Star Wars: Visions has come swooping in with its second season as of Star Wars Day 2023, reminding Star Wars fans old and new exactly why last year’s inaugural season scored so high with critics and audiences alike; indeed, the second round of the riveting anthology series is bursting with personality (or perhaps personalities, plural) and proves once again exactly what heights the franchise can reach when a diverse group of voices gets involved.
And, as eager viewers will soon find out if they haven’t already, one of those heights happens to be an entire Skywalker Saga’s worth of emotional devastation packed into a crisp 14 minutes thanks to animation studio Cartoon Saloon (The Secret of Kells, Wolfwalkers). We knew Visions was going to go hard once again, but we certainly weren’t expecting a masterclass of Star Wars horror in “Screecher’s Reach,” the second entry in the nine-episode season.
By all accounts, the internet can’t get enough of the Irish studio’s contribution to the season, which follows a young blue-collar girl named Daal who journeys to a haunted cave with her friends, desperate to inject something new into her rather monotonous life.
Of course, being steeped in brushes of horror, it wouldn’t be getting the praise it’s getting if it didn’t leave its audiences absolutely heartbroken with an extra helping of nightmare fuel to boot.
And since we’re above posting same-day spoilers, let’s just say that the most die-hard sectors of the Star Wars fandom will have an extra-special treat to chew on in this episode.
If there was an awards season exclusively for Visions, it seems safe to say that “Screecher’s Reach” would sweep in a rather spectacular fashion. We may not watch anthologies to pit the episodes against one another, but we should always give credit where credit is due, and it seems due in spades here.
Star Wars: Visions is available to stream on Disney Plus.