Thanks to the expanded universe of novels, comic books, video games and other forms of media, there’s a vast and expansive mythology encompassing tens of thousands of years that’s exponentially deepened the Star Wars lore. However, you’d never get that impression if your only knowledge of the franchise was from watching the movies, which have almost entirely focused on the extended Skywalker family.
Connective tissue running throughout a multi-film series spanning decades is nothing new, but there’s been genuine frustrations among fans that the Disney era has tended to rely so heavily on recognizable characters, iconography and callbacks to previous installments when there’s an almost unlimited amount of untapped material that could push the franchise in an entirely new direction.
Many of the rumored and confirmed projects in development are connected to one of the three trilogies, but a lot of people are hoping that Lucasfilm and the Mouse House will finally take some risks for a change. Nostalgia is all well and good in small doses, but it can’t be used to power an entire franchise as the studio discovered firsthand with the polarizing reactions to The Rise of Skywalker.
On that note, insider Daniel Richtman claims that while Disney want the Star Wars timeline to move forward and focus on a post-Skywalker galaxy, Lucasfilm are reportedly still not finished looking to the past and want to explore more of it in future projects. If that leads to a Knights of the Old Republic movie or an exploration of the deeper reaches of canon, then fans would be on board, but if the end result is more prequels and spinoffs for established names, then the backlash will only grow towards Lucasfilm’s lack of originality and focus on playing it far too safe.
