Outwith a couple of notable exceptions, Star Wars: Visions is a completely fresh take on the franchise, which is why the Disney Plus animated anthology has proven so popular with both critics and fans. The intertwining saga of the Skywalker and Palpatine families has been done to death across countless forms of media, so a clean break from continuity was the best way to go.
The “Tatooine Rhapsody” segment features Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt, but those are the only household names from Star Wars lore to make an appearance. Instead, the focus was on crafting stories audiences have never seen before in corners of the universe that had never been visited, and Visions definitely has the potential to become a recurring fixture of the Disney Plus schedule.
In a new interview with The Direct, executive producer Kanako Shirasaki explained what he wanted from the series, detailing why he wasn’t interested in any stories featuring Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker or any other iconic characters.
“We still asked the studios to please explore their own original chapters in the Star Wars galaxy and tell their own stories. I think that’s how you see the diversity in the chapters as well. In Tatooine Rhapsody, you see Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt, but they already had the rock band with very interesting characters, and they have their own story. And it is such a fun chapter to play around. We were able to receive so many diverse stories from each studio and different directors and scriptwriters.
These creators are huge Star Wars fans, which was very fortunate, and they really understand Star Wars storytelling, like, what’s the core essence of Star Wars. So, they combined that with their own storytelling from their own background, and so that’s how we got these nine very distinctive shorts. So I think that worked pretty well.”
One of the major bugbears people had with the Sequel Trilogy was the rampant desire to tie everything together and have it explicitly spelled out that it’s all connected. The end result split opinion straight down the middle, as The Rise of Skywalker concluded in a messy concoction of half-baked or abandoned plot threads dripping in nostalgia and fan service. Luckily, Star Wars: Visions isn’t going to repeat those mistakes.