The name Kathleen Kennedy is enough to send some longtime Star Wars fans into a fit of rage, with the Lucasfilm President shouldering most of the criticism for Disney’s haphazard treatment of the beloved franchise. With the notable exception of The Mandalorian, it seems that not a single project set in a galaxy far, far away goes by without some kind of major incident or creative upheaval, and as the person calling the shots, the fingers of blame generally get pointed in her direction.
After all, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of coherence to the franchise’s Disney era, with the likes of Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Josh Trank, Colin Trevorrow and Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss all being given their marching orders, while Gareth Edwards was reportedly locked out of Rogue One‘s reshoots. Following that, the Anthology experiment was abandoned completely after Solo bombed and the entire Obi-Wan crew were recently sent home indefinitely as the highly-anticipated limited series was reworked from the ground up.
Speculation has even been making the rounds that there’s a civil war brewing at Lucasfilm over her handling of Star Wars, and we’ve now heard from our sources – the same ones that told us Ahsoka Tano will appear in The Mandalorian and Rey would be revealed as Palpatine’s [SPOILERS] long before The Rise of Skywalker premiered – that George Lucas is said to be holding Kennedy personally responsible for the backlash generated by the recently-concluded Sequel Trilogy that saw both The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker split opinion straight down the middle, with box office takings dropping massively in the process.
Of course, Lucas had his own ideas for Episodes VII, VIII and IX that were discarded when he sold up to Disney, but the creator of Star Wars is still available to filmmakers like Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni in an advisory capacity. And while the 76 year-old is reportedly getting the itch to return in a more hands-on role, it seems unlikely that he’ll come back in any significant capacity if Kennedy is still in charge of the company he created.
Luckily for both him and large sections of the fanbase, though, Kennedy is widely expected to be shown the door when her contract expires, meaning that Lucas’ chances of rejoining Star Wars will greatly increase once she’s no longer an obstacle for him to deal with.
