Who Is Lyra Erso in 'Rogue One'?

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is a little under a year away from release, and I (as are most of us, I'd assume) am dying to know more information. Thankfully, it appears as if my prayers have been answered, because we've finally been given some major info. For those of you wondering about full character names in Rogue One (i.e. all of us ), feast your eyes on this piece of 411: CinemaBlend reports that Felicity Jones might play Lyra Erso in Rogue One. Of course, that would require we as fans to know who Lyra Erso is.

This information comes courtesy of a casting website, where the stunt actress Gabrielle Fritz is being listed as a the photo double for Lyra Erso. Because Jones and Fritz look pretty similar, fans have deduced that this must mean Fritz is Jones' photo double. Which means that Felicity Jones is Lyra Erso! (Thanks Algebra! Thanks transitive relation!) That or Lyra Erso is an entirely new character that we don't know about yet (because Fritz is four inches taller than Jones, you could definitely make a case for this). Either way, we've learned the first and last name of a Rogue One character, so yeah, this is big. Let's just have this moment, and forget about the inches. But who is Lyra Erso? And how does she fit into Rogue One? That's where things start to get tricky.

The name by itself doesn't reveal as much as I would have hoped. It turns out Lyra Erso isn't a huge character in the Star Wars universe. All we know is that she'll be part of the Rogue One mission — the mission to steal the plans for the Death Star, also known as the Battle of Yavin. But it doesn't take a Jedi to figure that out, considering that's basically what we know about the plot of Rogue One so far.

Maybe adding some context around her character will help. We know that an actor named Riz Ahmed will play Bodhi Rook, thanks to this journalist's detective work:

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of information on Bodhi Rook out there either. According to Makingstarwars.net, Mads Mikkelsen signed an autograph poster as "Galen" — the human apprentice of Darth Vader. Though this seems like it could be helpful in finding out more, it's hard to place Galen somewhere in the story this early on. Rounding out the cast, there's Alan Tudyk, Forrest Whitaker and Donnie Yen, but we haven't been given any official details about their characters. Our understanding of Rogue One heavily depends on some more info regarding its cast, and, though it looks like things will continue to stay under wraps for quite some time, this Lyra Erso news is a huge step in the right direction.

Images: Lucasfilm/Walt Disney Pictures