With a Star Wars Jedi threequel coming, does this mean Cal Kestis… must die?

Fans of the Star Wars Jedi games, including yours truly, got some good news out of an EA investor relations presentation Tuesday about the future of the series. According to Video Games Chronicle, the company has a third game in the works, intended to be “the final chapter of this thrilling story” after Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, two games starring the original character (and one of my favorite Star Wars gingers) Cal Kestis. But despite the word “survivor” in the title of that most recent game, the greater Star Wars universe probably does not have good things in store for Cal.

I received the news of this new game with no trepidation because it did not initially occur to me that Cal might be about to meet his predestined end. That is until my coworker Clayton Ashley typed into Polygon’s Slack: “I wonder if he will die in this one,” to which my other coworker Pete Volk responded, “[twisted version] I wonder which Disney Plus show he will have a cameo in.” Both plausible options for Cal’s future! But the former seems a bit more likely, I would say.

Cal Kestis may have avoided Order 66, but given the time period in which he exists, his days are numbered as a Jedi on on the Empire’s bad side. Also, like so many other Star Wars characters invented to exist in time periods that predate A New Hope, we already know he doesn’t show up for any of those events. (And we can only hope he doesn’t get edited into any of them. No one is asking for that. No one!)

But that doesn’t mean his story, and its ending, can’t still be fascinating. Rogue One proved that stories about characters who intend to die for their cause — with the audience knowing ahead of time that this will almost certainly be the case for them — can be just as poignant and narratively rich as stories where the ending is harder to guess.

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