Rogue One: Forest Whitaker's Saw Gerrera Has an Even Deeper Star Wars History Than You Think

With the reveal of Forest Whitaker's character, Saw Gerrera, in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a lot of fans got excited, as this Star Wars: The Clone Wars guest star (he had a four-episode arc in early season five of the animated series) would be coming to life. As it turns out, Saw's journey to the screen was longer than anyone knew.

"A lot of people know him from The Clone Wars, but he actually started off before that. George Lucas had him in mind for his live action [Star Wars] TV series that he had in development," Story Group's Pablo Hidalgo revealed on this week's episode of The Star Wars Show. "That never happened, but he found a place to put Saw into a story in Clone Wars."

He also continued the insight into the character, and where he'll be in Rogue One.

"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," Hidalgo revealed. When filmmakers working on the Rogue One story realized they "needed a Rebel extremist type character," Story Group brought Saw to the conversation. "They took that character, ran with it, and as they were developing the script, there was only one person they wanted to play this character, and that was Forest Whitaker, and we're very fortunate to have him in this movie."

Hidalgo continued the education of the character Saw Gerrera's history on his twitter account.

"To reiterate, he was an idea developed for the proposed live action TV show, but was introduced in The Clone Wars. George Lucas, working in his inimitable non-linear way realized him as extremist first, and then revealed his backstory in The Clone Wars," Hidalgo wrote. He noted as well that there were several ideas from the live action series that made their way into The Clone Wars, and not just in the latter, seasons, but as far back as season two of the series.

"Think of Saw as the uncle [that] mom and dad don't talk about. Something bad went down. He's 'disowned' to some degree," he teased. "Saw was militarized by the Republic to fight a proxy war against their worst enemy. A generation later, he becomes their worst enemy."

Star Wars: Rogue One hits theaters December 16, 2016. Check out new information on nearly every major character in Rogue One here.