Actor Freddie Prinze Jr. recently sat down to discuss his career and his role in the Punky Brewster revival. During the interview, he discussed his time as a voice actor for the animated Disney XD series Star Wars Rebels, in which he played Kanan Jarrus, a Jedi Padawan who survived the purge and went on to help form the Rebel alliance before the events of the original Star Wars trilogy. In the interview, Prinze Jr. also revealed that his character was originally supposed to leave the show much earlier than he did.
In the interview with Collider, Prinze Jr. discussed landing the role of Kanan Jarrus and the absurd levels of secrecy invoked in making a Star Wars show. Talking about the audition process, he said, “When I went in, I didn’t know it was Star Wars because they’re so stupidly secretive about everything. Who cares? Just tell people you’re making a Star Wars cartoon.” He goes on to talk about meeting Rebels creator Dave Filoni, whose other animated credits include Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the upcoming spin-off series The Bad Batch. Filoni also co-created the live-action series The Mandalorian for Disney Plus. After poking fun at Filoni’s signature cowboy hat, Prinze Jr. reveals that Disney didn’t actually want him for the part, but Filoni fought for him and he was cast later that day.
An interesting bit of information that he also reveals is that he and Filoni actually wanted Kanan to die at the end of season 2 at the hands of fallen Sith Lord Darth Maul. After miraculously surviving being cut clean in half by Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace, Darth Maul returned in The Clone Wars animated series as a reoccurring antagonist. Maul returned once again in Rebels, acting as a corrupting influence on Kanan Jarrus’s Padawan learner, Ezra Bridger. Maul would eventually meet his fate at the hands of his old rival Obi-Wan Kenobi, who delivered the finishing blow, killing Maul for good this time.
Kanan Jarrus did eventually die on Star Wars Rebels, but not at the hands of Maul. In the season 4 episode titled Jedi Knight, Kanan was killed by an explosion at an Imperial fuel depot after using the force to save his friends from the blast. Even though Prinze Jr. and Filoni had originally intended for Kanan to die in the second season, Disney said no.
Speaking on the matter, Prinze Jr. said, “Dave and I talked about me dying at Maul’s hand, at the end of Season 2, but then the same people who didn’t want me for the project suddenly said, ‘No, he can’t die. He has to be in every episode.’ So, I guess I won them over, at some point.” He also stated that Filoni and the animators deserve the credit for Kanan’s powerful death scene since there was no dialogue involved.
Rebels could have been a very different show if Kanan was killed at the end of season 2. Perhaps Ezra Bridger would have followed Maul to the dark side of the force, or maybe he would seek revenge for his fallen master. At the end of the day, Star Wars is an ever-changing story. We now know that a lot of Maul’s storyline in Clone Wars and Rebels was originally intended for George Lucas’s abandoned sequel trilogy, which would have seen the fallen Sith become the godfather of crime in the galaxy after the fall of the Empire.
You can watch all four seasons of Star Wars Rebels streaming on Disney Plus now.
Source: Collider
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