Is 'Star Wars' Becoming Too Reliant On Cameos?
Warning: Spoilers for Chapter 6: From The Desert Comes A Stranger
It is starting to look like everybody knows everybody in Star Wars. Over the last few years, we have seen the franchise bring back many of its most iconic characters in current movies, shows, comics, novels, and video games. From original trilogy staples like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader to prequel mainstays like Yoda and Darth Maul. Of course, this makes sense in many respects. If you have gotten some of the most recognizable characters in pop culture, you might as well use them, right? But the question I want to talk about today is whether or not Star Wars has become too reliant on resurrecting these characters rather than focusing on new ones.
One of the most controversial recent cameos I can think of is the inclusion of Maul (formerly Darth) near the end of Solo: A Star Wars Story. This appearance from the renegade Sith Lord has remained polarizing to this day for a variety of reasons. For starters, it was quite out of the blue and didn't have much buildup in the film itself. While this certainly added to the surprise factor, it seemed to come out of nowhere and interrupt the narrative for the sake of a shocking reveal. There is also the fact that many mainstream Star Wars fans and casual audiences still don't know that Maul survived his lightsaber duel at the end of The Phantom Menace. So while fans of The Clone Wars and Rebels animated series may not have batted an eye at Maul still kicking in Han Solo's time, those who don't keep up with the expanded universe were left confused and possibly even taken out of the movie they were watching.
Now, this isn't to say that every cameo has been like this. Examples such as Darth Vader in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Yoda in The Last Jedi, and even Luke Skywalker in The Mandalorian are all examples of cameos that enhance the story they're in while not alienating viewers who don't consume every piece of Star Wars media. However, for me personally, there have been many more recent examples of cameos that have felt like they were mostly just there for either a surprise or the sake of increasing a film or episode's viewership. Aside from Maul's previously mentioned cameo, there has also been Lando Calrissian's superfluous appearance in Rebels, along with Wedge Antilles, Hondo Ohnaka, and Rukh, also in Rebels, Bib Fortuna's seemingly inconsequential cameo in The Bad Batch, the Delta Squad's random inclusion in The Clone Wars, Caleb Dume and Depa Bilaba (who could've just been any Jedi Master and Padawan) in The Bad Batch, and I would even argue Ahsoka Tano in The Mandalorian (who could've also been any Jedi survivor and didn't really need to be Ahsoka).
But the most recently released piece of Star Wars media that has had me scratching my head the most is The Book of Boba Fett's sixth episode. In "Chapter 6: From The Desert Comes A Stranger," we spend the majority of the episode's runtime with Din Djarin, Grogu, Luke Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano, R2-D2, Cobb Vanth, and the newly introduced Cad Bane. This is an episode of The Book of Boba Fett, right? So why are we spending so much time with characters established in other series? While I had similar issues with "Chapter 5: Return of the Mandalorian," that episode still managed to tell a compelling story that just so happened to feel more like an episode of The Mandalorian. But with the show's sixth episode, it just felt to me like Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau were so overly focused on delivering fan service with appearances from major characters that it ended up feeling more like a Star Wars reunion party than an actual narrative. While I did enjoy Cad Bane's introduction at the end of the episode, it felt like a scene that should've been tied in more directly to Boba Fett's story rather than just being a one-off scene at the end of an episode that had virtually nothing to do with Boba's character.
As Star Wars grows bigger and bigger with each passing year, it has the potential to tell new and exciting stories that the franchise has never even attempted before. It has the potential to grow, evolve, and tackle subjects and concepts that have previously eluded it. We've seen examples of these kinds of stories over the past few years. Movies like Rogue One and The Last Jedi, episodes like "A World Between Worlds" and "Chapter 2: The Tribes of Tatooine", novels like Ronin and Into the Dark, and comics like Doctor Aphra and The High Republic have all shown that Star Wars is capable of telling unique and imaginative stories with mostly new characters and worlds. I love Luke, Han, and Leia as much as anyone else. But Star Wars as a mythology is so much bigger than just a handful of iconic faces. More than anything, I just want Star Wars to focus on being new, ground-breaking, and innovative, just as George Lucas himself intended. Star Wars is taking its first steps into a larger world and I would rather it continue to move forward instead of moving back to resurrect its legends. In the words of Yoda, "We are what they grow beyond."
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