One look at Disney’s Star Wars slate over the past few years and an interesting pattern begins to emerge. While the franchise has touched various corners of its timeline, a great deal of investment has gone into exploring the long 32-year gap between the events of Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens, most specifically the first decade after the destruction of the Second Death Star. In many ways, this was always the plan. The 32-year gap leaves plenty of narrative space to tell stories set within the Star Wars galaxy and explore an unknown era of the franchise’s timeline, particularly when one considers it is just four years shy of the entire time that encompasses the original Star Wars saga from The Phantom Menace to Return of the Jedi.
Titles like The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and now the upcoming film The Mandalorian & Grogu are all playing out as one massive story that will culminate in a team-up movie from Dave Filoni. This team-up film is essentially going to be an in-universe adaptation of The Thrawn trilogy, the original Expanded Universe (EU) follow-up to Return of the Jedi, before Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm and the creation of The Force Awakens. Is Disney attempting to make The Thrawn trilogy as a way to retcon the controversial yet beloved sequel trilogy? And if so, is this a good idea, or is Star Wars focusing too much attention on a niche corner of the fandom?
Lucasfilm is Recontextualizing the Sequel Trilogy
Star Wars has become obsessed with explaining elements of the sequel trilogy and making some of the sudden revelations in The Rise of Skywalker feel like part of a larger plan rather than half-hearted creative decisions. This is nothing new to Star Wars, as The Clone Wars went a long way in rehabilitating the prequel trilogy and adding additional layers to Revenge of the Sith and Anakin Skywalker’s abrupt change to the Dark Side. However, the Disney+ era of Star Wars has taken this to a new level, as subplots in titles like The Mandalorian, The Bad Batch, and Ahsoka are all tied back into explaining the rise of the First Order and Palpatine’s return. Disney and Lucasfilm have used the following projects to create the cinematic equivalent of DLC patches in video games, fixing bugs and errors.
Retcons have been part of Star Wars DNA since The Empire Strikes Back, when Darth Vader revealed himself as Luke’s father, rewriting everything that was established about Vader and Anakin Skywalker in the original Star Wars. The prequel trilogy makes numerous retcons of the original trilogy. However, none of the films have ever wiped one another from canon. Lucasfilm adding elements from the Expanded Universe is not removing the sequel trilogy from the timeline. Instead, they are recontextualizing them by adding new details to explain some of the unexplained story decisions.
What Disney is doing, though, is essentially crafting a second “sequel” story to the immediate aftermath of Return of the Jedi, using The Thrawn trilogy as its basis (both The Thrawn trilogy and The Mandalorian begin five years after the events of Return of the Jedi). This creates an “inbetweenquel” of stories that bridge the gap between the ending of Return of the Jedi and the beginning of The Force Awakens. It allows Disney to have its cake and eat it too, bringing back a version of the original post-Return of the Jedi stories that some sets of fans like while squeezing it into the larger Star Wars story that then builds to the sequel trilogy, which has its own loyal fan base. Theoretically, fans of both stories should be happy (though this is Star Wars, so that seems unlikely).
Focusing on a Niche Corner of the Fandom is a Bad Idea
There is bound to be a contingent of Star Wars fans who are more than happy that Lucasfilm is loosely adapting the Thrawn trilogy as a “do-over” for the sequel trilogy. For nearly 20 years, those books were the official post-Return of the Jedi storyline and a part of their journey into falling in love with Star Wars. Many were shocked when Disney decided to move into original stories following its $4 billion purchase of Lucasfilm, rather than adapting novels for niche audiences that George Lucas himself didn’t consider canon.
Disney’s decision to craft original stories rather than adapt the Expanded Universe has paid off. The Force Awakens made $2 billion at the worldwide box office, partially due to the mystery surrounding the project. The Last Jedi grossed $1.33 billion at the worldwide box office, becoming the highest-grossing film of 2017 both domestically and worldwide. Both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi were received positively by critics and audiences alike. Even with The Rise of Skywalker‘s disappointment, it grossed $1.07 billion worldwide. Hard to say a movie that grossed $1 billion is a disappointment in the financial sense. Now, though, Lucasfilm is looking to court an audience they think has abandoned them over some creative choices in the sequel trilogy.
Yet in the past, Lucasfilm’s decision to focus on “correcting” mistakes has often backfired. The sequel trilogy’s decision to largely ignore the prequels was made to appease fans who grew up with the original trilogy, but it displeased audiences who had grown up with and had fond memories of the prequels. The Rise of Skywalker‘s attempts to address a loud contingent of people’s criticisms of The Last Jedi resulted in a final chapter that pleased nobody. Now they are attempting to correct past corrections, a move that will likely expand the hole they have dug themselves into, making it deeper and wider.
Lucasfilm is now looking to invest millions of dollars and create an entire corner of Star Wars built around the remnants of niche elements from the franchise in the hopes that enough obscurity might add up to a breakout hit. They’ve been using The Mandalorian‘s popularity and mainstream appeal to introduce niche characters from the animated series like The Clone Wars and Rebels to a wider audience. This is why Star Wars‘ first feature film in seven years is The Mandalorian & Grogu, given that both title characters are a safe bet with mainstream audiences.
The more it goes, the more niche it becomes. Ahsoka is a series based on a character introduced in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, featuring a cast of characters and storylines established in another animated series, Star Wars: Rebels, focused on a villain who originated in a series of novels most audiences haven’t heard of who is now positioned as the franchise’s new big bad who can’t have that big of an impact given nobody references him during the events of the sequel trilogy. Star Wars is catering to a small select group at the cost of the mainstream audience, the same audience that has made it the most successful original property in the history of cinema.
A (New) Hope for the Future
Disney’s decision to focus on crafting a series of stories that are an in-universe do-over for the sequel trilogy is frustrating, as it comes at the cost of theoretically interesting new stories. Disney scrapped Adam Driver’s Hunt for Ben Solo pitch, which Academy Award-winner Steven Soderbergh would have directed about the former Kylo Ren, could have not only addressed criticisms of the sequel trilogy but also moved the series into a new era in the timeline. However, they canceled what sounded like one of the most interesting Star Wars projects since Andor.
To Star Wars‘ credit, they have begun to embrace new eras of the franchise. The High Republic publishing initiative, set long before The Phantom Menace, was a critical and financial hit, introducing exciting new elements to the series that have since been explored in The Acolyte and the video game Jedi: Survivor. In 2027, Starfighter will be the first live-action Star Wars project set after the events of The Rise of Skywalker. It will feature a new cast of characters in an unexplored era of the series, and that is exciting. Meanwhile, they have a movie centered on Rey (Daisy Ridley) that can build toward the creation of a New Jedi Order in this Star Wars experience, a story the live-action Star Wars series can’t tell because Lucasfilm would likely use a deep-fake Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker (and nobody wants that).
When Disney first announced plans for an Avengers-style team-up of various Disney+ series like The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka in a feature film centered on Grand Admiral Thrawn back in 2020, it seemed exciting. It seemed like a fun way to adapt a beloved story into the new Disney canon while subbing in the newer characters for Luke, Han, and Leia from the original. It seemed like a one-and-done event that could be a grand culmination and part of the larger story between the battle of good and evil.
Yet now, five years later, the disappointing setup of both The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka, the rushed-to-production film like The Mandalorian & Grogu that delayed the team-up movie, and no precise date for when this story will culminate have made what sounded promising now seem tedious. Nearly half a decade of Star Wars has been running in place, trying to “fix” issues that don’t exist and would be best to move on from. Instead of looking toward the future of Star Wars, it feels like the franchise is stuck in the past.
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