Join JTA as we count down to the premiere of Roge One: A Star Wars Story. Every day we'll be spotlighting a character from the new film. Today is Galen Erso.

Profile:
Galen Erso was born on the planet Grange. Four years before the Clone Wars broke out, Galen married Lyra Erso on Coruscant.

During the Clone Wars, Galen, Lyra and his daughter Jyn were abducted by Separatist agents but were rescued by his old friend Orson Krennic. Erso worked on manipulating kyber crystals, Force-attuned crystals that were at the heart of every Jedi lightsaber, and was encouraged to continue his studies by Krennic. Galen Erso's knowledge of the galaxy led both the Empire and the Alliance to Restore the Republic to seek him out.

Shortly before the Battle of Yavin, the Rebel Alliance intercepted a coded transmission from Erso indicating that a major weapons test was imminent, resulting in the Rebels recruiting his estranged daughter to partake in a mission to steal the plans to what they would discover to be the Imperial super-weapon known as the Death Star.

Production Quotes:
“He’s one of those people that has insight into you know specific aspects of just how the universe works. Where has Galen been, if Jyn has been on her own for years? The circumstances of how the family got to the state that it’s in is something that we probably don’t want to share right now,”
- Kiri Hart, Lucasfilm’s Chief of Story Development