Tuesday, December 14, 2021

My Pitch for the Future of Star Wars

  So the other day I was on the Star Wars fan forums website theforce.net and there was a thread on there asking fans to speculate what Star Wars content set after The Rise of Skywalker might be like. Some of the comments from other users on there inspired me to come up with a hypothetical roadmap for various post-Skywalker Saga projects. I shared my outline on the forum and a few people there said they liked what I had in mind, so I figured I might as well share all of my ideas here too. Keep in mind that I do not expect Lucasfilm to actually do any of this stuff. This is all just for fun.

Before we begin, though, allow me to clarify a few things. First of all; I think Star Wars has outgrown the “trilogy structure,” at this point. I have some ideas for three shows as well as three live-action films, but each project would theoretically stand on it’s own, so that they could be made in almost any order (some may not have to even be made at all). Furthermore, the only sequel trilogy characters I have ideas for are Rey, Finn and (to a lesser extent) Rose. Nothing against the other characters. I just don’t know where their stories can go. Also, I know John Boyega said in mid 2020 that he was done with Star Wars, but he has since walked back on those comments and recently said he was open to returning. For some reason the press didn’t really run with that story, though (probably because it doesn’t fit the narrative of “Disney ruined Star Wars”).


With that all being said, here’s my pitch for what post-Rise of Skywalker content could look like. Part of me actually still feels that all of this is stupid, but I’m gonna share it anyway, so here it goes:


ANIMATED SHOW 1


Working title:

Star Wars: Regions of the Galaxy


Rough idea: 

Starts a few years after The Rise of Skywalker. There’s no galactic-wide government of any kind anymore. The Resistance managed to gain control of the Core Region of the galaxy and have since evolved into The Core Republic. Other parts of the galaxy are controlled by other factions (Mandalorians, crime syndicates, maybe even new versions of stuff like the Nihil and Nightsisters, etc.). So I guess if this “Age” needed a name it would be “Age of Divide” or something like that. There are no remnants of the Sith, Knights of Ren, Empire, First Order or Final Order whatsoever. The closest we get to that is whatever Thrawn has going on in the Unknown Regions (assuming he’s even still alive by this point). I also like the idea of one of the factions experimenting with cloning again, maybe even perfecting force-sensitive clones. But that’s not essential. I also like the droid revolt idea (mentioned by someone else on the forum).


Rey and Finn are restarting the Jedi order in two different ways; one of them is gathering small children like Broom Boy and training them slowly in a school-like environment, and the other is speed-training about half-a-dozen or so other adults and they’re all going on adventures (sometimes together and sometimes apart) in a Knights-of-the-Round-Table type of fashion. 


Right now I’m leaning towards Finn being the one mainly training the adults (and show Rey training him beforehand through flashbacks). I want to use this show as an opportunity to “move him further along.” Maybe he rekindles the flame he briefly had with Rose on Crait and takes her last name (or finally finds out what his real name was). Maybe he meets one or more of the ghosts. You get the idea. He’s “the field agent” and Rey is “the Yoda.” And not that it matters, but as far as saber colors go, I always thought green would suit Finn.


I wouldn’t have a central conflict or war or anything driving the show forward like that. Just keep it loose and episodic. The main purpose of this show is just worldbuilding and laying the groundwork for the future.


LIVE-ACTION MOVIE 1


Working title: 

Star Wars: Alliance


Rough idea: 

It’s been like five or ten years now since The Rise of Skywalker. If Lucasfilm wants they can make this movie first and then make the show described above afterwards to “fill in the gaps” between The Rise of Skywalker and this.


In short; characters from the sequel trilogy team up with characters from The Mandalorian and its “sister shows.” So it’s basically a crossover, of sorts, between the Skywalker Saga and the Mandoverse. I think that would be a neat way to bring back sequel trilogy characters (mainly Rey) in a live-action movie without undoing the idea of The Rise of Skywalker being the end of the Skywalker Saga. It’s not really what I would want, personally, but it would probably put butts in seats, which is what Disney is thinking about.


I would have Rey team up with Din Djarin specifically (who I assume is ruling Mandalore at this point), to really emphasize this “crossover” idea as much as possible. I know he’d be like 70-75 at this point, so maybe keep his helmet on the whole time and just have Pedro Pascal limp around and say something along the lines of “I may be old but I still got a few tricks up my sleeve,” just not in those exact words (cause that would be stupid). Alternatively, just have him “sitting around” and have Rey instead pair up with Sabine, who would probably also need to be played by a different actress at this point, or at least keep her helmet on the whole time too.


The main conflict would involve an outside-galaxy threat. Let’s just say the Grysk, for now (assuming the Mandoverse “big storytelling event” that Lucasfilm talked about doesn’t involve them first). For context; the Grysk are a new alien race that have been loosely mentioned in recent books as “a half-myth,” and they haven’t really been officially detected yet. Apparently they may or may not come from a different galaxy, and are described as “invaders.” The old Expanded Universe novels (now called Legends) had something similar to this.


I don’t know if I would flat-out say they come from a different galaxy, though. I would just “loosely imply” it, if that makes sense. Either way, the Jedi find out about the Grysk so they have to split up to go recruit all the other political factions outside of The Core Republic. It’s not the end of the Age of Divide, just a brief unification against this new exterior threat, is all.


Also, just to be a bit more “thematic” with the idea of divisions and factions, I would have Rey and Finn start to not get along at this point, because they have different ideas on how the Jedi should continue to evolve. They manage to put their differences aside for the climax of the movie, of course, but the very end of the story hints that the Jedi of the future may have similar differences, which they accept. This is to hint that the Jedi in centuries from now may be separated into several different factions with no centralization.


ANIMATED SHOW 2


Working title:

Star Wars: Fallout


Rough idea:

The purpose of this show would be to explore how the galaxy deals with the ongoing aftermath of the Grysk invasion. At this point I would start to move the sequel trilogy characters to the background, and focus on new heroes instead.


LIVE-ACTION MINISERIES


Working title:

Star Wars: Unity


Rough idea:

The purpose of this project would be to bring Rey and Finn back one more time after not having seen them again for a while, for a “farewell.” I imagine them being middle-aged at this point, and imply that they’ve now been fully estranged from one another for at least a few years. They each have their own isolated Jedi orders now (a further sign of what’s to come). Both characters are put in a position where they have to come together one last time. They both die together in a self-sacrificial way at the end of the miniseries, but they clearly forgive one another and are good friends again in the final moments. Their Jedi orders have a newfound respect for one another after this, but continue to remain separate.


        I understand the idea of Rey and Finn dying at the same time may sound pretty dark for Star Wars standards, but my gut tells me it would make sense. They started their “Jedi journeys” together, so might as well also end together, right? Also, the reason I would want this to be a live-action miniseries instead of a film is because I feel like doing this particular story as a film would feel too much like “Skywalker Saga Episode 10,” which I’m trying to avoid cause I still want The Rise of Skywalker to feel like an ending.


LIVE-ACTION MOVIE 2


Working title:

Star Wars: Jedi Legacy


Rough idea:

Set like a thousand years later, the Jedi have evolved into several different factions with no centralization, and each faction has a slightly different philosophy from one another. Meanwhile, the political factions are all unified back together now, and call themselves The Alliance (as a reference to the film described above). So this would be the “Age of Alliance.” Basically everyone hates the Jedi for not being able to get along now. This is where the Sith would come back, in some fashion. I would bring back Matt Smith’s “Sith King” character (an amalgamation of all dead Sith) that got cut from The Rise of Skywalker, and maybe have him act a little like Palpatine, to imply that good ol’ Sheev is “still in there somewhere.” As expected, all the different Jedi factions realize they gotta come together, but in order to do so, they need to dig deep and figure out secrets about how the Jedi first began “thousands of generations ago,” which leads us to…


LIVE-ACTION MOVIE 3


Working title:

Star Wars: Jedi Origins


Rough idea:

Okay, this one doesn’t actually take place after The Rise of Skywalker, but rather thousands of generations before anything we know from canon Star Wars. That said, it would still be “spiritually connected,” in a sense, to the film described above. It would basically be the Dawn of the Jedi comics from Legends, but as a movie. I know there’s rumors that this is what Taika Waititi’s film is gonna be. We’ll see what happens, I guess…


Alright, that’s all I got!


Peace!


Related: Fiction Repository