Created by George Lucas Gender Male | Portrayed by Forest Whitaker | |
First appearance The Clone Wars
– "A War on Two Fronts" (2012) Last appearance Star Wars Rebels:
- "Ghosts Of Geonosis" (2017) Voiced by Andrew Kishino (The Clone Wars)
Forest Whitaker (Star Wars Rebels) | ||
Saw Gerrera is a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise, played by Forest Whitaker in the anthology film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as well as voiced by him in the animated series Star Wars Rebels, previous to Whitaker's portrayal Saw had originally been introduced in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars where he was voiced by Andrew Kishino both series set prior to the film. In Rogue One, Saw is a close friend of Galen Erso, as well as the foster parent and mentor in military combat of Jyn Erso, as well as the leader of an extremist borderline terrorist Rebel cell, called the Partisans (unaffiliated to the Rebel Alliance due to Saw's violent military tactics). While in The Clone Wars, he is the brother of the leader of the Onderon rebels Steela Guererra (Saw's sister), he helps her free Onderon from the Confederacy of Independent Systems, and he is mentored in military combat by the Jedi knights Obi-wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker (along his padawan Ahsoka Tano) and clone trooper Captain Rex.
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Concept and creation
Though Saw appeared in animated form in The Clone Wars, that was not the original plan for him. Appearing on The Star Wars Show, Pablo Hidalgo of Lucasfilm’s Story Group revealed the character’s origin; "He started off before that. George Lucas had him in mind for his live-action TV series that was in development, which ultimately never happened, but he found a place to put Saw into a story in Clone Wars."
Supervising director of The Clone Wars Dave Filoni stated: "We wanted a brother/sister duo on Onderon, and the character Saw was a character that George had already created, and he just wanted to involve and tell a little more about that character. So in the course of that we created Steela [to be Saw's sister], who would act as a natural foil to Ahsoka."
Andrew Kishino, who voiced Saw in The Clone Wars, said that character "[H]as even sort of, embodied in him, that feisty spirit of the Rebellion. The take-no-garbage kind of individual. He's stoic and strong and brash. He's 'that' guy, and it's that kind of strength tempered with Steela's calm, level-headed thinking, that is, to stand up to something that will ultimately become the Empire, absolutely critical and necessary.
Saw Gerrera's name is a "mnemonic riff" on the Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara. Gerrera is also a heterograph of the Spanish word "guerrera", meaning "(feminine) warrior", "(feminine) warlike" or "combat jacket" (Saw Gerrera wears a specialized combat jacket in all his scenes in Rogue One).
Entertainment Weekly revealed the character's appearance in Rogue One in June 22, 2016. The film's director, Gareth Edwards, had wanted a character to showcase the more "militant" and "extreme" side of the rebellion. Kiri Hart suggested using Gerrera, a pre-established character, in this role. Rogue One takes place roughly twenty years after his appearance in The Clone Wars.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
In Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Gerrera leads the Partisans, an extremist faction of the Rebel Alliance, on the planet Jedha. He is Jyn Erso's mentor, having rescued her as a child when her father Galen was abducted by the Empire. He relays a message to Jyn from Galen, who reveals that he designed a flaw into the Death Star's main reactor which makes it vulnerable to attack. Jedha City is attacked by the Death Star shortly thereafter; rather than escape with Jyn, Gerrera willingly stays behind, stating that he is done running away. He and most of his insurgents are then killed in the shockwave of the city's destruction. Within the film Saw is depicted as more physically damaged than his other appearances, being shown with robotic legs and his suit carrying a respirator, that Saw needs to constantly inhale from, in order to breathe.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Saw Gerrera (voiced by Andrew Kishino) first appeared in the fifth season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, in the Onderon arc consisting of the episodes A War on Two Fronts, Front Runners, The Soft War, and Tipping Point. The character appears on all the episodes of the arc, along with his sister, Steela Gerrera, who was the leader of the Onderon rebels, the Jedi Knights Obi-wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker (along his padawan Ahsoka Tano) with the help of clone trooper Captain Rex, secretly train Saw and the other members of the resistance movement in military combat but refused to involve in the conflict, and left Ahsoka to supervise the operation with instructions to not fight the battle for them. Saw helped his sister Steela while she leaded his planet Onderon, to victory over the Confederacy of Independent Systems. Dave Filoni along with the writers, decided for the arc to end with the death of Saw Gerrera's sister, because in his words, he wanted to depict that "there had to be a price paid for their freedom".
Star Wars Rebels
Saw is first mentioned in the Star Wars Rebels second season episode The Honorable Ones, but he doesn't make an appearance until the third season two-part episode Ghost of Geonosis (with Forest Whitaker reprising the role from Rogue One) In the episode after the Rebellion loses contact with Saw and his squad investigating Geonosis, they decide to send the Ghost crew (including Jedi knight Kanan Jarrus, his padawan Ezra Bridger, and Captain Rex) to rescue him.
Novels
The character is mentioned in the novel Star Wars: Bloodline and appears on Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel.