Star Wars: Rebels wrapped up earlier this week, and while the ending did a great job of tying up the journey of Ezra, Kanan, Hera, and the rest of the crew of the Ghost, it also provided some tantalizing hints of what might come next in the Star Wars animated universe. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this, but…

THERE ARE STAR WARS REBELS FINALE SPOILERS AHEAD, SO IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE LAST EPISODES, TURN BACK NOW!!!!!

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s get on with it. There was a lot of interest in what would happen at the end of Rebels, and how the ending would explain the absence of everyone on the show during the original trilogy. Due to the ending of Rogue One, many people expected Kanan and company to meet a demise that would prevent them from being alive enough to participate in the final years of the Rebellion.

While we did get teased with such an ending when Kanan died helping his friends escape the Imperial fuel reserve on Lothal, he was the only one to not survive the show. In fact, Ahsoka Tano was also revealed to have survived her confrontation with Darth Vader at the end of Season 2, when Ezra went back in time to save her during his journey through the world between worlds.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the show ended with the whole gang sitting around a campfire celebrating like at the end of Return of the Jedi. In an attempt to stop Grand Admiral Thrawn from destroying his home planet of Lothal, Ezra used the Force to summon a group of Purgills who claimed the Imperial ship he and Thrawn were on, then jumped into hyperspace to an unknown destination.

Lothal was saved by Ezra, but even though we flash forward several years and discover that everyone got a happy ending (even Rex and Kallus), but Ezra never returned from wherever the Purgills took him. Determined to find him after the Empire’s defeat at Endor, Sabine joins forces with Ahsoka Tano to go in search of their missing friend.

The fact that the ending flashes us forward past the ending of Return of the Jedi is interesting, because now it puts us into the timeframe leading into the events of the sequel trilogy. These would be the years when Luke would have began his New Jedi Order, and the Empire disappeared into the Unknown Regions outside the galaxy where Snoke took control and transformed them into the First Order.

Word on the street is that Dave Filoni, the mind behind both Rebels and the previous Clone Wars animated series is already hard at work on his next Star Wars animated project. Given how the plots of both Rebels and Clone Wars crossed paths with many characters and other elements from the first six movies, it would make perfect sense if this next project was a series set in the years between Return of the Jedi and the beginning of the Force Awakens.

If that’s what we’re going to get, it’s an opportunity to explore massive amounts of sequel trilogy backstory that fans are desperate to dive into. In fact, the ending of Rebels suggests that Ezra, Ahsoka, and Sabine may play a very influential role in how we got from celebrating the Empire’s defeat on Endor to the grim state of affairs we saw when Episode VII began.

Several years took place between the end of Rebels and the Battle of Endor. The fact that Ezra was nowhere to be found during all that time suggests that, wherever he and Thrawn wound up, it was well outside any area that had been under Imperial control. That makes it possible, and even likely, that Ezra and Thrawn wound up in the Unknown Regions.

The Empire fled to the Unknown Regions after their final defeat on Jakku, and we know their leaders at the time were Imperial officers who weren’t around when Episode VII started. If the new series takes us to the Unknown Regions, we could learn a lot about how Snoke took control of the Empire and turned it into the First Order, and what he was up to prior to that.

Also remember that Thrawn is FROM the Unknown Regions, it’s the entire reason the Emperor was so interested in him. A trip home could mean that we finally meet his people, the Chiss, and learn about them as a people. Loyalty to his people could be why Thrawn never returned to Imperial space.

Any contact Ezra and Ahsoka have with Snoke could be interesting, especially if it were the first contact Snoke had with the Jedi. Of course, the possibility exists that both of them would meet their end at Snoke’s hands, but they could also be responsible for another mystery of Snoke’s past: his injuries and disfigurement. If they were, it would explain why Snoke is so fragile and afraid of Luke Skywalker’s power.

Speaking of Luke, there’s always the possibility we could see him somehow get lured into the storyline. It’d be interesting to see Anakin’s onetime apprentice, who saw her former master fall to the Dark Side, interact with his Jedi son. And anyone else notice that the robe Ahsoka was wearing at the end of Rebels looks an awful lot like the one Luke was wearing at the end of Episode VII?

If Luke does get involved in this series, we may also finally get to see the Luke-Snoke confrontation that many expected to see in the movies before they both wound up dead. Or the ways in which Snoke influenced young Ben Solo, or the frightening things young Ben might have done that spooked Han and Leia into sending him to train with Luke.

Let’s also consider that, since we know clone trooper Rex fought in and survived the Battle of Endor, he could get drafted back into service yet again against the First Order. That could make him the only person to fight in all three wars, which would be an impressive feat. Or perhaps we could see Lor San Tekka in his younger days. Hey, maybe we might even meet Rey’s junk dealing, alcoholic parents!

However this goes, the odds are good that, if a show set between Episodes VI and VII happens, we’ll get all the answers to everything we wanted to know about the sequel trilogy and more.