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Saw Gerrera is a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise. He first was introduced in a 2012 episode of the animated series , in which he is voiced by Andrew Kishino. Hailing from the planet Onderon alongside his sister, Steela, they're introduced as Royalist working to free the planet from the rule of an illegitimate king backed by the Confederacy of Independent Systems and are mentored in military combat by the Jedi and clone troopers. While they're able to free their planet, his sister is tragically killed in action. An older version of the character appears in the live-action film Rogue One (2016) , played by Forest Whitaker. He is depicted as a key rebel leader who is expelled from the Rebel Alliance due to his extreme methods, but he remains instrumental in uncovering the Death Star's existence and inspiring his protege and foster daughter, Jyn Erso, to help the Alliance.
Saw's character makes recurring appearances throughout Star Wars media; Whitaker voices Saw in the animated series Star Wars Rebels, the video game , and appears in the live-action television series, Andor (2022–2025). Saw also appears in , with Kishino reprising his role. Many of his appearances depict him as an effective soldier whose methods become extreme. Other appearances explore Gerrera's battles against the Empire and the toll they take on him mentally, as well as his relationship with the Alliance, and his work uncovering the Death Star.
The character has received positive reception from critics for representing the darker aspects of the Rebel Alliance, and Whitaker's performance in both Rogue One and Andor, with the latter earning him an Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series nomination at the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards.
Supervising director of The Clone Wars Dave Filoni stated: "We wanted a brother/sister duo on Onderon, and the character Saw was a character that George had already created, and he just wanted to involve and tell a little more about that character. So in the course of that we created Steela to, who would act as a natural foil to Ahsoka Tano."
Andrew Kishino, who voices Saw in The Clone Wars, said that the character "Has even sort of, embodied in him, that feisty spirit of the Rebellion. The take-no-garbage kind of individual. He's stoic and strong and brash. He's 'that' guy, and it's that kind of strength tempered with Steela's calm, level-headed thinking, that is, to stand up to something that will ultimately become the Empire, absolutely critical and necessary.
Saw Gerrera's name is a "mnemonic riff" on the name of the Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara. Gerrera is also a heterograph of the Spanish word "guerrera", meaning "female warrior", describing Steela.
Entertainment Weekly revealed the character's appearance in Rogue One on June 22, 2016. The film's director, Gareth Edwards, had wanted a character to showcase the more "militant" and "extreme" side of the rebellion. Co-producer Kiri Hart suggested using Gerrera, a pre-established character, in this role. Gerrera appears significantly older in Rogue One than he did in The Clone Wars, despite the two works taking place only roughly twenty years apart.
Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Knight Darth Vader, and his Padawan Ahsoka Tano, along with clone trooper Captain Rex, secretly train Saw and the other members of the resistance movement in military combat but refuse to get involved in the conflict, and leave Ahsoka to supervise the operation with instructions to not fight the battle for them. Saw attempts to rescue the deposed King Ramsis Dendup from execution, only to be captured and tortured. However, he plays a vital part in the Onderon rebellion by convincing Dendup and militia General Tandin that the rebels are fighting out of loyalty to their rightful sovereign. Eventually, Saw and Steela lead the Onderon resistance to victory over the Confederacy of Independent Systems, though not without paying a heavy price for it when Steela dies saving the king. Dave Filoni, along with the writers, decided for the arc to end with the death of Steela, because in his words, he wanted to depict that "there had to be a price paid for their freedom".
Saw makes an appearance in the third season, two-part episode "Ghosts of Geonosis", with Forest Whitaker reprising his role from Rogue One in vocal capacity. Given the continuity error of Saw having a different eye colour in Rogue One to his appearance in The Clone Wars, a mixture of the two was used to imply Gerrera's eye colour to be changing with age. In the episode, the Rebellion loses contact with Saw and his squad investigating Geonosis and decide to send the Ghost crew to rescue him. Saw saves Jedi Knight Kanan Jarrus, his Padawan Ezra Bridger, and Captain Rex from a group of battle droids. He tells them of an operational shield generator that he found, leading him to deduce that a Geonosian is still alive. Saw convinces them that they need to find the Geonosian, as it could tell them why the Empire virtually exterminated its species. They discover the Geonosian, whom Ezra names "Klik-Klak". Saw aggressively interrogates Klik-Klak and forces him to lead them to the source of an energy reading, handcuffing him as well. They reach his home, which Gerrera ransacks, suspecting him to be hiding something. The Rebels learn that Klik-Klak has been protecting an egg of his race, and take him to the Ghost for questioning. Saw resorts to torturing him with electric shock and even threatening to destroy the egg. However, upon finding more evidence of the genocide of the Geonosians by the Empire, Saw has a change of heart and lets Klik-Klak back to his lair, giving him a chance to rebuild the Geonosian population.
Saw reappears in the fourth season's two-part episode "In the Name of the Rebellion", which is set shortly before the events of Rogue One. He gives information on a new Imperial relay station to the Rebel Alliance, and condemns their unwillingness to do whatever it takes to win, blaming it as the reason for their losses. He later rescues Ezra and Sabine Wren during their mission to assist him in learning about the Empire's Death Star, which he was investigating since his mission to Geonosis. They board an Imperial freighter, where they find a giant Kyber Crystal which the Empire is shipping. Ezra and Sabine try to pull the ship out of hyperspace out of concern for the prisoners aboard, but Saw, desperate to find out about the Empire's plans, stuns them. Though learning the weapon is powered by Kyber Crystals, Saw reaches a dead end. To prevent the Empire from obtaining the crystal, he causes it to begin absorbing energy until it explodes. Before fleeing, Saw offers Ezra a chance to join him. Ezra chooses to stay with the Alliance.
He is Jyn Erso's mentor, having rescued and adopted her as a child when her father Galen Erso was abducted by Orson Krennic, the Imperial military director of weapons research. In the present time, defecting Imperial pilot Bodhi Rook travels to Jedha to deliver a holographic message from Galen to Saw. Believing it to be a deception, Gerrera tortures him with Bor Gullet, a mind-reading, octopus-like creature, and holds Rook captive. Gerrera has a reunion with Jyn on Jedha, where it is revealed he abandoned her years earlier as it was dangerous for him to keep her around, though he later regrets it. He passes along Galen's message and watches it with Jyn, learning about a weakness in the Death Star. Meanwhile, the Death Star fires on Jedha City; while Jyn and her rebel companions escape, Gerrera chooses to stay and is killed when his hideout is annihilated in the wake of the blast. Krennic later boasts to Galen that Gerrera and his band of fanatics are dead.
In the episode "Narkina 5", Luthen Rael travels to meet with Saw Gerrera at the Partisans' base on Segra Milo, and invites him to join a raid led by rebel leader Anto Kreegyr on an Imperial power station on the planet Spellhaus. Gerrera declines on the basis of Kreegyr's separatist politics. In "One Way Out", Rael learns from his Imperial contact, Lonni Jung, that the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) is aware of Kreegyr's plans. Acting on Jung's information would compromise his identity, so Rael reluctantly decides to sacrifice all 30 of Kreegyr's men to keep his contact secret. Later, in "Daughter of Ferrix", Gerrera agrees to join the raid on Spellhaus at the last minute. Rael informs him that the ISB is aware of the raid, and Gerrera chastises him for being willing to sacrifice Kreegyr, asking what would happen if it were him instead. Gerrera grows suspicious of Rael, wondering if one of the Partisans has been compromised, too. Eventually, Gerrera reluctantly agrees to keep Kreegyr in the dark. In the season finale "Rix Road", the ISB learns that the ambush was a success, and Kreegyr and all of his men have been killed.
Gerrera reappears in the second arc of the second season, in the episodes "Ever Been to Ghorman?" and "I Have Friends Everywhere." The young rebel Wilmon Paak has been sent by Luthen Rael to Saw's partisan base on D'Qar to show them how to use a machine to extract rhydonium fuel, which the partisans plan to steal from the Empire, which is a very intricate and dangerous process. Wilmon had planned to return to his friends, but Saw refused to let him leave, requiring him to teach every variation of the extraction process (different at every Imperial station) to Pluti, one of his partisans. Saw tells his comrades that he plans to kill Wilmon once he's taught Pluti the information, but Pluti asks Saw which station they plan to attack, saying he wants to focus on remembering that sequence.
Eventually, Saw asks Wilmon if he believes Pluti is ready. When he says he thinks so, Saw points a blaster at him and asks if he thinks or if he knows. Wilmon insists that he's done everything they've asked of him, until Saw unexpectedly shoots Pluti, accusing him of being a traitor who had asked which station they had planned to attack in order to set up an Imperial ambush. He tells his partisans that he lied to Pluti, and they will be attacking a different station. Wilmon, now being the only one who knows the sequence, is forced to come along on the mission.
At the Imperial station Wilmon works on the extractor alone with Saw. Saw tells Wilmon a story of when he was a young man in an Imperial labor camp in the Onderon jungle, when they found a rhydonium leak, which is burning and corrosive, but he found intriguing. When Wilmon finishes the sequence, releasing some rhydonium into the air, Saw sniffs some of it. Wilmon, wearing a gas mask, asks Saw how he can do that. Saw replies that he understands the rhydonium, calling it his sister and saying he knows the feeling of wanting to explode. He gives an impassioned speech to Wilmon, telling him the importance of being there in the fight and admitting that he is crazy, but that "Revolution is not for the sane." When Wilmon pulls his gas mask off, screaming at both the sensation of the gas and his anger at the Empire, Saw encourages him to "let it in, let it run wild."
Within the novel, Gerrera and his rebel band raid former Separatist holds and bases in search of weaponry and supplies and encounters a former Separatist assassin, Soujen Vak-Nhalis, whose aid he managed to enlist despite their differences. Gerrera encounters Bail Organa during his efforts to exonerate the Jedi Order, enlisting Soujen and Saw's aid in return for Senatorial access, which led to the bombing of Center One, a re-education center in which the Empire framed as a refueling station to implicate Gerrera and his militia as Onderonian terrorists through propaganda. Saw later meets with Organa and Mon Mothma and the pair form an unofficial alliance despite their differences. However, to cover his connections to Gerrera, Organa feigns support for the Empire by advocating for Mothma's Imperial Rebirth Act, which would limit Palpatine's executive power as Emperor but also boost protections for worlds in the Empire and uses Saw Gerrera as a scapegoat for the importance of the bill. While the bill is passed, Palpatine would veto the provisions which limited his executive power and in the aftermath, Gerrera becomes the Empire's most wanted following the implementation of the act.
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