between the two games that released last year as well, Star Wars Jedi: Battle Scars by Sam Maggs, and Cal and his little buddy BD-1 were also recently featured in the LEGO Star Wars 25th Anniversary celebration video.

But where Cal Kestis, Merrin, and the vast majority of those they’ve encountered have still yet to appear is in live-action, or even in an animated series like Tales of the Jedi. I’m personally tired of hearing myself say “It’s only a matter of time!” in regards to Cal showing up in a project other than a game, and I’m certain it’s a safe assumption to say there are many others in the same position as me.

Cal is a great character (all of the Star Wars Jedi characters are, really, but for the purpose of this not being the longest article in the world we’re going to stick with Cal) with an incredibly talented actor in Cameron Monaghan behind him already. Monaghan has, of course, done plenty of live-action work (and the Star Wars Jedi games are motion capture, so not strictly voice work either) and has a demonstrable ability to bring a truly remarkable performance to the screen. He would undoubtedly carry the emotional weight, complexity, and passion that a franchise like Star Wars deserves.

But where does Cal fit in? Well, quite frankly, he fits in just about anywhere currently, and Disney simply needs to pick what place they feel is best. With Cal’s age, he’s in a great group and a perfect situation to be included in a lot of the projects Star Wars is currently working on. Just 13-years-old when Order 66 was enacted, Cal is close in age to the likes of Ahsoka Tano, Ezra Bridger, and the Skywalker twins to be involved in any original trilogy-centric story, as we know he is fully alive and fighting against the Empire himself during these events. While we don’t know where Cal’s story is ultimately going to take him (something that will get clearer whenever we see the third game), it’s also entirely plausible that he could still be alive after the fall of the Empire…and therefore he’s the perfect candidate to bring in to the Dave Filoni-led project that will culminate The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka series with Grand Admiral Thrawn at the center as the big bad. 

We’ve seen Ahsoka and Sabine Wren stranded on Peridea, and in Jedi: Survivor we’ve seen Cal discover a way to reach far-off planets to find and face-off against Bode Akuna on Tanalorr. To me, it feels like there’s a great chance that these two storylines taking place in separate parts of the galaxy will converge at some point, particularly since they’re taking place relatively close in the timeline – Jedi: Survivor is 9BBY in the Star Wars canon, while Ahsoka is estimated to be approximately 11BBY. As for how Jedi: Survivor‘s timeline intersects in additional ways with live-action Star Wars canon, in the game we see Cere and Eno Cordova working with the Hidden Path, the very same Hidden Path featured in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series…and they’re both set in the same year as well. 

We’ve already seen more than one live-action character brought into the Star Wars Jedi games as Saw Gerrera and Darth Vader are featured in Jedi: Fallen Order and Jedi: Survivor (for Vader), and it seems more and more likely that there could potentially be additional characters that will intersect with Cal’s own path through the stars at some point. As for when we’ll see him in live-action, while we don’t have any confirmation that it will ever happen, it seems extremely likely given the ways his story is now intersecting with the other stories rather than running parallel to them. 

Where would you like to see Cal Kestis brought into a series or movie in the Star Wars universe? Come chat with me about it on X @amazingspidrhan!