'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story' Cast Of Characters: That Blind Guy Isn't A Jedi, But Something Similar Never Seen Before

As part of their Rogue One: A Star Wars Story cover feature, Entertainment Weekly has released full profiles of the main characters from the next Star Wars movie. One of the most intriguing and mysterious characters spotted in the Rogue One trailer is a blind warrior played by Donnie Yen, seen challenging stormtroopers with nothing but a staff. We now know his name — Chirrut Imwe — but even more interesting is his story.

According to EW, “ he’s no Jedi, but he’s devoted to their ways and has used his spirituality to overcome his blindness and become a formidable warrior.”

This is something we’ve never really seen in the Star Wars movies: Force wielders completely unaffiliated with the Jedi or the Sith. “Chirrut falls into the category of being a warrior monk,” Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy told EW . “He very much still believes in everything the Jedi were about.”

So while it sounds like Chirrut won’t have the full panoply of Jedi powers, he does have a spiritual connection to the Force.

Rogue One director Gareth Edwards said, "This idea that magical beings are going to come and save us is going away, and it’s up to normal, everyday people to take a stand to stop evil from dominating the world.”

Chirrut will be accompanied mainly by Baze Malbus (Jiang Wen), a character with a totally insane name who serves Chirrut’s right-hand man. EW described the duo as “the galactic version of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.”