Will Star Wars: Visions Set the Seeds for Post-Rise of Skywalker?
Since the lackluster reception of Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker - both critically and commercially - Disney and Lucasfilm have been noticeably quiet about the Star Wars timeline after Rey proclaimed herself a Skywalker. None of the current Marvel comic series takes place during the sequel era, nor are any books announced for this timeline, and it seems that not one of the many Star Wars TV series that have been announced for Disney+ will deal with the aftermath of the Battle of Exegol. But for those who desperately want to get a glimpse of what’s the state of the galaxy after the end of the Skywalker saga, there is a spark of hope:
During a press conference in Tokyo on July 14, Lucasfilm revealed their plans for and provided a first look at Star Wars: Visions, a nine-episode animated show, that is completely done in anime style and created by famous Japanese animation studios. In coming up with the stories for Visions, Lucasfilm gave the creators a lot of freedom: they were neither limited to existing characters nor bound to any specific timeline of the Star Wars universe. And so, the only established characters that are as yet confirmed to appear in the show are Jabba the Hutt and Boba Fett.
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One of the episodes - titled "The Elder" - will take place before the events of The Phantom Menace, while two of the animated shorts will be set after Episode IX: "The Twins" tells a story about a girl and her twin brother, who are raised by the remnants of the Empire/First Order on the Dark Side, and deals with how far the boy would go to save his sister. The other story that takes place in the post-sequel era is called "The Ninth Jedi" and is produced by Production IG, the company that is also responsible for Ghost in the Shell and the anime sequence of Kill Bill.
"The Ninth Jedi" was originally intended to be two separate stories: the first one dealt with the daughter of a lighstabersmith (a completely new concept in the Star Wars universe), who ought to deliver the weapons to a group of Jedi, long after the guardians of peace and justice have fallen into legend. The other story evolved around the tale of eight warriors, who come together to find out if they are indeed Force-sensitive and can trust one another. These two stories were later brought together to “create something really epic and special,” as Josh Rimes, one of the executive producers of the show, puts it.
Judging from the brief synopsis of the two episodes, it seems that "The Twins" will be set closer to the events of Episode IX, as there are still some remnants of the Empire left, while "The Ninth Jedi" could take place decades, maybe centuries, after the Skywalker saga, with maybe no explanation on what has happened since then.
"We all love stories of the Jedi and lightsabers, but what became of the Jedi Knights after the movie series? My story is about that," says Kenji Kamiyama, the director of "The Ninth Jedi."
Which leads to the question that usually arises when something completely new is introduced into the Star Wars universe: Is it even canon?
Lucasfilm hasn’t provided an answer to this yet (and maybe never will), but unlike Star Wars Tales, the Dark Horse comic series from the early 2000s, it seems that Visions won’t be explicitly deemed as non-canon from the get-go. It rather seems that the nine episodes will be - let’s call it for a lack of a better term - “out-of-canon,” meaning that they may or may not end up being part of the official timeline, maybe like some of the stories in the From a Certain Point of View books or George Mann’s stories in Myths and Fables and Dark Legends. It doesn’t seem that the stories are closely linked to any specific events of the Star Wars timeline, but they maybe also won’t contradict them and may be seen more as tales that are told around a bonfire late in the evening.
Lucasfilm's intention with Visions seems more to show how Star Wars would look and feel if its stories had originated in the Far East (probably as a nod to George Lucas’ admiration for the work of Akira Kurosawa), rather than to actually expand the current lore. But still, until there is an official confirmation that all or at least some of the stories are non-canon "The Ninth Jedi" will be our first glimpse into the (distant) future of this Star Wars timeline.
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Source(s): IGN, StarWars.com