We’ve been speculating about this for some time, but now Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy has confirmed it: Rogue One isn’t getting a sequel.
According to /Film, Kennedy dropped the news in the latest issue of Empire. Rogue One director Gareth Edwards backs her up, saying that the sequel to the film was “directed by George Lucas,” alluding to the original Star Wars movie, which Rogue One is designed to segue into.
Considering the Rogue crew doesn’t appear in A New Hope and the ominous presence of Darth Vader in the movie’s promotional materials, many people speculated that most or all of the gang wouldn’t survive the film. It’d be a dark way to end a blockbuster, killing off the entire main cast, but it would make sense within the context of the original trilogy. That said, the Lucasfilm crew may be playing coy for now, not wanting to spoil the fates of the characters. If Rogue One does well (and it’s probably going to do well), Disney will likely want a way to keep that magic going, and a trilogy of Rogue movies following the crew doing covert operations in and around the original Star Wars trilogy sounds awesome.
The only way we’re going to know for sure is to watch Rogue One on Dec. 16. Or we could try to trick the cast into admitting what happens during their Twitter Q&A on Friday.