Summary
- Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order missed an opportunity for a major Star Wars character cameo, but a new book explains why.
- Chewbacca wasn’t present on Kashyyyk during Fallen Order, but his absence is now explained in a tie-in book.
- Despite Chewbacca’s absence, other Star Wars characters like Saw Gerrera and Tarfful make cameo appearances in Jedi: Fallen Order.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order missed the opportunity for a major Star Wars character to make an appearance, but a new book reveals that might’ve been intentional. Fallen Order and its sequel, Jedi: Survivor, visit 13 different planets from across the Star Wars franchise. Each helps to tie in species, ships, heroes, and villains from the wider series, giving Cal Kestis a firm place in the Star Wars canon.
But at the same time, the Jedi games are oddly insular. There are a few run-ins with Darth Vader, a handful of tie-ins with Ahsoka, and a smattering of nods towards the main series protagonists. However, they rarely, if ever, actually appear ingame. The plot is focused strictly on Cal Kestis’ journey, at once wholly separate from the main movie trilogies and inextricably connected with them. Still, Fallen Order had the perfect chance for one cameo, but it declined to take it – and now there’s a perfectly good reason why.
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Why Wasn’t Chewbacca On Kashyyyk During Jedi: Fallen Order?
A new Star Wars tie-in book, The Secrets of the Wookies, has revealed that Chewbacca wasn’t present on Kashyyyk during the events of Fallen Order, but later heard tell of Cal’s presence there. The book explores some mysteries and misconceptions about Wookies, whose unique language and rich culture has always made them somewhat of an enigma in the Star Wars canon. One of the unanswered questions it accounts for is Chewbacca’s absence during the Kashyyyk chapters of Fallen Order. As it turns out, he was off-world, but what he was doing is a different question.
Cal visits Kashyyyk during the early mid-game, where he gets embroiled in an effort to shut down an Imperial refinery that has forced many Wookies into slavery. The resistance is already well underway by the time the Jedi shows up, but Cal swoops in, hijacks an AT-AT, and shuts down the plant. He returns later in search of information left behind by the Jedi Eno Cordova: clues pointing toward a holocron containing a list of Force-sensitive children, which he intends to use to rebuild the Jedi Order. With the help of a grateful Wookie leader, he finds a further message from Cordova to help him along his way.
Oddly enough, Chewbacca isn’t present during any of this. It’s a bit surprising, since other Star Wars media, including The Secrets of the Wookies, portrays him as a leading Wookie resistance fighter, one who wouldn’t be liable to miss a fight for his species’ home planet. Obviously, whatever he was doing was indispensable to the resistance effort, otherwise he would’ve returned to assist on Kashyyyk, and appeared in Jedi: Fallen Order. So what was Chewie up to, and who on Kashyyyk filled in for him?
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Where Is Chewbacca During Jedi: Fallen Order?
Star Wars has a pretty concrete timeline, so it’s usually possible to point to a specific year and determine exactly what a major character was doing at the time. With Chewie, that gets a little more complicated. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order takes place in 14 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin), in essence, 14 years before the ending of Episode IV. That puts it four years before Chewbacca met Han Solo in 10 BBY, during the events of Solo. Record of his life before then is a little shaky, but there’s some evidence to go off of.
So he wasn’t aboard the Millennium Falcon just yet, but other Star Wars media provides some insight into what Chewbacca might’ve been doing while Cal was busy on Kashyyyk. In the Star Wars series Rebels and Ahsoka, as well as the comic book run Chewbacca, it’s abundantly clear that Wookie oppression isn’t limited to Kashyyyk; The Empire has displaced them across multiple worlds. Chewbacca himself is something of a galaxy-trotting liberator, going from planet to planet in order to disrupt Wookie forced-labor projects.
So Chewbacca was probably busy busting up Imperial operations on another planet while Cal was helping out on Kashyyyk, even though it’s not totally clear exactly which one. In the meantime, another Wookie was left in charge of the fight for Kashyyyk, and certainly had his own hands full. Luckily, even before Cal showed up, he had a great deal of help from another major Star Wars character.
Fallen Order’s Kashyyyk Includes Two Other Star Wars Cameos
Saw Gerrera And Tarfful Appear In Jedi: Fallen Order
Each of Cal’s trips to Kashyyyk in Jedi: Fallen Order includes another Star Wars character cameo, even if Chewbacca is absent. The first time Cal visits Kashyyyk, he runs into resistance leader Saw Gerrera and his fighting force, The Partisans. Gerrera debuted in the animated series The Clone Wars, and was later portrayed by Forest Whitaker in Rogue One and Andor. He and the Partisans are already working toward Wookie liberation when Cal shows up, but the Jedi’s assistance helps them finish the job.
But Cal’s real goal on Kashyyyk is to find the Wookie chieftain Tarfful, an old friend of Cere’s whom intel suggests might know something about Cordova’s holocron. Tarfful has appeared in the 2005 FPS game Republic Commando, as well as in Episode III in the same capacity. As the Wookie chieftain, he’s effectively the highest authority on their planetary struggle against The Empire. But until the Wookies have been liberated, Tarfful is suspiciously absent in Jedi: Fallen Order. Cal later ventures into the Kashyyyk Shadowlands to find him, at which point Tarfful is able to direct him toward a further clue atop the Tree of Life.
Chewbacca’s absence from the Star Wars Jedi games is a bit disappointing, but not terribly surprising. It’s not like most of the movies’ main cast appears in the games. They take place in between the prequel trilogy and the original trilogy for a reason. Plopping Chewie down in Fallen Order just for fan recognition would’ve not only shifted the focus away from its main character; it would’ve also created conflicts with other media he features in. But with the escalation of Cal’s importance in the wider galaxy, there’s always potential for a similar crossover in the third game in the Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order trilogy.
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Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
- Franchise:
- Star Wars
- Platform(s):
- PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft Windows
- Released:
- 2019-11-15
- Developer(s):
- Respawn Entertainment
- Publisher(s):
- Electronic Arts
- Genre(s):
- Action-Adventure
- ESRB:
- T
- Summary:
- From the creative team behind Titanfall 1, 2, and Apex Legends comes Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, a single-player action-adventure game set in the Star Wars Universe. Five years after the events of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, players assume the role of Cal Kestis, a Jedi Padawan that has managed to survive the outcome of the deadly Order 66, unlike many other Jedi. When Cal is found by Inquisitors seeking to hunt down the rest of the Jedi, he escapes and eventually finds a new former Jedi ally and begins to fight back against the empire to survive.
- How Long To Beat:
- 17 Hours
- Sequel:
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
