‘Star Wars Rebels’ Almost Reintroduced ‘The Force Unleashed’ Starkiller
Star Wars’ animated Rebels has often served as continuity bridge; reintroducing or re-shaping lore deemed non-canon by the move to Disney. One season almost saw franchise event The Force Unleashed returning to continuity with a grim update on “Starkiller” Galen Marek.
For those unfamiliar, the Star Wars franchise made a meal of its Force Unleashed storyline with the introduction of Sam Witwer’s Galen Marek, secret apprentice to Darth Vader who served as the focus of two video games, numerous comics, books and more. The Force Unleashed was essentially tossed out of continuity with other Star Wars “Legends” once new films got rolling, but as Witwer explained in a Twitch live stream with The Force Unleashed developers (h/t io9), “Starkiller” almost found a new place in Star Wars Rebels:
Dave [Filoni] did share with me, by the way, he considered making Starkiller an Inquisitor in Star Wars: Rebels. It didn’t quite fit the story they were telling, but he did think about it because he thought that would be interesting.
It isn’t clear which season would have featured Starkiller, as the first year had Jason Isaacs’ Inquisitor as its major big bad, while Season 2 featured multiple Inquisitor subordinates. Witwer nonetheless reprised his animated Clone Wars role as Darth Maul for a major Rebels arc, so one can see why the reintroduction of a video game antihero with Witwer’s voice might prove complicated.
There’s also a chance Witwer could return in Rebels’ final season to voice Emperor Palpatine (as he had in the games) if rumors of Ian McDiarmid prove false, but should the series have ventured into Force Unleashed continuity? Will any future Star Wars stories rescue the character?