Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Writer Explains Why Several Rose Scenes Were Cut

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is in theaters at last, and it has prompted all kinds of controversy. Given the film’s position as the final piece of the Skywalker Sage, it was bound to cause debate. However, no critique has been as loud as the one questioning Rose Tico‘s noticeably short screen time. Now, a brand-new interview is shedding light on the character’s cut scenes, and it says Rose was never sidelined intentionally by the film’s creative team.

Recently, Awards Daily did an interview with Chris Terrio, the writer of The Rise of Skywalker. It was there he said Rose originally had lots of scenes with Carrie Fisher’s Leia Organa, but their visual quality was not up to standard and ultimately cut.

“One of the reasons that Rose has a few less scenes than we would like her to have has to do with the difficulty of using Carrie Fisher’s footage in the way we wanted to,” the screenwriter explained.

“We wanted Rose to be the anchor at the rebel base who was with Leia. We thought we couldn’t leave Leia at the base without any of the principals who we love, so Leia and Rose were working together.”

Continuing, Terrio said director J.J. Abrams and he loved Kelly Marie Tran’s work on Star Wars. However, the CGI needed to bring the characters together didn’t pan out.

“As the process evolved, a few scenes we’d written with Rose and Leia turned out to not meet the standard of photorealism that we’d hoped for. Those scenes unfortunately fell out of the film,” Terrio stressed. “The last thing we were doing was deliberately trying to sideline Rose. We adore the character, and we adore Kelly — so much so that we anchored her with our favorite person in this galaxy, General Leia.”

This explanation does explain some loose ends as Rose was seen working closely with the Resistance on base during The Rise of Skywalker. Still, plenty of fans are understandably disappointed by how little Rose influenced this final film. Her part in The Last Jedi did receive mixed reviews, but the vocal minority against Rose was nothing more than that. Now, fans are left to wonder what Rose did off-screen while Finn was on a job elsewhere and how she might have interacted with General Leia on the job.

How do you feel about Rose’s part in the Skywalker Saga finale? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is in theaters now. The Mandalorian is also available to stream in its entirety on Disney+.