The second season of "Star Wars Rebels" started to link the animated series with other elements of the Star Wars franchise by introducing the characters of Ahsoka Tano and the clone soldiers from "Star Wars: Clone Wars."

Fans also witnessed several prominent characters from the movies debuting in the series like Princess Leia Organa, Darth Vader and Darth Maul.

The recent reports have stated that Season 3 of "Rebels" will link the series to the upcoming movies of Star Wars franchise, namely "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" and "Star Wars Episode VIII."

In an interview with Movie Fone, Simon Kinberg, producer of "Star Wars Rebels," said that Season 2 was an attempt to bring the series closer to the original movies' franchise by re-introducing several characters that are already well known among the fans. It might have been done in an attempt to connect with the younger fans of the franchise.

"What's lovely is, obviously, we've brought in characters from 'Clone Wars' in the second season, and we keep sort of bringing characters from the original movies and sort of deepening the relationships between our core characters, the Ghost crew. So it's trying to balance the two different things, like the original cast from the first season with 'Clone Wars,' with characters from the original movies, and maybe even feeding into future movies," co-producer Lawrence Kasdan explained.

Screen Rant has reported that it means characters from Season 3 might show up in "Rogue one" as the movie is going to release only a few months after "Star Wars Rebels" Season 3 premieres. Also, there is a significant possibility that a character from Season 3 might appear in "Star Wars Episode VIII."

The premiere episode of "Star Wars Rebels" Season 3 will premiere on July 16. However, the release date of the rest of the episodes is not yet revealed and most probably will be announced soon.