I was listening to my friends at Gold Squadron Gays podcast and they made a good point in the last episode: The Bad Batch Finale of the third season. When she Skeleton Crew Trailer, one of the hosts, Charles, mentioned that we are nearing the end of what he called “Phase One” of Star Wars TV. Of all the shows originally announced for 2020, Skeleton Crew And Andor Season 2 will end this era next year. What would the future of Star Wars TV look like after Andor? I was already thinking about writing an article about this conversation because it is a good question to think about. But then that night, The Acolyte was cancelled.

So let’s discuss the future of Star Wars on television and how it is looking increasingly bleak.

In 2020, Lucasfilm announced 11 new television series at Disney Investor Day. This announcement was exciting, especially during a global pandemic. Two years later Skeleton Crew would join the list. The future for Star Wars on the small screen looked bright.

Of the twelve announced series, eight have already premiered or are about to debut or will end in 2025. Ranger of the New Republic was canceled because an actress ruined her career (it should have been made into the Carson Teva and Zeb Orrelios show, but that’s just my opinion). Lando is supposed to be made into a movie, but since Lucasfilm has a penchant for announcing movies only to drop them, I won’t believe it until I see it. Who knows what will happen to A droid storysince there have been no official updates since 2021.

The Mandalorian was an instant hit, although it is important to keep the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in mind. As people were unable to leave their homes and sought escapism, television ratings increased across the board. That is not to say that The Mandalorian doesn’t deserve it; it’s a great show and premiered months before the pandemic hit. However, the television landscape four to five years ago was incredibly different than it is today, when series with supposedly lower viewership, such as The Acolyte And Andor, had to compete.

The state of television is incredibly bad right now. Most streaming services are struggling and we’re seeing shows being cancelled everywhere. Or worse, deleted forever. I’m still mad I never got to watch pasture.

Also, the 8-episode structure of many shows these days doesn’t help in getting a new series off the ground. There’s not much time to establish new characters, build a story for the long run (but not to long wait if it is cancelled), build a world and immediately reach huge streaming numbers. Not every series is a success story like Hazbin Hotel, which launched with a built-in fan base thanks to the indie pilot and its ongoing sister show, available for free on YouTube A damn good bossA show like The Acolyte had to basically start from scratch. Sure, the same The Mandalorian. But Mando, again, was set in a very different television landscape and in a somewhat familiar time period between the original and sequel trilogies. Mando didn’t have to do as much groundwork in world-building as the High Republic series. Now that Lucasfilm is trying to move away from the television model and get back to its movies, we may not get many more chances with new characters.

I miss the days when a show had seasons of 22 episodes. The bad batch was really lucky to have as many episodes as it did, especially given the increasingly dire state of animation. It may be a long time before we get another animated series like this. I fully expect more short anthologies like Stories and less like Star Wars Rebelswhich are more long-form. It will most likely depend on what happens with the Animation Guild, which is currently negotiating with the AMPTP and will resume in September. If things fall apart, animation will go on strike, just like SAG and WGA rightly did last year. That would definitely put any new Star Wars animation projects on hold, except probably Star Wars Visionsas the focus of this series is on studios outside the US. However, we will have to wait and see.

Lucasfilm and Disney are not other streaming platforms like AMC, which offer their diverse series like Interview with a vampire. AMC also announced The Mayfair Witches a second season, although it does not have the numbers or popularity of its sister series. AMC has invested a lot of money in the Immortal Universe to bring all of Anne Rice’s works to the screen. With a third show about the Talamasca, AMC is willing to work for these series and give them time to breathe and grow. These shows do not achieve the same numbers as The Walking Dead and its millions of spin-offs. However, AMC gave him a chance, and Interview with a vampire is the second best-selling series behind its powerful zombie franchise. It’s one of the highest-rated series on television heading into its third season. It’s like when you give things time to grow and invest in them, good things happen!

Star Wars Celebration Japan in 2025 just got a lot more interesting, to say the least. The movies will likely get a big focus since there are so many in the works. Things might be less for Star Wars TV in terms of new announcements. If there’s one thing Lucasfilm and Disney have shown over the past few years, it’s that they’re not patient enough to let a show grow and find an audience. It’s officially a numbers game.

Unless it is a huge success right from the start like The Mandalorianthey will be fired. Depending on how negotiations with the Animation Guild go, they could already be in the middle of a strike or have just come out of one. Lucasfilm also keeps drawing the wrong lessons from its alleged failure. Solo: A Star Wars Story failed because the film had to be shot twice and that was incredibly expensive. The Book of Boba Fett was kidnapped in the middle of the show to The Mandalorianwhich hurt the title character. Boba Fett had so little to do in his own series. The Acolyte introduced audiences to a relatively new era of the franchise. It needed time to grow.

The future of Star Wars television looks bleak from my perspective. I have no hope that we will get anything new, unique or creative. Lucasfilm and Disney have proven that they would rather have a deep fake AI of Luke Skywalker than invest in recasting those actors (again, the wrong lesson from Solo. Alden Ehrenreich was not the problem with this film). They want to play it safe and use already established stories instead of letting new ideas grow and take root. I can only imagine that the next animated series will be a spin-off of The Clone Warsthat has a tight grip on the franchise (think of how Disney executives literally buried their gays from a previous animated series).

I’m officially no longer excited about the future of Star Wars TV. Why should I care when everything new, innovative and groundbreaking is being cancelled? And I don’t think they’re going to prove me wrong any time soon.