The following contains spoilers for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Now you know.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is finally here and that means we can separate the facts from the ridiculous nonsense that we've been hearing over the past couple of years. While many of the rumors that we heard turned out to be true, others were complete crap. Here's a round-up of a few of our favorite falsehoods. Some seemed too far-fetched to begin with, but others could have been true, but we now know they were not.
Boba Fett Would Have a Cameo
A lot of the talk about the Star Wars standalone movies seemed to revolve around finding a place to give more screentime to Boba Fett. There was the plan, currently on hold if not dead, to give one of the upcoming spinoff films entirely to him, and there was a follow-up rumor after Felicity Jones was cast in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story that she was actually playing his daughter. While that rumor was clearly dead before the film came out, there was still a possibility that the bounty hunter could have appeared in the movie. While there were a handful of original trilogy cameos, he was not one of them.
Their Silly Codenames
This rumor was more than a little random but there was no reason to believe entirely that it wasn't true. Back before we knew the names of most of the members of Rogue One, they had codenames. The implication was that these codenames were going to be used in the movie but now we're thinking that if there was any credence to them, it was that they were used to hide the real names from the public. They had names like Seal Leader, which made them sound like they were part of some sort of elite special forces team. The truth, we now know, is that the entire Death Star plan stealing thing was thrown together at the last minute and off book. Nobody assigned them anything.
Young Han Solo Would Cameo
The word that Alden Ehrenreich had been cast as the young Han Solo came out months before Lucasfilm would confirm it. The casting process began months before that. We're even now a couple months away from the Han Solo film starting shooting. One of the rumors about why all of this was done so early was because there were plans for young Han Solo to show up at the end of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Kathleen Kennedy denied it, but since you can't prove a negative, there was no way to be sure it wouldn't happen until we saw the film for ourselves. We did. It didn't.
Grand Moff Krennic
Back near the beginning of it all, we learned that Ben Mendelsohn had been cast as the main villain of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Beyond that we knew little, but the rumor was that he'd be playing a Grand Moff, the same title given to the Death Star commander Tarkin in the original Star Wars. As time went on, we started to hear the character referred to as director, but it was possible the title was specific to the Death Star construction or that things would change over the course of the film. Needless to say, that while Krennic and Tarkin are rivals in the film, they are not equals. Tarkin clearly out ranks Krennic, as when Tarkin steals the Death Star command from Krennic, the director can do nothing about it.
Jyn Erso Would be Connected to The Force Awakens
Disney has made two Star Wars movies and both of them have had protagonists who were white, female, brunette, and had English accents. This can't be a coincidence, right? Actually, it was totally a coincidence. Nothing in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story implied any connection between Jyn and any other characters in Star Wars cannon, least of all some that won't be born for several years. By the end of the film, the Erso family isn't making any new connections, so it's safe to say there won't be any future revelations either.
Jyn Erso Would Turn Out to be Princess Leia
This one would have been absolutely nuts had it turned out to be true. Going back to the "all female brunettes in Star Wars must be connected" theory, there was one rumor that when it was all said and done, the twist at the end of the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story would turn out to be that Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) actually was Princess Leia. It's not entirely clear how this was supposed to work given all the information we had about Jyn and the Erso family, but needless to say, none of it was true.
Carrie Fisher's Daughter Would Play Princess Leia
When Billie Lourd, the daughter of Carrie Fisher, was cast in Star Wars: The Force Awakens there were rumors she would play Leia's daughter, or the princess herself, in a flashback. Then, when the plot of Rogue One was released, those rumors shifted to playing a younger Leia at the end of the movie as Leia escaped with the Death Star plans. While that scene did make it into the end of the movie. There was no need to cast anybody else to play the part, since thanks to special effects, you can just create a young Carrie Fisher to do the job herself.
That We'd Ever See Any of These Characters Ever Again
The question that comes right after "what are these characters doing?" is "What are they going to do next?" Much discussions was had, and many rumors were spawned, based on the idea that we might see any or all of these characters again in a sequel or an additional spinoff. We had a feeling that not every member of Rogue One would survive the events of the film, but it was more than a little shocking to discover that none of them did. While seeing these characters again isn't entirely impossible, seeing them in their own future is.
