Star Wars. What is it good for? Is it absolutely nothing? In 2026, that seems like a question tough to answer.
There’s an actual new Star Wars film coming out for the first time in seven whole years: The Mandalorian & Grogu, released here in late May, a feature-length spin-off from The Mandalorian streaming series.
But is anyone actually excited about it? I mean, really? After a bizarre Super Bowl commercial that had the two main stars mimicking a vintage Budweiser advert, I think any lingering pulses probably flatlined and floated off into the spirit realm.
When it comes to bucket-head and the frog-baby, there are two schools of thought; in one corner are those that love everything about it and love that little puppet thing and all the joy he brings when he lifts up cups. Whereas there are others, and I include myself in this particular corner, that feel it’s a show that started off with strong, fun and fresh ideas, but by the end of the last season was an Easter egg generator – pumping out fresh “member-berries” for 45-50 year old men, and even getting into the annoying world of deepfakes for the sake of it for shame.
What started off in 2019 as Kung-Fu in space ended up as basically Fraggle Rock. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, by the end of the third season I didn’t feel that there was anything else that could be done with it. It was really running on fumes, and Moff Gideon’s grand plan (Stormtroopers covered in laser-resistant Beskar armour) in the last series was so outrageously stupid that it felt like a good time to just pack it all up and move on.
This new film very much feels like Bart Simpson standing on that empty stage, surrounded by broken vases, giving us a low-energy final reading of “I didn’t do it” to confused and tired faces. I could be wrong, it could be a masterpiece, but sadly the trailers suggest not, and the buzz online feels more like a cadaveric spasm.
So is Star Wars in trouble?
In a word, no. Last spring, season two of Andor came along at a perfect time and gave fans something they’d been missing for a long time: hope.
At the conclusion of 2024’s The Acolyte; a series primarily about Jedi, it was immediately clear that Jedi are, for want of a better word, crap. They simply have no “rizz”, as the kids say.
They’re a bunch of boring hippies that sit around in dark rooms endlessly talking about things, and essentially doing nothing. Even when they do leap into action, it’s a cold, over-choreographed sword fight that holds little to no interest. These are space-monks who spend the vast majority of their time wandering around the galaxy mumbling about caution and giving bad vibes, while the closest they get to combat is opening a door with a pointed finger.
Jedi should be the Space SAS storming in when some bad galactic types need a good shoeing. Instead, these dullards toddle into situations and immediately reach for the herbal tea and the Jake Humphrey podcast. While the show had good intentions and an interesting angle, it was just a total slog.
But then came the return of Tony Gilroy’s peerless Andor, a prequel to the movie Rogue One (2016), which was itself a prequel to 1977’s Star Wars (now known as Episode IV – A New Hope). It was a breath of fresh space air. The reason being that there were no Jedi, no lightsabers, and no magic. Just a world that felt like it had dropped right out of the bag of A New Hope; with ‘70s-centric production design, new ships, old faces, all too prescient allegories, amazing central performances, and incredible writing.
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This is what Star Wars could, and should, be; a vast knife cutting the stale and familiar wide open; showing the viewer what lies inside, what goes on in the layers and what lies behind the twirling moustaches. Not just treading over the same ground.
It was putting the rancid state of the all-conquering Empire on full display for all to see, while also showing the Rebellion forming within this broken, corrupt and evil galaxy like an incubating egg. There was not one scene of a hippy sat in the corner meditating about problems.
There were, however, thrilling heists, heart-wrenching human struggles, brutal dystopia, and one of the best ending monologues in TV for many a year, and that’s before you get to season two, which ended up laying a perfect path to Rogue One – another fan favourite for similar reasons.
So with the TV side of things looking in better health, there is a lot of damage control to take care of on the big screen.
Star Wars Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker (2019) was a proper, bloody awful mess, so the lack of cinema representation is understandable. There had to be a time to contemplate where this massive machine can go next – to turn the tanker and set a new course. They’d resurrected the monster, sure, but with that monster comes the fans, and the fan-appeasing course-correction they took with it was so jarring and confusing, that it basically left every side of that community displeased.
Everyone who liked The Last Jedi (2017) felt betrayed by the cowardice of abandoning the new threads Rian Johnson pulled, and everyone that didn’t just felt it took every easy decision possible in order to try to appease the wrong people (Reddit people). The Last Jedi was no masterpiece by any means, but it was trying something, whereas IX was just utterly craven – a soulless and pathetic stab, with no idea how to end a trilogy, never mind a “saga”. The only thing it demonstrated was a genuine paucity of ambition on everyone’s part.
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But there are moves afoot. Dave Filoni (George Lucas’s protege of sorts and guardian of the lore) and Lynwen Brennan (business and operational guru) are now in charge of all things Lucasfilm. This feels like a smart move, a fresh start, and in the case of Filoni, hopefully continuity – and not a set of circumstances where another trilogy is building its own plane mid-flight again.
There is also another Star Wars film coming in 2027 – the Ryan Gosling/Shawn Levy helmed Starfighter, which is a self-contained story that takes place after the events of Episode IX, so a space in time that feels so far unexplored.
There are positive signs of light buried among the black stars, and some peace after so much war. So what is it good for? It can be everything.
Star Wars is always at its best when it builds and shows a world, not just a lightsaber. It needs steady hands, not reactive fan appeasers. It needs to remember it has the depths of space to explore – because for too long it has felt like the narrowest of corridors.
The Mandalorian & Grogu is released on May 22. John Rain is the host of podcast Smershpod
