When you look at the current era of Disney-owned Lucasfilm, it’s difficult to argue that the high point has to be “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” The prequel film, still now, feels wholly unique from just about everything else Lucasfilm has released over the last decade. And the one-shot film has already spawned a spinoff, “Andor,” which is regarded as the best “Star Wars” TV show yet. So, it’s a bit sad to know the co-writers (outside of Tony Gilroy, of course) of “Rogue One” had another idea in mind for the galaxy far, far away, but they never fully explored it.
In a recent tweet, Gary Whitta talked about an idea he and co-writer Chris Weitz had about a possible “Star Wars” TV series that would have taken the same sort of bold, unique storytelling of “Rogue One” and applied it to another era of the franchise’s timeline.
“Years ago my ‘Rogue One’ co-writer Chris Weitz and I had a cool idea for a TV show about a Mossad-style Rebel team hunting down Imperial war criminals who fled and disappeared after the fall of the Empire,” Whitta tweeted. “Could have been a cool bookend to [‘Rogue One’]. We never did anything with it though.”
To put this idea in context, the era of “Star Wars” lore that this Mossad–inspired series would reside is post-“Return of the Jedi,” after the fall of the empire. Presumably, it would pick up fairly close to the end of that film and follow a “Munich”-esque story about Rebels hunting down war criminals. While it doesn’t share much DNA with ‘Rogue One’ on paper (outside of the unlikely group of characters banding together), it definitely fits the mold of a more mature “Star Wars” story, like we’ve seen in that aforementioned film and the recently released “Andor.”
Obviously, this is an idea that Lucasfilm could still pursue. It’s just unclear if the studio wants much else to do with future stories in the Skywalker era of continuity. With “The Acolyte” and whatever else is being worked on with the films, it would appear that the future of the franchise could likely go in a very different direction.
But hey, the idea is solid and sounds a bit like a spiritual successor to “Andor.” So, we’re on board with that, if Lucasfilm is ever interested in developing it.