Glimpse The Alternate 'Rogue One' Ending; Plus The Director's Extra Scenes Will Be Resurrected (Kinda)

It's no secret that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has a very different ending than the one we saw in theaters. Extensive reshoots dramatically changed the geography of Scarif and the fates of a lot of the film's main characters. In fact, we've written about how a lot of shots from the Rogue One trailers featured footage from the original cut of the film.

Well now a new video gives us a small glimpse into an alternate Rogue One ending with different fates for Cassian Andor and K-2SO. Also, Marvel Comics will be releasing a comic book adaptation of Rogue One which is resurrect some of the moments and scenes that hit the cutting room floor, back into the story.

Spoiler Warning: Don't continue reading this story if you have not yet seen Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

A new behind the scenes video clip on ABC News (via MSW) shows a moment that was not in the final cut of the film.

In the theatrical cut of Rogue One, Imperial turned Rebel droid K-2SO dies in a blaze of glory trying to protect Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor as they try to steal the Death Star plans in the vault. At the conclusion of the film, after transmitting the Death Star plans off planet, Cassian and Jyn embrace as they await certain death. This is not how the film originally ended. Early versions of the script had most of the rebels escape death at the end of the story. In fact, some of the concept art seems to suggest that Jyn Erso may have escaped in the early cuts of the film, but we aren't sure.

One thing we do know from the cut trailer footage is that things did not happen the way they occurred in the final film. In the trailers we see Jyn Erso, Death Star plans in hand, running on the beaches of Scarif alongside her entire team, which includes K-2SO. Of course, in the final film, Jyn never makes it out of the Citadel tower with the Death Star plans and K-2SO meets his end right outside the door of the vault. In the original cut of the film, the tower was apparently at a different location than the vault, and the Rogue One team members had very different endings. We don't know yet what the original ending involved but it doesn't seem like they split up like they did in the theatrical cut.

The new ABC footage shows Alan Tudyk in his K-2SO performance capture suit going down in a blaze of glory next to what appears to be a unmoving Cassian Andor. They are in front of an Imperial door on the dirty beach, and not outside the vault room in the movie.

So they likely both met their end at the conclusion of that epic run through the AT-ACTs (shown in the trailer), with Jyn being the lone survivor to make it up to the tower to transmit the plans. Cassian didn't share that beautiful final moment with Jyn as the Death Star fired upon Scarif. I mean, this is just my assumption. I'm sure we'll eventually find out more.

And speaking of more, writer Jody Houser and artist Emilio Laiso are adapting the movie for a six-part miniseries adaptation of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story for Marvel comics. The series will begin to hit stores in April 2017, and will "explore other facets of the story" for things "that didn't make it into the film." Houser tells EW:

"The comics will definitely expand on what was seen in both Rogue One the film and the novelization. Lucasfilm and Gareth Edwards had a bunch of ideas for extra scenes and character moments that didn't make it into the film. I'm having a lot of fun playing around with those. Adaptations across different forms of media have always been a great opportunity to explore other facets of the story, and we're excited to have new material in the Rogue One comic."

Of course, I wouldn't expect the comic book adaptation to feature the original ending of the movie. The Rogue One novelization is not based on the original shooting script, but the theatrical version of the film. Like the novel, the comic will bring back moments from the original drafts and cut of the film to help flesh out the story and characters. It's unclear if we'll ever see the original ending of Rogue One, but I don't expect Disney will include it as special features on the intiial home video release.

As for the behind the scenes video from ABC News, you can watch that embedded below: