Brian Truitt

USA TODAY

Freddie Prinze Jr. voices the character of Kanan on the upcoming animated series %27Star Wars Rebels%27

Kanan is a survivor of %27Order 66%2C%27 where the Empire began its extermination of the Jedi order

%27Rebels%27 on Disney Channel in the fall

Freddie Prinze Jr. was born to play a Jedi. He even has the scars on his face to prove it, the result of some lightsaber fights as a 4-year-old rough-housing with friends.

As an adult, the actor is voicing the character of Kanan, a gunslinger full of bravado and the Force who's one of the new main players in the upcoming animated series Star Wars Rebels. The show debuts with a one-hour special on Disney Channel in the fall before moving to half-hour episodes on Disney XD.

"For people who are around our age and a bit older, Star Wars is in our DNA," says Prinze, 37. "I've heard 'May the Force be with you' about as many times as 'Hey, how you doing?' "

Rebels takes place 14 years after the last of the movie prequels, 2005'sStar Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith, when the evil Emperor enacted "Order 66" to wipe out all the Jedi in the galaxy, sending the likes of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda into hiding.

Since then, Kanan has been on the down-low, too. He keeps his lightsaber under lock and key and brandishes a blaster instead to avoid the attention of the Empire, especially the Inquisitor (a Sith villain) and his Stormtroopers. But Kanan gets his Force-ful groove back with his crew on the spaceship The Ghost and fights back against the imperial menace.

"He's been forced to shove a massive part of his life under the bed, so to speak," Prinze says. "Is he living a lie? At a certain point, the lie kind of becomes the reality. And to suddenly be forced back into your Jedi ways, it'd be a bit of a challenge for him. And pretty awesome, too, when you can see what a Jedi can actually do."

Executive producer Dave Filoni describes Kanan as a "cowboy Jedi." And unlike the stoic knights of his order in the Star Wars mythos, his banter is as sharp as his blue lightsaber strokes.

There is some melancholy, too. Kanan lived through the attempted extinction of an entire culture when Order 66 came down during his formative years, and he's massively affected by it, says Prinze.

"He definitely has seen more than what a young man should see. And what he had to see was pretty much the worst thing you would have to witness."

Prinze probably would have accepted any role on Star Wars Rebels, be it a bounty hunter, Sith lord or even a TIE Fighter pilot, but "the Jedi is who you want to be," he says. "I never wanted to be C-3PO. That would suck to just be running from bad guys."

In addition to voicing Kanan, Prinze is prepping his 4-year-old daughter Charlotte, one of two kids he has with actress wife Sarah Michelle Gellar, to watch the original Star Wars. That's "so she can know just how awesome a lightsaber is and she can know just how awesome her daddy is for the rest of his life.''