Star Wars Celebration may be best known for its huge breaking news, but the heart of the convention is in the past. Nowhere was that better on display this weekend than the “Star Wars Rebels Remembered” panel, where executive producer Dave Filoni, along with actors Vanessa Marshall, Tiya Sircar, and Taylor Grey spoke about the concluded series and revealed some new secrets about how that shocking ending went down.
The ending, of course, skips over the events of the entire Original Trilogy and Sabine and Ahsoka riding off to find them.
It was an ending that Filoni only told a few people at Lucasfilm about, just to make sure it was ok, before writing the Sabine’s narration on a piece of paper as he flew on Southwest Airlines from San Francisco to Los Angeles to record voices.
On the panel, the cast explained that after recording their final day on the show, Filoni let everyone leave and asked only Sircar to stay. She thought she was in trouble. However, when it was just her, Filoni and the sound engineer remaining, Filoni took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her. It was Sabine’s narration revealing the true ending of the series. She read it, cried, and recorded.
Sircar then went to a planned dinner with the rest of the cast as kind of a final celebration for finishing the show. Both Marshall and Grey said they noticed she looked like something was wrong when she arrived. It wasn’t until months later, sitting in a theatre watching the finale with an audience, did all the other cast members, save for Sircar, find out the fates of their characters. Which was when they realised that was why Sircar looked so different that day. She knew things about the show no one else did.
Apparently, Filoni was so secretive about the fates of his characters, he never actually put the words into an electronic form. They only existed in his notebook before being recorded and animated. Then, during the screening, Marshall was shocked to learn that Hera had a son named Jacen. And Grey was surprised to here Sabine and Ahsoka were teaming up to find him.
[referenced url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2018/03/the-ending-of-star-wars-rebels-was-perfect-because-it-was-also-a-beginning/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/u5byx5pelpffwehqocl2.jpg” title=”The Ending Of Star Wars Rebels Was Perfect Because It Was Also A Beginning” excerpt=”Before Rey, Finn and Poe came to a galaxy far, far away, a TV show on a kids network had already started to define the new era of Star Wars. That show, Star Wars Rebels, ended its four-season run this week with a three-episode special that not only concluded the story that began way back in 2014, but offered a peek of the future, too.”]
In the end though, Filoni wanted to make an ending like the movies he grew up with in the past. With the heroes riding off into the sunset ready for another mission. And, as Sircar pointed out, this time that damsel in distress is a man, and the heroes are two women.
No, the panel did not reveal when, or if, that story will be told. But to hear the story behind the story was almost as good.