Here comes a giant, true cliche:
In 2019, Star Wars changed forever.
The end of trilogy of trilogies with The Rise of Skywalker gave way to something even more radical: live-action, weekly, episodic Star Wars on the small screen. The Mandalorian was a revolution, sparking five years of detours, expansions, wish fulfillment, and surprise.
Star Wars was never thus. There were a couple of Ewok movies in the 1980s, and of course, animated series, but live-action Star Wars of any real quality was the provenance only of the big screen. Now, with six live-action shows having aired, one on the way, and the first of them to meet an early ending, it’s a good time to give the Streaming Star Wars experiment a once-over.
Here is, to my eye, what this revolution has reaped and sown:
Inundation
There’s just a lot more Star Wars in the world.
As much as I love it, and I have an insatiable appetite for it, inevitably, more can begin to mean a little bit less. New Star Wars coming out with something new every couple of months, hours of it, means each individual new show feels less like a super special cultural event and more like a part of the general media landscape. Or, maybe, an event for Star Wars fans in particular, as opposed to an event for, I don’t know, the United States.
Most young fans will never experience the torturous wait and the fantastic relief of finally seeing something you’ve been waiting for over a decade, or even just (!) three years. It’s hard to describe, if you haven’t experienced it, the peaks and valleys of hype and expectation that all that scarcity inspired. It can’t be recreated that in this type of media environment very easily.
There was a time when a new Star Wars movie, like it or not, felt like an event for everyone. Barack Obama ended a press conference with “I’ve got to go watch Star Wars” when The Force Awakens came out. Now, in a more atomized ‘content’ universe, and with the series designed appeal to the faithful Celebration Set (Ahsoka definitely felt like this!), Star Wars streaming makes Star Wars feel a little less rare and precious.
Is it all downside? Heck no. I feel like I was taking a walk in a meadow, thinking back on a happy life, when I tripped into a hidden cave full of sparkling gemstones. So much is suddenly here that I never knew I even wanted or could have! But I’m rare: if you put any Star Wars thing in front of me, I will eat it and ask for seconds and thirds. Most people, though, find rare things more precious than common ones. It’s just how value works in most people’s minds.
Experimentation
Is Star Wars a vision quest? A Wagnerian Saga? Is it Tolkien in space, is it CS Lewis? A 70s style retro sci-fi crime drama? Do you want to see Lizzo in Star Wars? Do you want to see digitally de-aged Mark Hamill brandishing a green lightsaber? Ready for a hundred Mandalorians battling stormtroopers with jetpacks? The suburbs of Star Wars? What Star Wars ice cream pops look like? Do you want to see Star Wars fisherman? Do you want to see a Wookie Jedi? An art gallery in Coruscant? Star Wars has never so much live-action room to just try stuff. Most of the experimentation in the past has been relegated to books or comics or video games. Now, we’ve seen new styles, new voices, and new perspectives emerge that the films, with the massive budgets and long lead times, just couldn’t have supported in the same way.
That means we’ve seen things that maybe we never would have on film: live action Ahsoka, Ezra and Sabine; an exploration of life on Coruscant post-ROTJ; Sand People using sign language; Darth Plagueis himself; a lightsaber bled on screen; Dark Troopers; a kangaroo court; a prison break; a Maori dance in the desert; Amy Sedaris as a Tatooine mechanic. Experimentation is everywhere, sometimes just seeming to test what works and discover what doesn’t. This highlights both the malleability and the inscrutability of Star Wars and a definable thing. And it’s so much fun.
Fragmentation
Star Wars streaming series have not been a cohesive, single story told in a linear fashion. In fact, the series are from all over the Star Wars timeline: Obi-Wan Kenobi is Episode III 1/2, but Ahsoka is a part of a what sometimes feels like a completely different story that exists outside the Skywalker Saga. Andor feels like a self-contained mini-saga about a young revolutionary, which ends with Rogue One as it’s third season. These things are released, seemingly, when they’re ready to exist, not to follow one another in a timeline.