Star Wars is following in the MCU’s footsteps, but is this the way? (Image Credit: Space.com)
Star Wars Celebration 2023 brought about a new hope for the franchise with loads of new movie announcements and promising teases about the next batch of Star Wars shows. A year and a half later, we’re left wondering; is the Star Wars timeline following in the footsteps of the MCU, and more importantly… should it be?
The Mandalorian quietly kickstarted an interconnected ‘sub-franchise’ of sorts that was soon expanded with The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka. Now, we’re eagerly waiting for Skeleton Crew. The New Republic-era storyline will continue after it, with the promise of an event movie happening at some point in the future and tying everything together.
It all adds up to create the feeling we’re heading for a Marvel-like model of stories and characters being developed across multiple sub-franchises. The reveal of an official Star Wars timeline and distinct projects placed all over it only underline the feeling that the franchise seems to be done with telling major stories on-screen all at once, as was the case in the original trilogy.
By all accounts, Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker was a box office success, earning over $1 billion in spite of divisive reviews. Nonetheless, we’re now in our fifth year without a new Star Wars movie hitting theaters, all while the TV output has exploded from a couple of cartoon shows into a myriad of live-action and animated productions on Disney+.
We’ve been told time and again it was all part of a ‘reset’ of the brand, as we’d been bombarded with too many movies too fast, most notably in 2018 when Solo: A Star Wars Story released (and bombed) only a few months after The Last Jedi. The reality is that ex-Disney CEO Bob Chapek had doubled down on streaming over theatrical due to the pandemic, and thus Star Wars – one of the company’s flagship properties – had to lead the charge with The Mandalorian.
More than four years later, we’re fully out of the woods, and theatrical appears to be the focus again under Bob Iger’s second regime. There’s been talk of downsizing the straight-to-streaming output, and Lucasfilm’s 2023 update at Celebration indeed confirmed the franchise was returning to the big screen… without fully leaving streaming behind.
Now, Disney overlords are looking to get the theatrical ball rolling again. There are three major movies in different stages of development, including The Mandalorian & Grogu, which was born out of the bones of a tentative fourth season of the hit series. It marks the start of a new era for the IP that should be more flexible and allow both executives and lead creatives to quickly pivot if one story doesn’t quite land (just look at The Acolyte). But is too much variety in the live-action Star Wars output too fast a bad thing too?
Before we cut into why looking at the Marvel Cinematic Universe for inspiration could spell either disaster or success, let’s take a look at the confirmed slate so far:
- Skeleton Crew, set in the New Republic era – December 3, 2024
- Andor season 2, set in the Imperial era – TBA 2025
- Ahsoka season 2, set in the New Republic era – TBA 2026
- The Mandalorian & Grogu (movie), set in the New Republic era – May 22, 2026
- Untitled Rey Skywalker-centric movie – TBA
- Untitled Jedi origins movie – TBA
- Untitled New Republic-era event crossover movie – TBA
Those are only officially announced projects — the list would grow much bigger if we counted rumors and semi-confirmed movies. Even Patty Jenkins’ canceled Rogue Squadron movie might not be entirely dead yet. And there will certainly be more Star Wars animated shows coming for sure.
We’ll likely get an update on new Star Wars shows at next year’s Star Wars Celebration (if not before during a new Disney Investor Day); we’re not counting on a full shutdown of the Disney Plus operations just because Lucasfilm is slowly crawling its way back into theaters. But we can already see a pattern: After wrapping up the Skywalker Saga back in 2019, Star Wars is entering an exploratory era of throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. In fact, we’re already there.
Even before Disney took over George Lucas’ empire and cleared out the canon, Star Wars had become a vast universe of interconnected stories from across different eras and locations thanks to comics, novels, and video games. The big difference? Now all of that is making its way into TV and cinemas. And that’s certainly reason to celebrate, because Star Wars is at its best when it goes beyond the borders of the family drama at its center. After all, the beloved Old Republic era features zero connections to the Skywalker Saga beyond the presence of Jedi and Sith.
Of course, charting a path forward for movies and TV shows – all of which must strictly abide by (and expand) the current canon – that was originally meant for ‘lesser’ stories is a challenge and raises the following question: What is Star Wars at this point?
The movies and series have taken Star Wars far beyond the Skywalkers’ struggles against the dark side and this may be the one thing that people are having trouble accepting; Star Wars is much more than a movie series at this point.
Star Wars isn’t one story anymore, even if you are just following the live-action projects, and that’s a hard pill to swallow for anyone who hasn’t touched the Expanded Universe, old or new. The Marvel Cinematic Universe got away with this approach because, despite all its sub-franchisees and plot threads, there was a clear through line to follow and see to completion. In a way, The Mandalorian and its adjacent shows are doing exactly that, and it’ll all culminate in the Dave Filoni-directed event movie, but what about the other projects? How do you keep the casual audience also interested in entirely different plot lines and genres, all coated with Star Wars paint?
I fear there’s no easy answer to these questions beyond just trying things out and seeing what sticks. Diehard fans and demanding cinephiles can declare Star Wars is ‘dead’ all they like while it continues to bring in the big bucks regardless. Stopping isn’t an option for Disney or Lucasfilm right now, and I’m guessing this long break from releasing movies in theaters is the biggest rest that the franchise will get this decade.
Despite some sub-franchises like Guardians of the Galaxy and Deadpool keeping the fire burning, the MCU is now showing clear signs of exhaustion. Even with a stronger 2025 lineup and new Avengers flicks, it’s easy to see why Disney wants to bring Star Wars back to the forefront of its theatrical efforts — and most fans will agree that the legendary franchise has always looked brighter on the big screen.
Still, it’s hard to ignore the many wins Lucasfilm has scored in the TV space (far more than Marvel, I’d say), and with Disney Plus stabilizing instead of going downhill, a TV-less future for Star Wars, at least when it comes to live-action, doesn’t appear to be on the cards. This might be for the best, as it’s easier to ‘sell’ an experimental venture like Skeleton Crew as brand-new content for your streaming platform rather than as a major theatrical release.
Television has allowed Star Wars to learn both good and bad things about itself, and now we just have to hope the powers that be are absorbing the right lessons. They need to take daring, confident swings while crafting the next generation of Star Wars movies and TV.
One thing’s certain: The Force will be with us, always… whether we like it or not.
There’s a lot of Star Wars to devour, even if you haven’t been enjoying recent TV and movie efforts. We’re fairly sure you’ll love more than a few of the best Star Wars games of all time, and Marvel is currently killing it with all its different comic book series, which could also be a sign of the larger plan moving forward.
