Saw Gerrera Returns
Forest Whitaker reprises his role as veteran freedom fighter Saw Gerrera. Although most audiences likely know him best as the paranoid leader of the Partisans terrorist cell from rogue oneand the rebel who raised Jyn Erso after she was separated from her father as a child, Gerrera actually made his first appearance in Clone Wars animatedseries.
Since Andor takes place five years before the events of rogue one, it doesn’t look like the Partisans have yet settled on Jedha to sabotage the Imperial kyber crystal mining operation, which is why their base looks a bit different in this trailer. Interestingly enough, this is also around the time that Saw abandoned Jyn to fend for herself. She was only 16 when the Partisans abandoned her, and since she was 21 when she died in rogue onethat would mean Gerrera parted ways with her around five years before the film as well.
Does this mean we might get a Felicity Jones cameo when Stellan Skarsgard’s Luthen Rael comes to recruit the group for the Rebel Alliance he’s trying to build with Mon Mothma? Let us know you predictions in the comments!
Stellan Skarsgard as Luthen Rael
We also see more of Stellan Skarsgard’s new character Luthen Rael, who seems to be another character working against the Empire from the inside. In the trailer, we watch him not only meeting with Genevieve O’Reilly’s Mon Mothma on Coruscant but also trying to recruit Saw Gerrera and Cassian to his new cause of him. It seems Luthen is being set up as a previously unknown founder of the Rebel Alliance, and also doesn’t seem afraid to get his own hands dirty by the way he shoots at TIE fighters in one scene.
Ben Miles as Chancellor Valorum?
Some fans jumped to Twitter to celebrate the return of Terence Stamp as disgraced former Supreme Chancellor Finis Valorum from The Phantom Menace. But that’s actually actor Ben Miles (The Crown) as what looks like an Imperial senator whom Mon Mothma trusts enough to confide in.
Yes, from this angle, it does kind of look like Miles is playing Valorum, but we’ve learned in the past few years that Disney isn’t super fond of recasting characters, especially after Only (which wasn’t actually Alden Ehrenreich’s fault, no matter how much anyone tries to spin that). But, assuming Stamp wasn’t interested in returning to starwars, would Lucasfilm have no other choice but to recast the character? We’ll just have to wait and see.