The second Star Wars movie in the new Disney firmament, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story , is out this week. It is not a follow-up to Star Wars: The Force Awakens; not a continuation of Rey and Finn and Poe Dameron’s adventures; not even an Episode. So what is Rogue One: A Star Wars Story? Where does it fit into the ongoing Star Wars saga? And didn’t Darth Vader die in Return of the Jedi?
(Maybe you already know all this. But someone keeps searching “Where Does Rogue One Fit In The Star Wars” so…)
Origins of ROGUE ONE
The origin of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story can be found in the crawling text that set up the very first Star Wars in 1977.
Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope - Opening Crawl on Disney Video
The original Star Wars crawl reads:
“It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy…”
The parts in bold constitute the plot of Rogue One.
ROGUE ONE Time Period
In the Star Wars saga continuity, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is set between Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars (A New Hope will never be my Star Wars).
Time in the Star Wars universe is often measured by the Galactic Standard Calendar (of arguable canonicity in the Disney era), with the Battle of Yavin as its pivotal event. Years in the Star Wars galaxy are labeled as BBY or ABY: Before the Battle of Yavin or after. The Battle of Yavin, which took place in BBY 0, ended when Luke Skywalker — then of the Rebel Alliance’s Red Squadron of starfighters — destroyed the Empire’s “ultimate weapon,” firing a proton torpedo into an exhaust port and causing a chain reaction to destroy the Death Star. Though they’d face other setbacks, the Battle of Yavin lead inexorably to the Battle of Endor that wrote an end to the Emperor and his squalid reign of terror.
Rogue One ends in BBY 0, the year Princess Leia took possession of the Death Star plans and attempted to evade Darth Vader in her ship, the Tantive IV, first seen fleeing the Imperial Star Destroyer Devastator in the very first of Star Wars.
Star Wars: Episode III ends in BBY 19, another epochal year in the Star Wars galaxy that saw the end of the Clone Wars, the purge of the Jedi under Order 66, the end of the Galactic Republic and the birth of Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is set in this 19-year period, likely in the last year or so.
The ROGUE ONE Plot and Classic STAR WARS Characters
Since Rogue One takes place around 0 BBY, between Episode III and Star Wars, it should be obvious why Rey, Finn, BB-8, Poe Dameron, Kylo Ren, Supreme Leader Snoke and all of the other characters Disney just introduced us to in The Force Awakens won’t be making an appearance.
But if you’ve been paying attention to the Rogue One trailers and marketing, you probably caught a few familiar faces. While Rogue One’s ensemble cast is mostly comprised of new, non-Jedi characters (part of the original plan for Rogue One was to show us the less spiritual side of the galactic civil war), it will also have a handful of recognizable faces who were active during the Rogue One time period. This includes Imperial figures, like Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin. It also includes Rebel Alliance characters, like Bail Organa — Leia’s adoptive father — and Rebel Alliance leader Mon Mothma.
Rogue One does not include Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and other familiar faces from the original Star Wars, not because they weren’t alive at this period, but because they weren’t involved in the specific events — the theft of the Death Star plans — depicted.
Still, there will probably be many nods to other Star Wars movies and shows, like Star Wars Rebels, that will more securely establish Rogue One in its between-movies niche.
You should be ready for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story now. Just be sure you have the Star Wars: Despecialized Edition queued up so you can continue where Rogue One ends by watching the movie that first took us to that galaxy far, far away.
