During its four-season run on Disney XD, Star Wars Rebels featured guest appearances from a host of familiar Star Wars faces, including the likes of Darth Vader, Princess Leia, Lando Calrissian, The Emperor, Grand Moff Tarkin and Saw Gerrera.
The latter made his live-action Star Wars debut in 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which itself featured a couple of Rebels nods such as cameos from Chopper and The Ghost. However, despite taking place in close to the same time period, the show opted against featuring Rogue One villain Director Krennic, or the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, and Rebels creator Dave Filoni has explained why during an interview with CinemaBlend:
“At different times in Rebels in Season 4, there was a moment where even Krennic would appear in the series, where the Death Star appeared in the series, but because our show isn’t ultimately about either Krennic or the Death Star, I decided to cut those ideas from visibly showing up,” said Filoni. “I don’t want to confuse the audience.”
“I know a lot of people would know exactly how they fit,” he continued. “It just seemed distracting to talk about something that wasn’t the primary focus of the show. It’d be distracting to bring the Death Star into it or this character Krennic. Why would we bring him in if he’s not going to play a major role in this series? So I tried to avoid that yet get the idea that Thrawn is competing with how we’re going to fight the rebels.”
It certainly would have been easy to throw Krennic or the Death Star into an episode or two of Rebels, and would surely have got fans talking, so it’s refreshing to see Filoni putting the story first, especially if there wasn’t a way to bring them into the show beyond simple fan service.
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Via CBM
