Rogue One Alternate Ending Gives Cassian Insane New Backstory

For the latest installment in the Star Wars movie canon, things might have been much wilder than any of us could have imagined.

The man who essentially pitched Lucasfilm on the idea for Rogue One revealed a "might-have-happened" moment. John Knoll, chief creative officer and senior visual effects supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic, sat down for an interview with iO9 and explained that there was one more alternate ending that didn't make the cut, and it painted Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) as kind of a bad guy.

Knoll's conclusion featured Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) and Cassian running off with Darth Vader nipping at their heels. They would have eventually blown themselves up after considering doing the same to Leia and her ship. But that's not the craziest part. Knoll crafted a completely different backstory for Cassian.

"I had a version of it where the Cassian character, originally, was a double agent," Knoll said. "He was a spy planted by the Empire into the Rebellion. And over the course of the mission, he becomes aware that the Death Star actually is a real thing and it's not just propaganda. The Empire really built it, intends to use it and its only purpose is a genocide weapon. He realizes a lot of what he's been told is a lie and that he's been on the wrong side. So he switches sides to the Rebellion and he realizes he can let everyone live."

He went on to explain: "They've got a carbon freeze bomb on the ship and the idea is that he forces everyone into the airlock. 'I'm going to set this off and you're all going to survive.' He sort of times it with one of the hits from Vader's ship so he blows up the ship and sets off this carbon freeze bomb and everyone is frozen. Then on Vader's ship, they detect no life signs and they think everyone's dead. And they're like, 'Where's that ship the plans were transmitted to?' and they go. So I was going to leave our heroes out of the picture. It's why they don't show up in Empire or Jedi: they're stuck in [carbon freeze]."

While that would certainly have been interesting to see on the big screen, we're glad the film ended the way it did. Speaking of, brush up on what really happened in Rogue One's conclusion with the ending fully explained.