The Cool Way Rogue One Almost Connected To Star Wars Rebels

Star Wars Rebels

When Disney brought the Star Wars franchise into its family, that wasn't just to keep churning out more movies. Lucasfilm has been taking more noticeable steps to connect their big screen endeavors to their TV shows, books and video games, thus establishing a even tighter-knit continuity. Take Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, for example. Star Wars Rebels fans may have noticed some calls to the TV show in the movie, such as the appearance of The Ghost, a mention of a General Syndulla and even Chopper the droid being briefly spotted. Now we've learned that there was an extra-sneaky reference that didn't make Rogue One's final cut, but would have added yet another tie to the Rebels side of a galaxy far, far away. A certain code name, to be specific.

Fans reading Star Wars: Rogue One: The Ultimate Visual Guide (picked up by film journalist Adam Frazier) noticed that in Cassian Andor's section, one of his operational aliases is "Fulcrum," who is described as a "recruitment agent in Albarrio sector." That reference will do nothing for Star Wars fans who've only seen the movies, but Rebels viewers know "Fulcrum" as a codename used by several Rebel operatives in the TV series, most notably Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker's former apprentice. In the grand scheme of things, name-dropping "Fulcrum" is insignificant, but had the codename been mentioned in Rogue One, surely a few Rebels fans would have gotten a kick out of it.

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For anyone who hasn't caught Star Wars Rebels, Fulcrum's identity was a secret for the majority of the show's first season. It was only in the Season 1 finale that Ahsoka Tano was revealed to be the operative who had been in clandestine communication with the main characters. Following Ahsoka's, shall we say, defeat at the end of Season 2, the Fulcrum identity has been passed onto another major character in Season 3 (no spoilers here). Even though Fulcrum wasn't mentioned in Rogue One, since the code name was mentioned in the movie's Ultimate Visual Guide, it's presumably still canon, meaning that it will eventually be passed on to Cassian Andor or he already has it during the Rebels years.

Let's go a step further. It was recently announced that Forest Whitaker will voice Saw Gerrera on Star Wars Rebels soon, so is there a chance we could see a younger Cassian Andor on the show at some point as well? Remember, Cassian said he'd been "in this fight" since he was six years old, so it's plausible that the Rebels characters might run into him during a mission. This is just speculation on our end, but if he does show up in the series, it would be wonderful if Diego Luna would reprise him.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is currently playing in theaters, while Star Wars Rebels Season 3 will continue on January 7 on Disney XD with the two-parter "Ghosts of Geonosis."

Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer

Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.