The Ways That 'Star Wars' Fans Would Help Fix The Franchise
People have long speculated what they would do if they were in charge for a day. Whether it be their employer, the boss of their favorite creative studio, or the leader of the free world, everybody thinks they know exactly what to do to fix things: reinstate casual Fridays, complete the unfinished The Clone Wars episodes and release them as the "The Lost Missions Volume 2," or sue for world peace. While fans are always certain that these ideas are in the best interest of all involved, there are always dissenters. Especially in a fanbase as historically vocally divided as the Star Wars fanbase.
Recently YouTuber and podcast host Ally Cortés asked her Twitter audience what they would do as head of Lucasfilm. This generated plenty of ideas for changes to the galaxy, new TV shows, rebooting the sequels, and much much more. Here we will examine some of the most compelling ways fans would change Star Wars if given the keys to the kingdom for a day.
Among the many tiresome critiques of the sequel trilogy that have been splattered all over internet comment sections for the past six years, there are a few valuable insights that could certainly have improved the trilogy. Several of these ideas popped up in Cortés Twitter thread asking fans to improve the universe. Many of them centered around Finn, an underutilized and underdeveloped character.
While he had a good start in The Force Awakens, Finn was relegated to a B-plot storyline in The Last Jedi, sent on a fool's errand along with Rose Tico. Abrams also showed no apparent interest in continuing Finn's original trajectory in The Rise of Skywalker as he once again feels like a bit of an afterthought in the film, besides vague and unconvincing hints that he's Force-sensitive. While some fans feel that the sequel trilogy should be given the stinky boot, burned to the ground, and remade from scratch, there are other ways to retroactively improve a controversial film series.
Just as The Clone Wars fleshed out underdeveloped characters and storylines in the prequel trilogy, many fans on Twitter believe that Finn could be developed with his own show. One Twitter user responding to Cortés called for a Disney+ show chronicling Finn's journey to becoming a Jedi Master in the wake of The Rise of Skywalker. Seeing Rey and Finn return the Jedi Order to guardians of peace and justice would be a well-deserved epilogue after the final defeat of Palpatine and the Sith Eternal. While the stories may be smaller in scope, breaking up slave trading Zygerrians, defeating pirates, and getting death stick dealers to go home and rethink their lives, it would be a good opportunity to see Jedi doing what they are meant to do.
As surprising as it may seem, a good template for this show would be the relationship between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn in the years of Kenobi's apprenticeship. Over the course of numerous comic books and novels, this master and apprentice duo travel across the galaxy attempting to help those beings in need and protecting the innocent. A series focused on Rey and Finn undoing the travesties of the First Order would be a good platform for some long overdue development on their part.
Needless to say, the less than savory characters of the galaxy also drew plenty of attention on Cortés thread. This includes calling for more appearances of the biggest of Star Wars baddies, Darth Vader. One user, if head of Lucasfilm, would produce a trilogy of movies in between Revenge of the Sith and Rogue One, detailing the deplorable actions of Lord Vader as he hunted down and destroyed the few surviving Jedi.
While there is certainly plenty of appeal to seeing more Rogue One-like Darth Vader scenes where he lays absolute waste to a squad of outmatched rebel fighters, culminating in duels with Order 66 survivors such as Quinlan Vos, there are already those who worry that the market is Vader-saturated. While Star Wars is ultimately the story of the Skywalker family, recent stories have begun branching away from the storylines and characters found in the Skywalker Saga. The Mandalorian is definitively one of the most successful shows of the past few years, and it took 16 episodes before a Skywalker appeared for a brief cameo. Combine this with Vader's appearances in Rebels, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and a very possible arrival in The Bad Batch, there's already plenty of the Dark Lord to go around.
Other popular villains that fans have tabbed for their own shows include Boba Fett and Mara Jade. While Boba is obviously already secure in his own show as The Book of Boba Fett is expected to debut in December, fans want to see the events of the comics brought to the small screen yet again. In a current run of Marvel comics called War of the Bounty Hunters, Fett is pursued across the galaxy by rival bounty hunters. These hostile mercenaries are determined to wrestle the carbon-frozen Han Solo away from Fett and be the ones to deliver the goods to Jabba, collecting a handsome bounty and gaining the favor of the Hutt Cartel.
One of the fans responding to Cortés called for this story to make its way to Disney+ as a limited run series. Called "Rogue Two" (a curious title choice at best), this series would center around Boba Fett, alone and on the run with his valuable cargo, waylaid on all sides by rivals such as Bossk or Dengar. While this would be a fascinating point in Boba's life, and would give more screen time to the iconic carbonite-encased Han Solo, it seems highly unnecessary given the imminent release of The Book of Boba Fett and the comic series already covering this series of events.
The introduction of Mara Jade is one that Expanded Universe fans have long been calling for. The one-time Imperial assassin and eventual wife of Luke Skywalker was a powerful wildcard in the universe. With her red hair and purple saber, she would be a striking visage on screen if played by the right actress and written with the same care and development as other Disney+ projects. Many people online have fancast Brie Larson as Mara Jade, much to this writer's chagrin. While Larson, one of the many talented people Disney has a history with, will almost certainly make her debut in Star Wars eventually, Mara Jade is not the role for her. Larson's calm, quiet, confident demeanor simply does not coincide with the fiery intensity of an espionage agent-turned-Jedi.
With the storyline of the sequel trilogy already set, it would also be difficult to envision a setting where the Jade and Skywalker wedding takes place and is never spoken of in the sequels. If the death of his wife was a contributing factor in Luke's exile, it almost certainly would have been brought up to Rey when he was recounting why he left the galaxy and the Force behind. Given the current state of Star Wars, it seems prudent for Mara Jade to play her role as a villain with no romantic attachment to Luke Skywalker.
Source(s): Deseret