Much like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the live-action Star Wars film which released in 2016, Star Wars Rebels takes place in between the events of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Both the popular animated series and the film featured a ragtag group fighting the nefarious Empire and explored the early stages of the sci-fi saga's iconic Rebellion.
They're both pretty identical as it is. This is most likely due to an interesting tidbit which, showrunner of Rebels and its predecessor Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Dave Filoni recently revealed. The writer and producer explained that during the early stages of development for the Disney XD show, it's main focal point was stealing the plans for the dreaded super-weapon: The Death Star.
There were some really early on conversations with Rebels about it being it about them finding the Death Star plans. But as Rogue One came about and took shape, it was obvious we weren't gonna do that story. I didn't wanna do that story, frankly, honestly, with Rebels because I thought I don't want their whole existence to just serve and hand off to another part of the plot. I want it to be its own story about this kid.
This intriguing plot point evidently grew into Rogue One and therefore left Rebels without an appearance by the small moon.
This is most likely for the best, as Filoni went on to explain; though he doesn't doubt fan's ability to recognise the iconography, he elected against incuding overt references - as to not detract attention from the show's protagonists or the unfolding storylines.
In the first episode, you see a kid on a planet oppressed by an empire. So, the promise of that kid's journey is probably that he will overcome that, and save the people there. That's a really hard goal when we know, if you're an experienced fan, that Luke Skywalker does that for the whole galaxy. So the question becomes how do we solve that particular story problem. How does Ezra have a significant win? How does he save his friends and people?
Filoni also explained that Simon Kinberg, writer and executive producer of Star Wars Rebels, helped him keep the story focused on the Ghost crew:
[Simon Kinberg] helped focus my story efforts because he was always adamant about the family aspect of the show. That this is this kid, and it's about his family. And through that, over time we started to connect the dots about the importance of that family, and his birth parents versus his new family and his new parents, and Kanan and Hera.
The story grew out of that, for what he is attached to, and what he needs to let go of. How his friends become more a part of his life. You kind of build to the point, and, in the end, we got where I wanted it to be in the beginning, which was he saves his friends significantly, and the planet Lothol from the Empire.
What do you think about Filoni's comments? Would you have liked Rebels to have explored Rogue One's storyline?