So What's Going On With Star Wars?
The Acolyte has been cancelled after one season, the ongoing Star Wars flagship comic from Marvel will be coming to an end shortly before going on to tell the story of the Battle of Jakku, and anything we are getting from Disney+ that lasts seems to be set within the same 25 year period of a universe that is thousands upon thousands of years old. This leaves me asking one important question: What is going on with Lucasfilm and Star Wars as an IP?
Let's take a quick appraisal of where we are so far in 2024. The Mandalorian may be done considering it's next entry is a theatrical release in 2026. The Book of Boba Fett is definitely over since that show was cancelled. Ahsoka is getting a second season though a release date has yet to be determined and production has yet to begin, indicating a probable 2026 release. It is unclear if Skeleton Crew is intended to be multiple seasons or be a one-and-done miniseries but either way, that comes out in December of this year. 2025 does have Andor's second season which will also be its last. On the animation side there is no new Tales of... series announced, no Visions volume 3, and no 3D animated show akin to Rebels, The Clone Wars, or The Bad Batch.
Most telling out of all of this is where we are on the comics side of things. A few months ago Marvel announced the flagship Darth Vader and Star Wars comics set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi because they were reaching the end of the timeline there and said they'd be announcing what's taking it's place in the near future. This week we found out that the replacement was an ongoing series following the cast of the Original Trilogy through their continued post-Return of the Jedi adventures starting with the Battle of Jakku. This will also bring Aphra into the fold in the post-Return of the Jedi galaxy.
This kind of perfectly encapsulates paradoxical issue that Disney has raised with the advent of Disney+, especially when one takes into consideration the fact that all canon is allegedly equal now. Obviously the most profitable era for Disney to exist around is the Original Trilogy because that's almost unanimously beloved. That said, considering that Disney can't manipulate the flow of time or the aging process (despite whatever they try to do unconvincingly with CGI), this limits their ability to use iconic characters in live action in this era. Yes, Luke and Leia have shown up but in order for a show to showcase these characters fully as main characters, the budget would have to be astronomical. The fact that Rebels characters basically got an entire next season in live-action and portions of The Clone Wars came to live-action would also be a solid explanation as to why we aren't exploring the story of Luke, Leia, and Han post-Return of the Jedi in animation. The New Republic-era storytelling was announced to end with Dave Filoni's Heir to the Empire movie that is expected to pit the heroes of the various Disney+ shows against Thrawn and an animated show would create the expectation of a live action appearance.
It's not as if the Star Wars timeline is short since it spans thousands upon thousands of years. There is plenty of room for storytelling within that span so the decision to hang around the Original Trilogy because that's where people are right now feels weird. The High Republic books have posed a lot of interesting scenarios (even if I have my own misgivings about where in the timeline it falls) but Disney has yet to go back further than that. It is almost as if this idea to have everything equally canon is a detriment because the story group wants to hold back the best ideas for the financially lucrative mediums which ends up meaning nothing happens in those time periods while these ideas develop. The thing I go back to time and time again is that there is one book set during the sequel trilogy and in the six years since The Rise of Skywalker came out, the post-sequel trilogy era has had zero exploration, despite the fact that there is a movie impending possibly in December 2026.
This paralysis has sadly become the standard for a lot of what's gone on with Disney in the post-pandemic era. Their desire to be risk-averse has had the opposite effect since they've been pouring more and more money into projects which inflates the budget and requires a larger return to break even. Not every movie or television show needs to cost the same as or more than the GDP of Palau, and perhaps lowering the budgets is the best way to make things more profitable. Plus, with less money riding on the project, the less the studio should have to feel like they have to micromanage. Dune Part 2 is one of the biggest genre successes of 2024 and Barbie was one of the biggest successes of last year, both of which were the results of giving directors the freedom to make the exact movie they wanted with minimal pushback.
The issues clearly go beyond what can be done at Lucasfilm because this is a problem at other Disney subsidiaries as well. Maybe Kathleen Kennedy is the issue but it appears the issue runs way deeper to the point that this situation is likely not to improve until Disney makes serious changes at the top, including a reevaluation about the value of the content that is releasing on Disney+.
