Jedi Survivor’s Cal Kestis Is A Free Disney Plus Star Just Waiting To Happen

Ask most Star Wars fans what the best tales are that have come out of the new Disney era of Star Wars, and you might mostly get a lot of mumbling and fidgeting and intense debates about The Last Jedi. But you’d probably hear Rogue One, Andor and chunks of The Mandalorian.

And you’d also hear Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. It’s not a Disney project in the traditional sense, but instead an EA/Respawn video game which created an entirely original story within a similar timeline to many past and present Star Wars projects. The sequel, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, is out this week, and is shaping up to probably be as well-received as the first game, if not better.

Star Wars has a long history of crafting solid stories within video games, especially back in the day when KOTOR and Jedi Knight ruled the scene. But here and now, it feels like Disney is probably leaving something on the table by not fishing out a live action version of Cal Kestis for a movie or Disney Plus series, either with a cameo in a similarly-timelined series (Obi-Wan was around the exact same era), or with his own adventure, either a new tale or an adaptation of the games. Haven’t they heard adapting video games is all the rage now?

Part of the benefit here is that you have a built-in star ready to go. That would be Cal Kestis himself, Cameron Monaghan, a screen actor before all this and one who is fully represented as the character in the game. No performance capture where Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson end up morphed into characters that don’t look like them. Cal Kestis is Monaghan, and in addition to his great work in the games, you may have seen him in Shameless for years, or caught his surprisingly excellent turn as the Joker (sorry, “Jerome”) in Gotham.

Live-action Star Wars has not been averse to Fallen Order/Kestis hints. We saw a version of his droid (if not the literal one) in The Mandalorian. Obi-Wan had the Fortress Inquisitorous, which was first seen in Fallen Order, and they had Purge Troopers from the game as well. It’s clear everyone making all these series, and Disney itself, is well aware of these games and how good they are. I just don’t know what will cause them to make the leap to get Monaghan actually onscreen one of these days.

Look, I am supportive of Dave Filoni doing whatever the hell he wants with Mando and Ahsoka and Thrawn and all that. But I think the door is open for some other adaptations or continuations of plotlines. And just because Cal Kestis isn’t an old, beloved EU character or the classic Kyle Katarn doesn’t mean he should be ignored when considering which heroes should appear onscreen. This feels like an obvious layup for Disney, given the quality of these games, the built-in fanbase for the character and the lead actor they would already have cast. We’ll see if they ever agree.

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