Rahm Kota from The Force Unleashed video game series was in an early version of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story script. It had a lot of cameos, and most of them involve characters from previous movies.
Introduced in The Force Unleashed, Kota was a Jedi Master who survived Order 66 because of his private militia instead of clones. He was blinded in a duel with Galen Marek.
Filmmaker Marcos Cabota guested on La Fosa del Rancor and recounted the story of a friend auditioning for Rogue One. During the testing, they read some pages of the script and noticed a part for a blind Force user called Rahm Kota. Kota did not appear in the Star Wars spin-off, but a similar character was in the form ChirrutImwe. This made Cabota believe that the blind Force-believer was a variation of the Force Unleashed character:
“In fact, they were talking about a Jedi, who then did not appear in the movie but did appear somehow … Rham Kota was in Rogue One, I can tell you, he was a blind Jedi. And what do we find in Rogue One? A blind user of the Force … In the script we had from Rogue One, before becoming Rogue One, it was Rahm Kota.”
While Cabota’s story hints that there is scope for Kota to make a jump from the expanded universe to a current canon, it is also possible the script was a bogus one used for auditions. It is not an uncommon practice to shield details. While it is possible, Kota was meant to appear and was changed into Chirrut.
Chirrut is not the first time that Kota’s has been compared to a canon character. KananJarrus has also drawn a comparison after the Ghost Crew member lost his eyesight.
It is possible for old Legends characters to return for the Star Wars canon. Rebels did that with Grand Admiral Thrawn and included Force Unleashed‘s own Starkiller.
