On the fifth anniversary of the film, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story director Gareth Edwards reflected on the potentially controversial decisions of using CGI to bring back dead actors, and killing off every main character at the end. Edwards told StarWars.com that he is “really pleased” that none of the main characters survived because it would’ve raised valid questions about their future in the franchise. Rogue One was a prequel that directly tied into the original Star Wars film, A New Hope.

It was also the first in a series of planned Star Wars spinoffs, which came to an abrupt end after the commercial failure of Solo: A Star Wars Story some years later. The franchise has since pivoted to streaming, where multiple shows are in development, one of which features Cassian Andor, played by Diego Luna in Rogue One.

Edwards said that he was “waiting” to be told that he cannot kill every main character at the end of the film, and that he must let “some of them live.” But that call never came. He said that he is quite “proud” of what they got away with, because at the end of the day, the ending of Rogue One is thematically appropriate for the film. He said:

“Things are more valuable when they only exist for a brief moment, and they’re not something you can always go back to. I feel like the fact that they did all — those characters came together and then can’t come together again, really, in the same way, probably helped the movie in some way.”

Image via Lucasfilm

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The filmmaker also spoke about bringing back old characters via CGI. In Rogue One, both Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia appear in cameos of varying lengths (Leia shows up right at the end). But the actors who originally played them—Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher—were unavailable. Cushing died in 1994, and Fisher died in 2016, after Rogue One was filmed.

Edwards recalled that rendering the CGI Tarkin came down to the wire, and that he was wasn’t always convinced that it was going to work. But the audience’s reaction to the Tarkin reveal is something that he will always remember. Crediting actor Guy Henry for taking on the rather thankless role of playing the Tarkin stand-in on set, Edwards added:

“We lucked out with Guy Henry. He was the actor who played Tarkin for us, with all the dots on his face and everything. When I went to speak with him and meet with him to try to talk him into it, it was a strange request for an actor. You’re basically saying, 'Can you be in our movie, but can we replace you with another actor and have nobody know that you did this?’ You’d imagine him saying a 'what’s in it for me' kind of thing. But he said, ‘You know what, Gareth? If you’d said any other actor in the history of cinema, I would say no, but Peter Cushing was the reason [I’m an actor].’ That actor, Guy Henry, his first role on TV was playing Sherlock Holmes. So he watched all of Sherlock Holmes, Peter Cushing’s version of Sherlock Holmes, and sort of started emulating him in the beginning of his career. It sort of stuck, I think. He’s always held him in this high regard, as well. So we kind of lucked out with him, that he had all the same mannerisms in his performances.”

Rogue One, despite being marred by production difficulties that saw the ending being revamped and the score being re-written (among other things), was a critical and commercial success. It grossed more than $1 billion at the box office and scored two Oscar nominations. Edwards, however, hasn’t directed another film since. In addition to the streaming series, Disney is taking the anthology approach with the franchise, with multiple films in various stages of development.