Initial ‘Star Wars Rebels’ Ideas Involved Discovering Death Star Plans

With Star Wars Rebels, audiences were given familiar Star Wars elements and environments with all-new characters, as the members of the Ghost crew attempted to thwart the Galactic Empire prior to the events of A New Hope.

The series featured cameos from a number of recognizable characters and locations, though producer Dave Filoni pointed out that some original concepts for the series included locating plans for the Death Star, before that concept was ultimately used for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

“There were some really early on conversations with Rebels about it being it about them finding the Death Star plans. But as Rogue One came about and took shape, it was obvious we weren’t gonna do that story,” Filoni detailed to ComicBook.com. “I didn’t wanna do that story, frankly, honestly, with Rebels because I thought I don’t want their whole existence to just serve and hand off to another part of the plot. I want it to be its own story about this kid.”

While fans may have been familiar with the Empire and its reign of terror, we were completely unfamiliar with the series’ main characters, with Filoni opting to focus on these characters and their journeys more than tying the show’s narrative into more familiar elements of the live-action films.

“In the first episode, you see a kid on a planet oppressed by an empire. So, the promise of that kid’s journey is probably that he will overcome that, and save the people there,” Filoni detailed. “That’s a really hard goal when we know, if you’re an experienced fan, that Luke Skywalker does that for the whole galaxy. So the question becomes how do we solve that particular story problem. How does Ezra have a significant win? How does he save his friends and people?”

Filoni wasn’t the only driving force in the animated series, as co-executive producer Simon Kinberg also helped Rebels stay focused on the core components of the narrative.

“Simon Kinberg really, I think, helped focus my story efforts because he was always adamant about the family aspect of the show,” Filoni confessed. “That this is this kid, and it’s about his family. And through that, over time we started to connect the dots about the importance of that family, and his birth parents versus his new family and his new parents, and Kanan and Hera. The story grew out of that, for what he is attached to, and what he needs to let go of. How his friends become more a part of his life. You kind of build to the point, and, in the end, we got where I wanted it to be in the beginning, which was he saves his friends significantly, and the planet Lothol from the Empire.”

Fans can enjoy the fourth and final season of Star War Rebels on Blu-ray now.

Do you wish the series had incorporated these Death Star details? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!