What Exactly Was Star Wars Detours?
In the first decade of this century, George Lucas loosened his grip around his franchise and started to not only allow but also embrace new kinds of stories in his sandbox: spoofs and parodies. This led to the LEGO Star Wars shorts, a Phineas and Ferb version of A New Hope, and the Robot Chicken and Family Guy trilogies. But also to Star Wars Detours.
In an interview in June of 2009, the maker mentioned this never released animated show that they were working on besides The Clone Wars (this was several years before the announcement of Star Wars Rebels!). Before the show got its official title Lucas himself several times referred to it as "Squishies," probably referencing the cute little toys with the big heads, but more likely to the old "squash and stretch" principle of the animation shows of old.
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Then, three years later, at Star Wars Celebration VI in Orlando, a panel called "Super-Secret Star Wars Panel with Todd, Seth, and Matt" unfolded. "Todd" was animator and director Todd Grimes, "Matt" was Matthew Senreich, and "Seth" was Seth Green, and with no future Star Wars movie announcements, this panel was one of the highlights of this Celebration. And the panel got even bigger when George Lucas appeared on stage to discuss his new project.
And this was exactly what it was. Lucas didn't just let Grimes, Senreich, and Green (the latter two had created Star Wars Robot Chicken a few years earlier) do an animated Star Wars show; no, he invited them to Skywalker Ranch to closely work with them every morning until noon for several weeks. Maybe he saw in the trio another new generation who, like Dave Filoni, could teach how to make Star Wars.
The only premise Lucas gave them was to stay in the timeframe between Episode III and Episode IV and to push the boundaries of what they dared to do with the show, both in style and in wackiness.
All stories would take place either on Coruscant, on the Death Star, or on Tatooine and the initial plan was to include none of the main Star Wars characters but to tell stories about the everyday citizens of the galaxy. But as development continued, the Grimes, Senreich, and Green started to include more and more characters from both the original and the prequel trilogy: Or at least a certain version of them, like a Darth Vader, who is stuck in middle management of the Empire, a grumpy old Emperor, a teenage Princess Leia with ridiculous big hair buns and the attitude of a Paris Hilton-like It-girl and even an animated George Lucas himself.
The show also included quite an illustrious cast of voice actors, with Anthony Daniels, Billy Dee Williams, and Ahmed Best reprising their roles from the movies, some The Clone Wars royalty with Dee Bradley Baker, Cat Taber or Jennifer Hale, as well as Seth McFarlane or "Weird Al" Yankovic.
On this day in Orlando, it was also revealed that there were already 26 finished episodes, with 13 more in production. That meant one and a half-season of half an hour-long episodes (including the commercials), each consisting of three roughly 6 minutes long shorts. This was also the day when Squishies officially became Detours, and the first trailer was released.
The show's look was radically different from The Clone Wars, with all characters having enormous heads, small bodies, and often some exaggerated features, like the aforementioned hair buns of Leia or Vader with a much too big helmet.
Judging from the trailer and other material surfacing since 2012, Detours' kind of humor was not too far off from what Green and Senreich had used for Robot Chicken but more attuned to a younger audience. As George Lucas put it during the Celebration panel: "It's a little young for the older people and a little old for the younger people."
Lucas's release strategy for the show was similar to the one that had worked for The Clone Wars: start producing, and when you have a bunch of episodes ready, find a network to sell it to.
Unfortunately (for Detours), Lucas also worked on selling his company to Disney in 2012, and in March of 2013, Lucasfilm officially announced a shift of strategy for Lucasfilm animation, leading not only to the discontinuation of The Clone Wars but also to a postponement of Detours "to a later date." By then, the company had revealed its plan for a sequel trilogy, and they probably feared that a goofy cartoon series was not the best way to introduce a young audience to this new era of Star Wars.
In the years after, both Green and Senreich have on several occasions expressed their beliefs that the show would be released in some form sooner or later, but with each passing year, their hopes have dwindled. Though Lucasfilm filed a new trademark for the show in 2018, so much new content and characters have come out since 2015 that parts of the show would have to be reworked and probably new episodes made, including characters from the Sequel Trilogy or the TV shows. And it doesn't seem that the company is willing to invest additional money in this 10-year-old project.
Still, in recent years Lucasfilm has released some of its non-canon content (like the 2D Clone Wars series or the Droids and Ewoks cartoons) under the "Star Wars Vintage" banner, so there is still hope that the more than 30 finished episodes of the last Star Wars project, in which George Lucas was deeply involved will someday be made available to the public.
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Source(s): Screencrush