A tease for upcoming Star Wars shows, including the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story prequel, Andor, has made one character's exclusion from the original Star Wars even stranger. Andor will focus on the titular character, Cassian Andor, and how he became embroiled in the rebellion against the Galactic Empire. The series sees Diego Luna reprising his role from Rogue One and show Cassian's transformation from a selfish nihilist into a man who serves the Rebel Alliance.
Andor is going to focus heavily on the early days of the Rebel Alliance, much like Star Wars: Rebels, only likely much darker in tone, providing an insight into other Rebel members close to Cassian. One specific Rebel Alliance character's inclusion was revealed in the recent announcements. While the character certainly makes sense given what is known of Andor from Rogue One, it retroactively raises a question regarding George Lucas' original trilogy.
The character in question is none other than the leader of the Rebel Alliance, Mon Mothma. Genevieve O'Reilly is confirmed to be reprising her role after appearing as the character in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, Rogue One, and the voice role for Mothma in Star Wars: Rebels. Vanity Fair revealed that Mothma's role would run parallel with Andor's, proving she will have a big role to play in the upcoming series. Mothma was a character first introduced in 1983 when Return of the Jedi was released in theatres. At the time, Mothma (then played by Caroline Blakiston) provided the Rebels with vital information about the second Death Star plans stolen by Bothans. However, Mothma's inclusion in Andor and these other live-action appearances only make her absence from Star Wars all the stranger considering her absence in A New Hope.
Mon Mothma's inclusion in both Andor and Return of the Jedi makes a lot of sense, given her massive importance to the Rebel Alliance. However, this only highlights that she is not present throughout Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Granted, this is simply a case of Lucas conceiving a character after writing 1977's Star Wars, and the franchise since then picking and choosing when to include characters of the original trilogy. That being said, the character is still vital to the Rebel's formation, meaning her absence from the original film, at least within the context of its story, is very strange.
Mothma was also important to the Galactic Senate during the days of the Clone Wars from the prequel movies. She appeared in 15 episodes of the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars before appearing in six episodes of Star Wars: Rebels. This only proves that Mothma's importance as a character to the Rebel Alliance was heightened after the release of Return of the Jedi. Lucas' decision to recast the character for Revenge of the Sith, and include her in The Clone Wars, proves how important she is to Lucas' idea of the Rebel Alliance, making her appearance in Andor all the more logical.
In Andor, her character will only be expanding upon in exciting ways alongside Diego Luna's Cassian. Given Mothma's minor appearances in live-action so far, accumulating only a few minutes of screentime across three feature films, Andor is likely to give the character much more depth than before. With Rogue One: A Star Wars Story featuring Mothma the most so far, a prequel to this seems like the perfect place to develop one of the Rebellion's most important characters. All this being said, it proves that such a vital character of Star Wars' history deserved a place in A New Hope, highlighting the strange omission from the film that began it all back in 1977.
