Will Cal Kestis Return? “Never Say Never.”

Before the live-action debut of Ahsoka Tano and Ezra Bridger — or the deepfaked return of Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian — there wasn’t much in the way of Jedi representation in the modern Star Wars era. After the sequels, the saga turned the clock back to the murky years between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, years where the Jedi Order was pretty much extinct. It’s from this void that Cal Kestis, the playable hero of Jedi: Fallen Order, was born. At that time, he was just one of maybe a handful of Jedi who’d survived the events of Order 66, forging a new path in a suddenly hostile galaxy. But he became a cult favorite all the same, and his potential has only grown in the years following his debut.

Cal’s adventures in Fallen Order and its sequel, Jedi: Survivor, held the saga down in more ways than one. While The Mandalorian and its loose spinoff explored the fall of the Empire, the Jedi games took the baton from stories like Rebels, retaining the sweeping grandeur that the Disney+ shows lacked. Fallen Order alone proved that this corner of the galaxy was strong enough to stand on its own — but Survivor demonstrated Cal’s crossover appeal by pairing him up with some familiar faces. After Saw Gerrera and Boba Fett made cameos in Cal’s story, fans wondered whether Cal himself would eventually return the favor in a live-action story, or if he’d meet more legacy characters in another Jedi game. It’s been three years since Survivor was released, and there’s no real word on Cal’s future. According to a Disney representative, though, Survivor is far from the end for the Jedi warrior.

In a conversation with GameRant, an unnamed Disney rep confirmed that Cal Kestis is still front of mind when it comes to new stories. “Never say never,” the representative said when asked about Cal’s future. “We’ve got his lightsaber in the park. We’ve got more Cal stories coming.”

One of those “stories” could potentially be Star Wars Jedi 3, the third (and potentially final) game in the Respawn series, which has been in the works for years. In late 2023, Monaghan confirmed that he’d begun work on the game — though the departure of lead director Stig Asmussen that same year might have kneecapped production. Electronic Arts, which co-produces the Jedi games alongside Respawn Entertainment, also put the games in jeopardy after a round of layoffs that culled over 600 employees from the company.

There haven’t been many updates about Star Wars Jedi 3 since; while there’s definitely a chance the game could debut sooner or later, the “stories” Cal could appear next in might not be games at all. The virtue of modeling the character off a flesh-and-blood actor is that the same actor could also appear in live-action. Fans have long theorized that Cal survived to see the Empire fall and the New Republic rise, which would allow him to appear in one of the Mando-verse shows, director Dave Filoni’s upcoming Thrawn-centric film, or in an adventure of his own. If GameRant’s anonymous Disney rep is to be believed, the possibilities for Cal are potentially endless — so long as Lucasfilm doesn’t forget about the character.