Now that a Star Wars Jedi trilogy is coming, does this mean Cal Kestis… has to die?

Fans of the Star Wars Jedi games, myself included, got some good news from an EA investor relations presentation Tuesday about the future of the series. According to Video games chroniclethe company has a third game in the works, which is intended to be “the final chapter of this exciting story” after Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order And Star Wars Jedi: Survivortwo games featuring original character (and one of my favorite Star Wars redheads) Cal Kestis. But despite the word “survivor” in the title of that most recent game, the larger Star Wars universe probably doesn’t have good things in store for Cal.

I received the news of this new game without any hesitation, as it didn’t initially occur to me that Cal was about to meet his destined end. That was until my colleague Clayton Ashley typed into Polygon’s Slack, “I wonder if he’ll die in this one,” to which my other colleague Pete Volk replied, “(twisted version) I wonder what Disney Plus show he’ll comeo in.” Both plausible options for Cal’s future! But the former seems more likely to me.

Cal Kestis may have avoided Order 66, but given the times he lives in, his days as a Jedi on the bad side of the Empire are numbered. And like so many other Star Wars characters who were invented to exist in eras prior to A new hopeWe already know he won’t show up for any of those events. (And we can only hope he doesn’t get edited into any of those events. No one asks for that. No one!)

But that doesn’t mean his story and its ending can’t be fascinating. Villain One proved that stories about characters who plan to die for their cause — where the audience knows in advance that this will almost certainly be the case — can be just as gripping and narratively rich as stories whose ending is harder to guess.

I guess I’m saying, if Cal Kestis has to die, I’m curious to see how it ends. Does that sound weird? Whatever.