A familiar galaxy, far, far away

Celebration Japan is now over, and with it a whole bunch of news about the immediate future of the Star Wars franchise. I love these cons, and had some serious FOMO seeing friends and fellow cosplayers attending this year. The name is apt: online Star Wars fandom can be incredibly toxic, but every time I've gone, I've found it to be a positive, refreshing experience.

The biggest news from the con came on the first night: a teaser trailer screener for attendees for the next theatrical film, The Mandalorian & Grogu, as well as an announcement for the film that'll follow it: Star Wars: Starfighter, word on the next big animated series, Maul – Shadow Lord, and news that the second season of Ahsoka will soon go into production.

These projects will drop in 2026 and 2027, and when they do, they'll bring the franchise back to theaters for the first time since The Rise of Skywalker in December 2019.

With the con now over, I figured it was good moment to take stock of the next couple of years for the franchise. It looks like we're in for an era of comfortable, risk-adverse projects.

The Mandalorian & Grogu

The big expected news from Celebration was an update on The Mandalorian and Grogu, which is set to hit theaters on May 22nd, 2026. Lucasfilm screened a teaser trailer for attendees, featuring an action sequence in which Din Djarin took out the crew of an AT-AT Walker on an ice planet, some clips of Sigourney Weaver, and a bit more.

It hasn't been released online, but you can find some bootlegged versions floating around online. What struck me about the crowd's reaction was that it's really leaning into those crowd-pleasing moments (at least for the trailer), with lots of action scenes, comedy, and heartfelt moments – there was a big cheer when we caught a glimpse of the Razor Crest (or at least, its replacement?) as well as when we see Din Djarin in action.

The Mandalorian is a show designed around fan service, and if this trailer is any indication about its tone and style, it's a bigger version of the show. AT-AT Walkers? ✅. Din Djarin riding an AT-RT from the Clone Wars? ✅ Familiar characters (Zeb from Rebels?) ✅. Baby Yoda doing cute things? ✅.

This is shaping up to be a film that's designed to appeal to fans and to avoid pissing them off by doing something unexpected. It'll be fun, people will talk about how it's leaning back into the spirit of the original films, and it'll make a bunch of money at the box office.

Star Wars: Starfighter

The other big announcement from the con was for another film: Starfighter, which will be directed by Shawn Levy and star Ryan Gosling. We've been burned by announcements before, but they say this film will head into production this fall and hit theaters on May 28, 2027 – just in time for the 50th anniversary of the franchise.

We don't have many details about this one at the moment: only that it's set five or so years after Rise of Skywalker, and that it's a standalone film, with Gosling playing a "brand-new character."

The title suggests that we're going to see something to do with X-Wings. I've been burned by these predictions before, but I have to wonder if this film has something to do with space combat, if that might be why we haven't seen much forward progress on Patty Jenkin's Rogue Squadron, which was announced with quite a bit of fanfare a couple of years ago, and which is seemingly still in development, but which wasn't mentioned at the con.

IF – and that's an if resting on a whole bunch of assumptions – that's the case, it makes sense: you don't want to have two different films about roughly the same subject matter near one another. There's a lot of opportunity for audience confusion who don't want to parse the different eras and minutia that comes with it. Hopefully that's not the case: Rogue Squadron is something that I really want to see.

I like Levy as a director, and he's directed a lot of fun action (Night at the Museum) and comedy (Cheaper by the Dozen) films that feel like they're aimed at the huge, four-quadrant audiences that studios are really aiming for these days. Two of his most recent films, Free Guy (about an NPC who learns he's in a video game) and The Adam Project (about a pilot who travels back in time to his younger self, trying to save the world) both feel like they're hitting the right tone for a Star Wars film: something fun and with a wholesome-ish story, with plenty of action set pieces and special effects. They're also very much a product of the genre blockbuster world we're in, and most recent film, Deadpool & Wolverine, is entirely self-aware of that.

I don't think this'll be a film where we'll see all sorts of random pop culture references, but Levy strikes me as someone who knows what types of plots make those films tick. I would be very surprised if this is more Rogue One or The Force Awakens in worldview than Rian Johnson's subversive The Last Jedi.

That's not really a bad thing, but it does feel like it's a safe choice. If you're lining up a film to land on the 50th anniversary of the franchise, big, brash, and earnest are probably the way to go.

Maul – Shadow Lord

There had been word of another animated series in the works in the last year that I've seen percolate through the rumor mill, Clone Uprising, presumably about the Clone Troopers who were unhappy about the direction the galaxy had taken after the rise of the Empire. That wasn't announced – if it even is in the planning stages – but I can't say that I'd be surprised that it wasn't, given that we just went through three seasons of another animated series, The Bad Batch.

Instead, we're getting a series about Darth Maul: the tattooed villain from The Phantom Menace who was brought back in The Clone Wars and Rebels and who made a surprise appearance in Solo: A Star Wars Story.

I can't for the life of me find it, but I remember writing something about how Star Wars has a whole bunch of big story buckets: the main arcs that blend action, The Force, and hero journeys, alongside the western-tinged adventure serials like The Mandalorian and Skeleton Crew or serious military and political intrigue in Andor. In Solo, The Bad Batch, and Book of Boba Fett, we've seen another big bucket: the galaxy's criminal underworld.

This series feels like it'll be a good exploration of that. The only description we've got is "after the Clone Wars, Maul plots to rebuild his criminal syndicate on a planet untouched by the Empire." Presumably, that syndicate is Crimson Dawn, which played a central role in Solo, and what we'll be getting here is a bit of the story that we've seen in the bits and pieces of worldbuilding that we got in the film.

Maul's a fun character: he worked well as an enigma in TPM (and in the excellent novel Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, by the late Michael Reeves), but was fleshed out quite a bit in The Clone Wars, which turned him into a fuller character.

At this point, the animated side of Star Wars feels like it's a well-oiled machine, with a huge fanbase and the ability to take place all over the galaxy and playing out some connective tissue between the various games, films, and other shows. I would bet that we'll see some connections not only to Solo, but that we'll get some other familiar characters from The Clone Wars, Rebels, and Bad Batch popping up. Maybe even some fun cameos of characters from games like Jedi: Fallen Order and Jedi: Survivor.

Ahsoka

We got confirmation that the next season of the live-action series Ahsoka is about to enter production. The biggest part of that announcement was that we'll see Hayden Christensen return as Anakin Skywalker – his surprise cameo in the first season was a real highlight, and a payoff years in the making for fans. Another bit of news was that the season would feature Admiral Ackbar in a prominent way, and that he'll be going up against Grand Admiral Thrawn.

The first season of Ahsoka was fun, but it also felt like it was a show that required a lot of homework. It's embedded in the overarching bundle of Mandoverse live-action shows, but also followed the animated series Rebels, paying off some storylines that had been left behind when that series was ended in 2014.

As a result, it's a show that feels like it's designed to really nod to fandom: here's the fan-favorite Thrawn in live-action form, here's Sabine, Ezra, Hera, Huyang, and Ahsoka from these other projects, and here's some other deep-cut references to these other projects, along with some intriguing other characters like Baylan Skoll, Shin Hati, and Marrok that feel like they're designed to generate new spinoffs in comics or book form for their backstories.

A friend of mine and I were talking about this, and their chief complaint was that this was a show that they weren't sure who it was for: it wasn't something that was actively expanding the franchise's existing fandom, and it wasn't something that really stood on its own, unlike The Mandalorian or Andor (as much as any Star Wars project can stand on its own.) My guess is that it'll be fine: another season that'll require some homework to understand the bits and pieces and characters, but will otherwise be fun to watch, but which doesn't fundamentally change my feelings about Star Wars in one direction or another.

All of this is to say: it looks very much like the foreseeable future of Star Wars projects is designed to be comfortable and familiar. All those things you like about the franchise: lightsabers, big action scenes, some fun comedy and witty lines, some heartfelt hero moments and lessons, these films/movies will have them. They’ll be fun to watch: The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and The Mandalorian all had elements of the familiar, brought into the modern day, and they remain good films. But I’ve always felt that The Force Awakens was a film designed in a lab to make sure that they weren’t pushing fans away in ways that the prequel trilogy did. I have a feeling that the folks at Lucasfilm have that feeling rolling around in their heads.

That's not surprising: ever since The Last Jedi in 2017, the studio has learned that trying to tinker with the underlying appeal and source code for Star Wars is a good way to kick a hornet's nest.

The studio has found itself put in the crosshairs of vocal, bad-faith fans when it has tried to do something different. I thought that The Acolyte was a good try that didn't quite pan out, and because it had a whole bunch of female and POC characters in its lineup, it earned the ire of YouTube idiots who were willing to spend their free time picking everything apart for any hint of "woke" and who were ready with thousands of dramatic headlines and YouTube thumbnails about how Disney and Kathleen Kennedy have ruined Star Wars and that their precious childhood memories and any love they had for the franchise is now irrevocably destroyed.

“Qanon for nerds”: Fandom isn’t immune to online radicalization

Conspiracy theories and online fandom

Transfer OrbitAndrew Liptak

It's bullshit, plain and simple, but it's exhausting bullshit that draws Lucasfilm's resources away from their work and into damage control. I'm generally skeptical that online movements perfectly translate into real-world action, but there have been some notable examples of where these online campaigns can really put a damper on a film's box office returns, like Lightyear, The Little Mermaid, Wish, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, or a TV show's audience numbers, like Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, The Last of Us, She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, and The Acolyte.

I don't see that discourse changing anytime soon: we've got a generation of online commenters who've established a neat little ecosystem drumming up rage about film and TV and a political and cultural environment that supports it.

These people will create endless videos and online noise about how The Mandalorian and Grogu and Starfighter will ruin Star Wars. There's no way around that, but I suspect that by leaning into familiar territory, those arguments will have a little less traction to hold onto. The reactions to The Force Awakens, Rogue One, and The Mandalorian were all generally well-received by audiences because they took cues and beats from the original trilogy. Even with its critical and subversive worldview, I think Andor escaped some of those petulant voices because it was wrapped up in a recognizable environment and trappings, while the critical appeal and reviews helped drown out the rest.

This is not an environment we should be in, and it's deeply frustrating that it likely plays some factor in this lineup: films and shows that are generally safe and won't be taking any risks. Good art – even good commercial art – should be willing to take risks and push and chip away at boundaries and expectations! Comfortable is boring.

The films that stand the test of time are the ones that are willing to undertake that challenge and to make audiences think about what they've seen, rather than just something to merely consume. I want more films that push at the boundaries of what Star Wars can be, like The Empire Strikes Back, Revenge of the Sith, The Last Jedi, Andor, and The Acolyte. Even if they aren't a complete home run or a perfect story, it's that underlying attitude of wanting to push and poke at things that helps make those stories really stand out. It's something we need more of, not less.

All the other stuff

A last bit of commentary to cap this off: we got a non-update for a handful of films that have been in development: Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy's Rey movie, James Mangold's origins of the Jedi film, Taika Waititi's film, and Simon Kinberg's post-Rise of Skywalker trilogy, all of which are still in the developmental phase.

For those keeping score at home, there's no word on Jenkin's aforementioned Rogue Squadron film, Dave Filoni's Mandoverse film, Donald and Stephen Glover's Lando ... film? TV show?, and Rian Johnson's trilogy. I'm not going to read too much into any absence of an update, because I don't have the feeling that it's an all-or-nothing thing. Rogue Squadron I already mused on, Filoni's Mandoverse film is probably contingent on the success of Mandalorian & Grogu, and the Johnson and Glover projects are probably in the category of "whenever these guys can fit it into their busy schedules."

What surprised me about these announcements is one huge missing thing: Disney+. We've got Andor coming out this week, and after that, that's it until the next season of Ahsoka debuts. There's a little more on the animated front: Tales from the Underworld drops May 4th, Season 3 of Visions, and a third season of Young Jedi Adventures. There's really nothing for that core audience until 2026, when the Maul series comes out.

What we've gotten in recent years has been generally good: with the exception of The Book of Boba Fett and Season 3 of The Mandalorian, we've been treated to some decent shows, ranging from truly great (Andor) to fun popcorn fare (The Mandalorian, Skeleton Crew and Obi-Wan) to solid experiments (Acolyte) to it's-fine-but-not-offensive (Ahsoka).

The streaming world has contracted quite a bit in recent years, and Disney has made a concerted effort to shift its focus from streaming back to theatrical films: Moana 2 was originally a series while The Mandalorian and Grogu was apparently what had been planned for a fourth season of The Mandalorian. There's also been a lot of changes at the top of the company: Bob Iger returned in 2022 and is apparently apparently looking for a successor when his contract ends in 2026, and I'm guessing that's injected a bit of uncertainty into the studio's future priorities. There were also some reports that Kathleen Kennedy was planning on announcing a retirement earlier this year, but those were sort of shot down, but I can see that bringing some complications as well.

That said, it's weird that there doesn't seem to be anything in the pipeline on that front, given that streaming is still a pretty big part of Disney. Andor has been a huge critical hit for Lucasfilm and Disney, as has The Mandalorian. I have to imagine that there are some streaming projects in the works, but it looks like there'll be a bit of a drought in the foreseeable future. News of another show did pop up today, but that seems like it’ll be a ways off.

This isn’t the worst thing in the world: the more content you throw at the walls, the higher the likelihood that you're going get diminishing returns (Again, see Book of Boba Fett and Mandalorian season 3). The streaming and modern blockbuster world relies on volume and frequency: you don't really see projects really marinating for a good while before they're given a release date and shoved into production.

Hopefully, what we're seeing is Lucasfilm paring down their projects and devoting more time and attention to them, rather than tossing things out with the hope that they'll help with subscriber numbers.