Disney has announced a slew of new Star Wars series. 9 new ones, plus The Mandalorian makes for 10 in total. There was a time in my life where this would have excited me, but now I honestly don’t care, because I have zero faith that any of these will take risks or have consequences. Let me go down the list.
EDIT: Disney has since added some detail about these series. I’ve kept my original comments, but added notes on what they will be about and whether I was right (spoiler: I wasn’t wrong)
Obi-Wan Kenobi
What the hell can this even be about? Him masturbating in the desert for 18 years? Even if he goes off on adventures they are of no consequence. We know where his story is going. What can he possibly do that will matter between dropping Luke off in Episode III and then whisking him away on an adventure in Episode IV?
Apparently Hayden Christiansen is back as Vader. Uhm, why? He can’t do the voice. Anyone can be in the suit, as they’ve already proved. Why even bother involving him? Are they going to meet each other again? No. They aren’t. Because, need I remind the writers that Vader DOES NOT encounter Obi-Wan between Episodes III and IV, per their dialogue in Episode IV.
EDIT: This information was already out when I wrote it, but I missed the detail. This series takes place 10 years after Episode III. If I can just add to my original theory. Obi-Wan, having masturbated to all the pornography available on Tatooine takes a short trip off world to find more smut when he runs into some trouble and has some adventures.
Andor
I’m assuming this is about Cassian Andor from Rogue One? The guy who gets blown the fuck up at the end of that movie. Based on the logo he is playing the game Quake? Anyway, another one with a foregon conclusion. What are we going to learn from his story? The early days of the Rebellion? Who cares?
EDIT: Obviously it was going to be about Cassian. This was rumored a while back. No real details yet though. Seems fairly certain it won’t be about a clone of him running amok after the battle of Scarif. Unless… the Quake logo is the clue. He re-spawed somewhere else on the map!
Ahsoka
Will it be about how this ultra powerful fan-fic jerkoff fantasy sat on her ass and did nothing while Vader and the Emperor stomped on everything? And how she was happy to let some untrained boy and his friends risk life and limb to bring peace to the galaxy? We know she was of no consequence to the OT. We know she’s dead by the ST. We know she didn’t stop Snookie or the First Order from becoming powerful. So… what the fuck is this going to be about?
Lightsabers! Lightsabers! More lightsabers! Gotta have lightsabers! It’s so awesome because Ahsoka has lightsabers!!!
Insightful Star Wars Fan
Lando
If this isn’t a Love Boat/Fantasy Island style show where every week there are new guests visiting Cloud City and Lando helps them solve their personal troubles, I’m fucking out.
But seriously; who cares? What is Lando going to do of consequence between losing the Falcon and meeting Han again? I assume it’s a young Lando and Donald Glover will come back to play him. But maybe it’s an old Lando story that takes place post Jedi?
EDIT: Per Disney “The galaxy’s favorite scoundrel, Lando Calrissian, will return in Lando, a brand-new event series.” Nothing too informative here. Could still be about him hosting celebrity guests and solving their problems. 🤞
Rogue Squadron
As recently as 10 years ago this would have had me pissing my pants with excitement. But now that we know that the Republic failed and an even more powerful-er-er Empire showed up with zero trouble, who the fuck cares? It’s just going to be mindless space combat with no consequence.
EDIT: The only detail about this is that Patty Jenkins (who wrote/directed Wonder Woman) is the creative force behind this. I’m still luke warm on the idea (no pun intended). The intro video from her shows a classic T-65B X-Wing, meaning it is almost certainly set around the time of the OT. But, back to my earlier point… to what end? How can this possibly matter given what we know about the ST?
Rangers of the New Republic
See above. The New Republic failed. So what the hell do we care?
Unless I have this wrong and it’s actually a time/dimension traversing story where the 1989 Texas Rangers baseball team, along with their owner, George W. Bush, get teleported to the years following the battle of Endor. And they work hard to establish baseball as the official pastime of the New Republic. Then George W. Bush gets elected as Chancellor of the New Republic and gets them involved in a bunch of pointless wars, weakening the Outer Rim and giving rise to the First Order.
Where’s my fucking check, Disney?
EDIT: Obviously I was wrong about this being about time traveling George Bush. The only new detail is that its set in the timeline of The Mandalorian.
A Droid Story
This better be about C-3P0 and R2-D2 finally getting married and settling down.
EDIT: Per Disney “This epic journey will introduce us to a new hero guided by R2-D2 and C-3PO.” I guess gay robots can’t marry yet in Star Wars, but they can adopt it seems. Jokes aside I wasn’t entirely wrong. It’s about R2 and 3P0. I mean, what did you think they were going to do? Make an entirely new story about new characters? Get a grip.
The Bad Batch
No idea what this could be about. Maybe a bunch of clones that went wrong?
EDIT: This is going to be a cartoon. There’s a sneak preview. I fucking nailed this one. It’s about clone wars shit.
Visions
No idea and I’ve run out of snarky things to say. Maybe this is one that will take place in the High Republic era they were pimping? Set 1000 years before the OT that could be interesting. But will “fans” care if there’s no Darth Maul or Ahsoka or Mandalorian Lady or other things they’ve seen before in cartoon shows?
EDIT: Per Disney “Original Series of animated short films, celebrates the Star Wars galaxy through the lens of the world’s best Japanese anime creators.” Guessing I’m wrong on this one. Though maybe some stories will be in the High Republic setting. Based on this information I’m going to bet it’s a bunch of derivative shit with characters people recognize, but in an anime style. Can we resurrect Satoshi Kon and have him do one about Rey and how everyone just treats her like an object or a tool they can manipulate?
The Acolyte
Based on the logo coloring and the term “acolyte” typically being attributed to someone following a dangerous religion I’m guessing this is about a dark jedi. When? No idea. Hopefully it’s another set in the High Republic where they could expand their wings with some new story ideas.
EDIT: Per Disney “The Acolyte is a mystery-thriller that will take viewers into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark-side powers in the final days of the High Republic era.” Nailed it.
In Conclusion
Star Wars was designed from the start to be a “Hero’s Journey”. What this means is only the hero really matters. Every other character exists to either help or hinder the hero on his/her journey. You can tell stories about side characters, but you have to do so with the understanding that they don’t matter. And if you’re fine with that, then so be it. Attempts to make those characters matter only weakens the original story.
Before there was a prequel and sequel trilogy there was room for Star Wars to breathe, provided you didn’t stomp on the events leading up to and during the original films. Nobody really knew how the Emperor came to power. There could be hundreds of interesting stories to tell there. Nobody knew what happened after Endor, you could keep going for hundreds of years (and they did… with mixed results). But now that we have these bookends to Luke’s journey everything from the start of Episode I through the end of Episode IX is sacred ground that you can’t tread on for fear of fucking up the events between.
This is the curse of mythic story telling. Nobody cares about the third guy on the left rowing Odysseus’s ship. He exists to literally propel Odysseus to his next adventure… or get into mischief that Odysseus has to rescue him from, this proving what a hero our protagonist is.
The only option is to tell a story far away from the main events about new characters. This is why The Mandalorian was working originally, but now as they start cramming in shit we’ve seen before and tying it into main trilogy events it’s starting to weaken. It was a personal story about this guy and this little baby he was protecting. We cared about THEM, not about the fucking Empire or Jedi or whatever. We never even wondered what Luke was up to until the Baby Yoda activates the Jedi ham radio. Now we’re thinking “So… did Luke hear that? Are we going to see Luke in this shit now?” because once you have that connection you immediately have to accept Baby Yoda is dead by the ST. Yaaaaaaay. 🙄 If Mando and Baby Yoda never found a jedi and just kept knocking around getting into adventures we can safely assume they never got involved in the ST events. Maybe they were elsewhere? Maybe they left the galaxy?
Want to hear my expert vision for how The Mandalorian should have gone? Several seasons of the two of them searching for clues, getting into trouble, avoiding capture. Along the way Mando learns how awful and dangerous the Jedi are. The finale is him deciding to hide the Baby Yoda away, so the Jedi can’t find him and turn him into a savage monster. Leaving the path open for a Teenage Yoda series set like 100 years after the ST where he emerges again and we can write new stories about him and a new galaxy of characters in a post mythical Star Wars era.
Armchair Screenwriter 