Star Wars: Latest on the The Sequel Trilogy’s Fate
Let’s take a look at what we know about the fate of the Star Wars sequel movies.
The last few weeks have seen a ton of news and rumors swirling around what is to become of the Star Wars Sequel movies. Disgruntled fans have been rallying around a rumor going around saying that the newer movies would get reconnected out of canon. This being the internet it’s hard to really tell how large this group of fans is of course. Since the rumor broke a few weeks ago there has been a ton of chatter, though little of it is official, on the subject. Today lets take a look at some of the newer stuff thats come out about it what it tells us about the likely fate of the sequel movies.
The Rumor Update
As I discussed a couple weeks ago, the rumor was started over on the Overlord DVD channel. The rumor came from unnamed sources and discussed an internal struggle within Lucasfilm over the fate of the new movies. The theory states that a group of people within the company who did not like the current direction of Star Wars or the new movies were set to take power. When they did so they would in effect retcon the Sequel movies out of canon, making them some kind of alternate timeline event. While Overlord DVD’s sources are unnamed the channel has been correct with some rumors in the past.
Since then there has been a lot of additional articles on the subject. Few of them add any new sources from the Overlord DVD channel. I couple, such as this video from YouTube channel Midnight’s Edge have added additional details from more unnamed sources. These unknown new sources added more to the existing rumors. They state that people within Lucasfilm went behind the director’s back to sneak easter eggs into Rise of Skywalker to help set up several ways that the trilogy could be retconed.
This rumor in effect states that not only is there open division within Lucasfilm about the direction but a whole secret underground network working to destroy the movies. It feels that this faction indeed was actively doing this during the production and filming of Rise of Skywalker. Aside from unnamed sources the rumor doesn’t give any evidence that any of this is true. It doesn’t state who or how many people oppose the current direction of things. It doesn’t even really point out any concrete easter eggs that could lead to the retconning. The only one even obliquely mentioned is the Dark Rey scene which is pretty thin stuff.
Dumb Rumors That No One Believes
Since the rumors broke, the internet has been filled with a ton of articles such as, this, this or this, pointing out how silly the rumors are. Not only do they not have any evidence, they are super far fetched and go against common sense. No matter how much some people don’t like the new movies, myself included, they were undeniably a massive commercial success and have legions of fans. The fact is that pretty much no one with any knowledge of the industry buys these rumors. While Disney has scaled back on Sequel Era merchandise and projects, they are still making them and tying events into them. Retconning the movies would also mean they’d have to scrap everything put out int he last 5+ years. It simply won’t happen.
So What Is the Fate of the Sequels?
The newest rumor going around, and one that I think has some truth, is that Disney is going to kind of ignore the Sequels for a while. I talked about this a while back when I mentioned that Disney appeared to be abandoning the era. The fact is that Disney doesn’t need to get rid of the Sequels at all. They have a ton of other time periods to tell stories in. We’ve got the Mandelorian set post Return of the Jedi but not really in the Sequel era. We’ve the High Republic Era set hundreds of years ago. We’ve the upcoming Bad Batch TV show that seems to be set during the rise of the Empire. The Cassian Andor show set during the Rebellion Era. An Obi-wan show set…. sometime? Likely during the “Dark Times” between the OT and the Prequels.
There is SO much Star Wars out there (and it’s making Disney buckets of money) that they can tell stories for the next 20 years with out having to go back to the Sequel era or characters. They can fill in the massive rich background and history of Star Wars. They can focus on other characters in other parts of the Galaxy during the “Sequel Era”. Sure the movies where horrible, and their events kind of ruin somethings, like the Skywalkers, but there is so much more to Star Wars than that.
So what is the fate of the movies? Well I think all signs point to them being put on the back burner for now. Stories directly related to them, or continuing their “plots” will be few for a while. They will still be canon. We will still get stuff relating to them and the era here and there, but the focus will be on other things. We’ll get a slew of new movies at some point that are unconnected to them, as was always the plan. Background stories will then slowly started rehabilitating them, adding details that helps make them a little better. And who knows, maybe in 10 or 20 years, when the kids who grew up with them as their first Star Wars movies age up, they’ll come back into prominence. That’s to some degree what’s happened with the Prequels (which are far better overall). Eventually I suspect everything will come back around in the end.
Let us know what you think is going to happen to the sequels, down in the comments!
