Star Wars Rebels: Not Even Hera Knew About Her Baby With Kanan

The final moments of Star Wars Rebels delivered an emotional gut punch to fans by showing the fates of the beloved Ghost crew after the Galactic Civil War. But perhaps the most surprising and tear-jerking revelation came in the form of Jacen Syndulla ‒ the son of Hera Syndulla and the late Kanan Jarrus. This quiet, yet profound, epilogue affirmed the enduring love story that captivated audiences throughout the series; a legacy carried on in Star Wars: Ahsoka. What many viewers didn’t know, however, was that the reveal of Jacen was just as shocking to the voice of Hera Syndulla, actress Vanessa Marshall.

In an exclusive interview for ComicBook with the cast of Pod of Rebellion – the new rewatch podcast featuring Marshall, Tiya Sircar (Sabine Wren), Taylor Gray (Ezra Bridger), and moderator Jon Lee Brody – the actors reminisced about the emotional series finale screening, where Marshall learned about Hera and Kanan’s child in real-time; a secret that Tiya Sircar had been fiercely guarding for an entire year.

The Unforeseen Joy of a Shared Future

For Vanessa Marshall, the death of Kanan Jarrus in “Jedi Night” was already a monumental moment of grief and sacrifice for her character, Hera. The idea that there could be anything beyond that sorrow was, at the time, unimaginable. “I thought there was a workaround [for Kanan’s death]. I didn’t know I was going to birth his child,” Marshall candidly admitted during our interview. As an actor, she lived through the loss Kanan’s sacrifice represented, never anticipating the miraculous extension of their love. The audience’s shock was mirrored by Marshall’s genuine surprise, making the onscreen moment even more impactful for her. It was a secret so tightly held that only one cast member, Tiya Sircar, was privy to its contents for a full year leading up to the finale.

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Sircar recounted the immense pressure of keeping such a pivotal plot point under wraps. As the epilogue’s narrator, Sircar had recorded the voiceover a full year prior to Disney screening the finale. “That was the hardest. That was the hardest secret to keep,” she shared with regard to the Jacen revelation. The anticipation built to a fever pitch for Sircar as the day of the cast screening approached. She knew the emotional rollercoaster Marshall was about to experience. “And I remember Vanessa was a few rows ahead of me, and I had been waiting a year, knowing that her brain was going to explode when she found out about their child. And I remember watching it in this darkened theater. I wasn’t watching the screen. I was watching Vanessa to see what her reaction was, and she burst into tears.” Sircar’s story perfectly encapsulates the unique dynamic of the Rebels cast – a genuine family, both on and off-screen.

The Unforgettable Moment of Revelation

When the moment of Jacen’s reveal finally arrived at the cast screening, it was a truly chaotic and hilarious scene, as recounted by Marshall and Gray. My question, “How did you react to that big surprise?” prompted a cascade of vivid memories. Taylor Gray, who sat next to Marshall in the theater, recalled how her shock manifested with a punch to his arm: “I was sitting next to her and my arm – I thought it was going to get bruised.”

Marshall’s recollection painted an even more vivid picture of the unexpected reveal. “I hadn’t eaten all day [before the screening] because I was running around. And I was like ‘I better eat a protein bar now before I pass out.’” In a moment of pure, unscripted irony, Marshall was mid-bite into her protein bar, believing the dramatic revelations were over with the final scene of the series, when the epilogue and Hera and Jacen appeared on screen. Unbeknownst to her, Lucasfilm had strategically placed night vision cameras to capture every single reaction. “I did not clock that. So, I see that I’ve given birth to a small child. I’m mid-bite and I look at Taylor with this face and I punch him in the arm. I’m sitting there chewing, going, ‘what!?’ Meanwhile, I had no idea. There was nothing demure or poetic like, ‘Oh, look, I’ve had a baby.’ It’s just choking on a protein bar [and] punching Ezra – Taylor. And then, looking up to see that it was all caught on film, thinking: ‘wait, when did I have a baby? How did I not know this?”

The sheer normalcy of Marshall’s pre-reveal activities in contrast with the monumental emotional impact of Kanan and Hera’s child highlights the genuine, raw surprise she experienced. Her immediate reaction was to seek out the one person she knew held the key to this secret: Tiya. Sircar confirmed this, admitting, “If I wasn’t sworn to secrecy [by Dave Filoni], I would have made a beeline to you and been like, ‘you’re not going to believe this!’ But I wanted to, really bad.” This shared experience, from the guarded secret to the heartwarming (and simultaneously heartbreaking) revelation of Jacen Syndulla, shows just how deep the bond of trust and affection is among the Star Wars Rebels cast – a bond that continues to resonate with fans through their new podcast, Pod of Rebellion. The unexpected joy of Jacen’s existence, even in the wake of Kanan’s sacrifice, became a testament to enduring hope and a secret that truly exploded into the galaxy.

Pod of Rebellion is distributed by iHeartPodcasts and available on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere podcasts are heard.