Gary Whitta Weighs In On What Rogue One's Jyn Erso Would Have Been If Not For The Death Star

Jyn Erso, the compelling character at the heart of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, is a character [...]

By Russ Burlingame

Jyn Erso, the compelling character at the heart of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, is a character who was shaped by her unique circumstances: if not for the Empire going after her father and killing her mother, she never would have become a de facto member of the Rebellion.

But...what would that have left for her in a galaxy at war? One fan asked director Gary Whitta on Twitter today whether Jyn might have followed in her father's footsteps as an Imperial officer if not for the events of the film.

He said no -- that he didn't believe she would have chosen to be a soldier at all.

Interestingly, his answer (which you can see in the tweet embedded below) read an awful lot like some lines Mon Mothma had written about Jyn in the film's novelization. That was pointed out by Wookieepedia, a Star Wars Wiki.

In the film, Jyn Erso is the daughter of the man largely responsible for the design of the Death Star. After he develops concerns about unleashing such a monstrous weapon on the galaxy, he abandons his post, but Imperial forces kill his wife and drag him back to work. Raised by a radical faction of the Rebel Alliance, Jyn lives for years without knowing whether or not her father survived -- until the war finds her.

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is in theaters now. 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 One tells 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."

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