There’s More Than Just The Skywalker Saga Part 1: An Overview

Star Wars

Oct 30

Collage of the Skywalker Saga — Image Source: IGN

It has been 45 years since A New Hope was first released, spawning what has become one of the world's biggest and most avid fandoms. One thing that has remained a constant is the controversy over its new releases. There were criticisms of the most recent trilogy and the prequel trilogy when it first came out. Even Empire Strikes Back was not initially well received as it is now. It seems that this has led to Disney taking a rather safe approach to its properties. While most of the content it has released after the sequel trilogy has been high quality, they all have a major similarity. They all take place either between the prequel and original trilogies or between the original and the sequel trilogies. In a universe that has roots spanning back thousands of years and could easily jump into the future, there is a lot of underutilized material.

Same Old Stories

The Mandalorian with Grogu in his bag — Image Source: Wallpapers Den

Our first taste of a Star Wars Disney+ series was back in 2019 with the release of The Mandalorian. It was an immediate success partly because of the high caliber of writing, acting, and overall production. A big part of this was because it felt fresh but familiar. The main characters were all new (or new to live-action, at least). Much of the content was new, but it felt like an authentic extension of the Star Wars universe. Many concepts that had been relegated to lore or fanfiction were now being fleshed out on the screen. The history of Mandalore, the collateral from the fall of the Empire, the Darksaber, etc., were all introduced intentionally and cohesively.

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The three live-action shows that followed in the footsteps of The Mandalorian were all picking a popular character from a previous property and expanding their story in order to guarantee success. The Book of Boba Fett was the next show which should have been a slam dunk, but instead of taking risks (or even moving away from the planet where it all started), it was met with mixed reviews and felt like a missed opportunity for many. Obi-Wan Kenobi was a success, filling in the details of his time between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, and feeling like an organic extension. However, the story of a warrior reluctantly taking on a child to protect them from the people chasing them while moving from planet to planet sounds a lot like Season 1 of The Mandalorian. While I have enjoyed Andor so far, it seems the strangest character to be given his own show, seeing as how he was a supporting character in one movie, whose character and development have more than a few similarities to Han Solo. There is no large time jumps in these three series. They all focus on a single protagonist instead of a true team, and that single protagonist is always male.

The Disney Movies

To say the sequel trilogy was divisive would be an understatement. The Force Awakens was well received enough but was criticized for following a little too closely to the plot of A New Hope. While the plot was very similar, the storylines it set up were intriguing and could have led to a fulfilling trilogy.

Then, The Last Jedi happened. Rian Johnson wanted to subvert the typical Star Wars movie tropes, and, for better or worse, he certainly did. There were storylines cut short, capers failing, and all the setups you would expect in Star Wars seemed to go the other way. It was taking risks, but possibly taking them too far and mostly for the sake of just taking the risk in the first place without much meaningful payoff. It is safe to say it was likely the most seriously divisive content released in the Star Wars universe, which is saying something. While it garnered high critical reviews (currently 91% on Rotten Tomatoes), The Last Jedi did not go over well with audiences, especially the more involved out of the fanbase.

The Rise of Skywalker was left to pick up the pieces to try to make a cohesive arc across the three movies. It felt messy but went over better with audiences than The Last Jedi. It attempted to resurrect the storylines killed off in Episode VIII and resolve them all in the same movie. It tried to play it safe in the same way you would try to stabilize a patient on life support.

The two other standalone movies that were released around the same time were both, again, all around the same collective period of all the trilogies, and either starred a major legacy character (Solo) or had a plot directly derived from one of the previous movies (Rogue One). They both also had cameos by Sith villains that did not necessarily need to be there. While Rogue One was well received, Solo was less so.

Because due of the inconsistent reception of the movies, Disney seemed to be putting a pause on the cinema side of Star Wars with no firm release date on any films. They may have taken the wrong lessons away from the less-than-expected success. Instead of realizing that the franchise cannot rely on fan service and connected characters alone, they are continuing to pump out television shows set around the same period and withholding movies completely.

Legends

It is easy to point out the flaws in something that already exists, especially when it is a challenge to create things from scratch. Here is the thing, they do not necessarily need to start from scratch. Before Disney purchased Lucasfilm, there was a huge wealth of stories being told through books, video games, and other mediums that were a part of the Extended Universe. However, on April 25th, 2014, there was a statement released essentially saying that anything outside of the films and certain novels was no longer considered canon and was relegated to Legends. Canon or not, there are endless directions, time periods, and characters that have not even been touched. The best part about anything in the Legends is that you have complete creative control to tweak and alter as you see fit since it is not canon yet anyway. There is so much lore that has been established either in Legends or in some of the interconnected media that have been accepted as canon. A quick dive into Wookieepedia would show how there is so much material that is already fleshed out for a movie, series, or trilogy. There is plenty of space to fill in when there is no real restraint on the writers’ creativity.

Through the next few weeks, I will be laying out some of these unexplored ideas in this series on what could and hopefully will be one day. Certain events, such as the creation of the Sith order that led to the Hundred-Year Darkness or the eventual resurgence after the latest trilogy of the Jedi and/or Sith, would make for great media. There are loose concepts that could stand on their own, such as the Grey Jedi, or the Old Republic. There are several ways to expand the Star Wars universe. There is more than just the Skywalker Saga.

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