Star Wars: The Clone Wars launched many fan-favorite characters, but the top two are definitely Anakin’s Padawan and general badass Ahsoka Tano, and veteran Clone Trooper Captain Rex. If you’ve seen the second season of The Mandalorian you don’t need to be told who Ahsoka is, but Rex has never been seen in live-action… or has he?
There’s long been a fan theory that a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it character in Return of the Jedi is Rex. His potential appearance is in Han’s raiding party on Endor, which features a character with a strikingly familiar white beard. His creator Dave Filoni has even said “I really do think that Rex is that guy on Endor“.
Now it’s been confirmed in an unlikely place. Star Wars children’s book ‘I am a Clone Trooper’ is a guide to all things cloned in a galaxy far, far away. It summarizes the stories of Commander Cody, the Bad Batch, and, of course, Captain Rex.
Now Dee Bradley Baker, Rex’s voice actor, has posted a page showing him celebrating the destruction of the second Death Star alongside Han and Leia, confirming that he was indeed present in Return of the Jedi. Check it out:
Some fans have poured cold water on this by saying the canonicity of a children’s book is questionable and that the bearded man is a Rebel fighter known as Nik Sant. However, the way I see it there can be two bearded old men fighting the Empire on Endor and who’s to say which is which?
Rex’s ultimate fate is unknown. There have been rumors he’ll appear in either The Mandalorian or The Book of Boba Fett, but if he did he’d now be a very old man as the clones suffer from accelerated aging – though we’ve never gotten a clear sense of exactly how this works when you hit advanced years.
My bet is that Captain Rex will turn up in the upcoming Ahsoka Tano Disney Plus show. This might just be in flashback, but I still want to see Temuera Morrison stepping into the battle-worn boots of yet another grizzled-cloned warrior.
