Star Wars Mysteries Rogue One Might Answer

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is barely a twinkle in Disney's eye, and all that we know about the film is that it'll involve a bunch of Rebels trying to get their hands on the plans for the first Death Star, but very little else. Rogue One happens five to ten years before the events of A New Hope, and stands to fill in a lot of gaps that the franchise has left behind, whether those mysteries are intentional, accidental, or a product of the Expanded Universe being wiped out. With all of the freedom that the galaxy has to offer, what mysteries might Rogue One actually solve for us?

Supreme Leader Snoke, who has only had about a minute of screen time, is currently the biggest mystery in all of Star Wars. We know that the chain of Dark Side baddies goes something like Plagueis to Palpatine to Vader, with a Darth Maul and a Count Dooku wedged in there somehow. But the bad guy who outlived them all has been Snoke—even though we've never seen him before and he's never been mentioned until now. He clearly has a pretty powerful relationship with The Force, if he's not actually the Dark Side incarnate, and therefore has had a hand in the course of all galactic history, so maybe Rogue One will actually find a moment to slip him into early continuity.

The Expanded Universe had some pretty great stories about how Han Solo, employed by the evil Empire, rescued Chewy from another officer, thus making them lifelong brosefs, but we have no idea how Disney will be treating the official meeting between Han Solo and Chewbacca. While the Star Wars braintrust will probably be saving it for their young Han Solo solo film, some hints at how, or at least when, the two actually met would be a solid story addition. Even if we just get to see them palling around before they got mixed up in that whole Skywalker mess, or giving Jabba the business, it would be pretty satisfying.

Many Bothan spies died in order to get the plans for the second Death Star, so it's likely that the Rebellion uses up Bothans like tissues when it comes to stealing and smuggling junk from the Empire. The entire mythology of the Bothans has been wiped out, and it's about to be rewritten from top to bottom, so we need to know why they're such effective spies and smugglers. Are they shapeshifters? Are they so unassuming and stupid that no one ever suspects them of anything untoward? Is a Bothan an alien race, or is "bothan" just a word that the Rebels use to define bravery... or is it a space-swear word, like "nerf herder" or "frak"?

While under interrogation, Leia tells the Empire that the Rebels are holed up in a base on Dantooine, but when the Empire gets there, it's already been abandoned. But why? It's not as though it was a dummy base set up by the Rebels in case someone needed to drop a location while being tortured, because the base was exceptionally sophisticated, as revealed in the book Lost Stars. We don't know why the base was abandoned, but it seems like the perfect place for Rogue One's Rebels to set up shop, and maybe we'll finally get to see why it was just left there.

Why does an old dude on a desert planet have a part of a map to the first Jedi temple? The Force Awakens raises more unanswered questions in its first five minutes than any film in Star Wars history, and the mystery of Lor San Tekka's role in the world of the Jedi is one of them. The Force Awakens: The Visual Dictionary reveales that Tekka was a member of the underground Church of the Force, and helped Luke locate the lost temple, but the knowledge of his character drops off right there. There's no doubt that he's pretty good at smuggling information, so let's hope that he shows up Rogue One with a solid backstory.

Some of the best Star Wars hints are often dropped in the kiddie lit surrounding the series. Of the tiny bits of information that are trickling out of Rogue One, we know that Felicity Jones' character is named Dosmit Raeh, and thanks to Rey's Survival Guide, released by Disney at the same time as Force Awakens, we know for a fact that Raeh's old pilot helmet is now owned by Rey, who "found" it on Jakku. Not only are their names kinda similar when you say them out loud, but if you mix up the letters in Dosmit Reah, you get "mother said." You also get "Thomas Reid," but that's neither here nor there. But you can bet your butt it's a clue about Rey's parentage.