When a clip from the season two finale of "Star Wars Rebels" made its way online, fans of Knights of the Old Republic took notice. Not only would the heroes of "Rebels" be traveling to a planet sharing a name with a planet featured in the beloved video game series, but the planet also looked to share more than a few similarities with the game version to boot.
The planet in question is Malachor V, renamed in "Star Wars Rebels" to Malachor. As the Knight of the Old Republic era of the "Star Wars" expanded universe timeline has been rendered obsolete, it seems showrunners have taken certain aspects of the game series and reworked them to fit into the current "Star Wars" universe.
As we detailed earlier this week, the Malachor in "Rebels" is an ancient Sith planet, much like Malachor V. Like in the games, this new canon version of Malachor also features a large Sith temple, housing an ancient Sith artifact. It was also the sight of a massive battle, just like the battle of Malachor V that exists in the Knights of the Old Republic timeline.
A new IGN interview with "Rebels" co-creator and executive producer Dave Filoni adds even more details, namely that the now in-continuity version of Malachor also featured a massive super weapon, just like the one seen in Knights of the Old Republic II.
"I like the idea of this powerful, ancient woman that has domination that we've never heard of before, that was creating this massive weapon," Filoni says. "And in the midst of the construction of this thing, when it was nearing completion, it got assaulted by ancient Jedi Knights. They have this huge battle at the foot of the temple, basically, and the weapon fires or malfunctions and everyone gets turned to stone."
The "powerful, ancient woman" Filoni speaks of is an ancient Sith who created the temple, though he wouldn't elaborate on what the character's name is, saying he has to make sure "everybody's cool with it."
"But yeah, there's this ancient Sith Lord that Nika was playing, and I'm still going over the dos and don'ts of the continuity of all that," he says. But I wrote the history down, I just put it out there in case people want to pick it up later when they're working on things, and give some continuity. I won't reveal the name - I have named the character, but I have to make sure everybody's cool with it."
Might the name of the character be Kreia, aka Darth Traya? Players fight the female Sith lord at the end of Knights of the Old Republic II in the depths of Malachor V, so it would certainly match up. Given Filoni's comments on "going over the dos and don't of the continuity" and waiting to reveal the name, it seems like the creator may be trying to add more elements of the KOTOR era into official canon.
Of course, numerous elements are different between the two versions. The ancient battle in "Rebels" is between Sith and Jedi, whereas the battle in the KOTOR era is between Darth Revan's army and the Mandalorians. The superweapon in the game doesn't turn people into stone, though it does cause massive casualties to both sides of the battle and forever leaves Malachor V a barren wasteland. The temple in the game also doesn't house a holocron, but rather is a site of huge amounts of dark side energy, energy that is used to predict the future.
Filoni admits to io9 that he regularly uses names, background characters and ships from the expanded universe for show (and has been doing so since "Clone Wars"), but that fans shouldn't read too hard into it.
"Malachor is a name that people would know," he says. "For the people who know that lore, they're going to be excited by that. It's really fun to mine those characters and things."
Considering just how many elements for the new canon version of Malachor matches up with the one in KOTOR, it's hard not to read into it.
