Star Wars rocks.
I mean that sincerely. There are few fictional worlds people care about so deeply for so long and few franchises capable of inspiring so much obsession, disappointment, argument, nostalgia, and genuine love all at once.
Which is exactly why its current creative stagnation feels so frustrating. And Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, the franchise’s first film since the 2010s, feels less like a standalone disappointment and more like a perfect encapsulation of what has happened to Star Wars as a whole.
There may never be a fourth season of The Mandalorian. Instead, creator Jon Favreau “start[ed] from scratch” and pivoted toward a feature film—not by turning the Thrawn–centered continuation into a movie, but by writing a story broad enough for even casual audiences unfamiliar with the characters to follow.
And there are two ways to approach reviewing the resulting film: for what it is, and for what it isn’t.
Meeting the film where it’s at, it’s difficult to be disappointed. The trailers promised an action–adventure romp featuring—you guessed it—the Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu (aka Baby Yoda), and that is exactly what the movie delivers. If you enjoy watching a character arrive at a foreign planet, realize they have to fight some monsters, escape, arrive at a different planet, and repeat the process a few times over, you’re in for a good time. And for what it’s worth, the action is competently staged, the visuals are satisfactory, and the film doesn’t outright shatter established Star Wars lore, which unfortunately can’t be said for every project in the franchise.
But it becomes difficult to talk about the positives for very long. Yes, a mindless, video game–esque script can be entertaining, but it also leads to a near–total lack of character growth. Mando is effectively the same person at the end of the film as he was at the beginning. And if you can believe it, the nonverbal Grogu doesn’t evolve much, either. There is some vague sentiment about ‘the young taking care of the old after the old took care of the young,’ but it never translates into any meaningful or tangible change.
There is also something oddly ironic about the film’s structure. Newly established Lucasfilm Co–President Dave Filoni began his Star Wars career by releasing Star Wars: The Clone Wars in 2008, a project that notoriously feels like several television episodes stitched together into a feature film, featuring Rotta the Hutt and companions of Ahsoka Tano. Nearly 20 years later, his latest project does the same thing.
Strangely enough, one of the film’s most interesting elements is Rotta the Hutt (Jeremy Allen White). What was once little more than the shrill “Squishy” plot device from The Clone Wars film is now a hulking gladiator trying to distance himself from his crime lord father Jabba’s legacy. It’s a clever use of recognizable iconography without relying entirely on nostalgia, mostly because Rotta barely had enough presence to be nostalgic for in the first place.
And it is undeniably nice to see Star Wars back on the big screen. But an odd aura hangs over the entire movie: a desperate desire to return everything to the status quo and not to shift it.
Not only does the film end in almost the exact same emotional and narrative place where it began, but even the smallest details revert to what audiences recognized from Season 1 of The Mandalorian. Those first two seasons of The Mandalorian felt like a genuine turning point for the franchise: simple, focused, visually distinct, and refreshingly small–scale. More importantly, Din Djarin actually evolved over the course of the series. But after the emotionally satisfying separation of Mando and Grogu at the end of Season 2, the franchise immediately reversed course and reunited them barely a year later in the spinoff series The Book of Boba Fett. By the end of The Mandalorian and Grogu, Din once again has a Razor Crest ship, his Season 1 sniper rifle, and is bounty hunting across the galaxy with Baby Yoda. After seven years, it suddenly feels like very little has changed.
And then there’s judging the film for what it is not. And, unfortunately, what it isn’t is a justification for Star Wars returning to theaters in the first place.
There’s no larger sense of momentum here. No major threat looming in the background, no lingering sense of intrigue pushing the franchise forward. If Disney were simultaneously constructing a compelling larger–scale story elsewhere, perhaps audiences would be more forgiving. But Star Wars as a whole increasingly resembles a meal made entirely of side dishes and desserts. Those things are enjoyable in moderation, but eventually audiences start wondering where the main course went.
And that leads into the larger question haunting the franchise: What exactly happened to the Star Wars brand?
Over the past decade, Star Wars has shifted from a cultural event worth camping outside theaters for into a content pipeline. Between an unplanned sequel trilogy and a flood of streaming series ranging from excellent to outright awful, the franchise has become diluted, to say the least. Many people have already articulated this problem well, so rather than repeat those arguments, I’d like to focus on the aspect of this situation that lingers in my mind the most: It is unbelievably difficult to make something new.
It is much easier to remaster, slightly tweak, or outright imitate something proven to work. “Tonight’s special is the chef’s twist on a classic.” “Imagine this movie mixed with that movie.” “Take the vocal style of one artist and put it in front of the instrumentals of another.” Such impulses increasingly feel like the defining creative philosophy behind modern Star Wars.
And this problem extends far beyond Lucasfilm. Parent company Disney increasingly seems more comfortable revisiting familiar faces—live–action remakes, Pixar sequels, Marvel revisiting franchise tentpoles like Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr.—than gambling on entirely new ideas capable of defining the next generation.
But returning to a galaxy far, far away, The Force Awakens is essentially A New Hope repackaged for 2015. Ahsoka is Star Wars Rebels Season 5 in live–action form. And The Mandalorian and Grogu is just The Mandalorian compressed into a two hour runtime.
But there’s something interesting about those comparisons. The latter halves of each one were all moments when Star Wars broke new ground, proving novel ideas can still emerge inside massive franchises. But only when there’s an actual desire to create something new.
In 1977, George Lucas stitched together samurai films, westerns, mythology, politics, and pulp serials into a Flash Goredon–inspired space opera. In 2014, Star Wars Rebels expanded the universe by framing the rise of the Rebel Alliance through the lens of a small group of underdogs resisting growing authoritarianism. In 2019, Jon Favreau, similarly to Lucas, approached The Mandalorian through the lens of western and samurai cinema, instead focusing on the ‘scum and villainy’ side of the galaxy rather than galactic destiny and lightsabers.
And, maybe most notably, there is Andor.
Andor explores the political and human consequences of fascism in a way no previous Star Wars project seriously attempted. It examines how authoritarian governments erode freedom, how exhausting and morally compromising rebellion can become, and how ordinary people—not chosen ones—change history. But most importantly, how a no–name thief from Ferrix can save not just a galaxy, but perhaps the franchise that created it. It approached the franchise from an entirely different angle, and in doing so, became the most critically acclaimed Star Wars project Disney has produced.
But, unfortunately, almost everyone recognizes Andor as the exception, not the rule.
Obi–Wan Kenobi exists largely to reunite Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen. The Book of Boba Fett tried to build a show around a fan–favorite whose old appeal had already been repackaged through The Mandalorian, forcing the series to reinvent him in ways that left him far less interesting than if he had simply remained ‘dead.’ Ahsoka prioritized continuing Rebels plotlines over re–establishing why audiences connected with Ahsoka Tano in the first place.
This is also where the Filoni era starts to feel trapped by its own toy box. Ahsoka, Cad Bane, Zeb, Rotta, Thrawn, Embo, the Ghost crew—many of these characters are fun to see again, but eventually the question becomes unavoidable: why keep pulling figures out of the same bin instead of building a new one?
And yet, what makes these projects frustrating is that flashes of something compelling still exist inside them.
Kenobi contains an emotionally moving final exchange between Obi–Wan and Vader that elegantly bridges the prequels and original trilogy. Ahsoka introduces Baylan Skoll, portrayed by the late Ray Stevenson, arguably the most intriguing original Disney–era character, whose skepticism toward Jedi ideology and the galactic power structure feels refreshingly different (the character is, quite frankly, the only reason I want Ahsoka not to be cancelled). Even The Acolyte, controversial as it may be, showcases some of the franchise’s strongest lightsaber choreography in years while finally exploring the aesthetic identity of the High Republic era.
The ideas are there, but the willingness to fully commit to them often isn’t. Not every side dish tastes bad—some of them have great ingredients—but no amount of seasoning can hide the absence of an actual meal.
Over the past year, I’ve spent time brainstorming what I would want to see from Star Wars. I’m pretty proud of some of my ideas—I even wrote a Darth Vader anthology screenplay. But the more I work on them, the harder it becomes to ignore the obvious: most of them are adaptations, expansions, or answers to questions the franchise had already raised.
And so the same thought always returns: “But that isn’t really new either.”
Expanding lore and filling narrative gaps only goes so far. As a fan of Rogue One, Solo, and Tales of the Jedi, I can confidently say not everything Disney has produced has been meaningless. But side stories alone cannot sustain a franchise forever.
The post–Return of the Jedi timeline—spread across The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka—appears to be slowly building toward a Thrawn–centered crossover event, presumably in Filoni’s long–discussed, still somewhat ambiguous “MandoVerse” crossover film. But because these stories are positioned before the sequel trilogy, audiences already know the galaxy’s eventual state. The same issue looms over Andor, Kenobi, and even parts of The Acolyte. Their endings are constrained by larger continuity.
This lack of stakes is nowhere clearer than in Maul: Shadow Lord, the latest Disney+ Star Wars original. Audiences already know where Maul ends up after Clone Wars (thanks to Rebels and Solo), know Vader survives, and know the featured Inquisitors die later in the timeline, making the show feel less like a necessary story unfolding and more like characters mechanically moving toward a predetermined conclusion.
So what can be done? Decanonize the sequel trilogy in Ahsoka Season 2 via the World Between Worlds? Jump hundreds or thousands of years into the future, where no existing ending can trap the story? Maybe either option could work. But the specific answer matters less than the willingness to take the swing.
Right now, Star Wars feels less damaged by one bad decision than by years of refusing to make a truly dangerous one. The franchise has become obsessed with filling in gaps instead of charting new territory. It is safer to revisit familiar iconography. Safer to bring back legacy characters. Safer to make audiences point at the screen and recognize something they already love.
But Star Wars did not become Star Wars by playing it safe.
And that is what so much of modern Star Wars is missing: not competence, not budget, not even talent—but the willingness to risk failure in pursuit of something genuinely new. Because the reality is that making something new means risking the possibility that people may not like it at all.
A franchise built on imagination should not feel this afraid of it.
