Saw Gerrera

Saw Gerrera is a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise. Saw was originally introduced in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, where he was voiced by Andrew Kishino. He was subsequently 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.

In The Clone Wars, he is the brother of the leader of the Onderon rebels, Steela Guererra, whom he helps free Onderon from the Confederacy of Independent Systems, and 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. In Rogue One, Saw is a close friend of Galen Erso, the foster parent and mentor in military combat of Jyn Erso, as well as the leader of an extremist rebel cell called the Partisans unaffiliated with the Rebel Alliance due to Saw's violent military tactics.

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 the 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 "female warrior", describing Steela.

Entertainment Weekly revealed the character's appearance in Rogue One on 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.

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 (and his Padawan Ahsoka Tano), along with clone trooper Captain Rex, secretly train Saw and the other members of the resistance movement in military combat but refuse to get involved in the conflict, and leave Ahsoka to supervise the operation with instructions to not fight the battle for them. Saw and Steela lead 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 Steela, because in his words, he wanted to depict that "there had to be a price paid for their freedom".

Star Wars: Bloodline
The character is mentioned in the novel Star Wars: Bloodline, set six years before the events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, where it is noted that his methods of combating the Empire are viewed as having been "extreme".

Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel
Gerrera appears in Catalyst: A Rogue One Novel, detailing how he came to meet Galen, Lyra and Jyn Erso.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Gerrera reappears in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, portrayed by Forest Whitaker. Within the film, 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.

Season 2
Saw is mentioned in the Star Wars Rebels second season episode "The Honorable Ones", as being a factor in Agent Kallus's disdain for the rebellion's tactics against the Empire and part of the reason he participated in the genocide of the Lasat race of Ghost crew member Garazeb "Zeb" Orrelios.

Season 3
Saw makes an appearance in the third season, two-part episode "Ghost of Geonosis", with Forest Whitaker reprising his role from Rogue One in vocal capacity. 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. Given the continuity error of Saw having a different eye colour in Rogue One to his appearance in The Clone Wars, a mixture of the two was used to imply Gerrera's eye colour to be changing with age.

Season 4
Whitaker will reprise his role as Gerrera in season 4, set shortly before the events of Rogue One.