A specific phrase repeated all through the preliminary backlash to the prequel trilogy: George Lucas ruined my childhood. Longtime followers complained that Lucas had taken all the things they’ve cherished concerning the motion pictures since they had been youngsters and made a mockery of it, figuratively mocking their youthful selves. Nothing captured this place higher than a scene from the collection two premier of Spaced, by which Gen X nerd Tim (Simon Pegg), ritualistically burns his Star Wars memorabilia in a scene that director Edgar Wright shoots like Vader’s funeral pyre from Return of the Jedi. To Gen X followers, the prequel trilogy was not their Star Wars.
To the defenders of the prequel trilogy, the outdated followers had been completely right. Star Wars wasn’t for these followers anymore as a result of they’re adults. Star Wars is basically a sci-fi fairy story, a narrative for youngsters. So who cares if the adults of the late-’90s disliked the prequels? Youngsters on the time cherished them. They usually cherished the prequel trilogies spinoffs, particularly The Clone Wars.
For these younger followers, themes involving Anakin Skywalker’s battle in opposition to his destiny and the clones’ want to turn into people, plots involving secret cabals and underground resistances had been introductions to extra complicated storytelling. The present represented their first expertise of watching one thing each thrilling and wealthy, a science fiction primer. So regardless that the collection escaped cancellation as soon as by transferring from Cartoon Community to Netflix for an additional season, they nonetheless felt cheated by its finish in 2014.
The spinoff Rebels (2014-2018) stored the story alive, and Clone Wars even obtained one final season on Disney+ in 2020. However none of that felt as vindicating because the second season of The Mandalorian, by which Katee Sackhoff reprised her position as Bo-Katan Kryze, the bounty hunter from The Clone Wars and Rebels. Not solely did Bo-Katan function a harbinger for extra returning characters akin to Ahsoka Tano and Ezra Bridger, she quickly supplanted Din Djarin, because the de facto lead of The Mandalorian. Becoming a member of The Mandalorian was The Unhealthy Batch, Star Wars: Tales, Asohka, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Skeleton Crew, reveals that put prequel trilogy characters and ideas on the middle.
Given this re-alignment from the unique trilogy to the prequel trilogy, Filoni makes good sense as the brand new head of Lucasfilm. Nevertheless it’s exhausting to overlook the irony at work right here. The youngsters who had been informed that their love of Star Wars is extra reliable than that of the crusty Gen X’ers at the moment are outdated adults in cost. And, it seems, they’re clinging to their childhoods with simply as a lot tenacity because the individuals who by no means needed to share Star Wars within the first place.
Which raises a query as Star Wars enters a brand new period below Filoni and Lynwen Brennan: will Star Wars develop below them because it did below Lucas and Kennedy? Or, extra exactly, will the Star Wars followers in cost let new followers are available in, even when they don’t like the identical issues? Will individuals who didn’t meet Bo-Katan and Ezra Bridger after they had been 5 need to discover out what these characters are thus far? Or will they need their very own characters, demanding to see Kai Brightstar and Nash Durango from Younger Jedi Adventures as an alternative?
