This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away: After the Sith Seized Power, There Is A New Hope in ‘Star Wars’ Fandom
Welcome back to a new edition of “This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away“, coming to you after I skipped last Sunday due to my being unavailable. I had in mind a bit of a darker piece, but the events of the past few days in the Star Wars online community have given me some hope, so I’ll be spinning it around. That being said, please, please, try to behave in the comment section. We’ve been striking down comments all week based on our own judgment of what we want to see in our feeds. You may redirect your complaints to someone else.
It’s an Acolyte-heavy piece tonight. Feel free to read through our spoiler discussions of episodes three and four, and also the SWNN Live! episodes of each one, respectively (here and here). There are also a couple of interesting companion pieces: Josh’s character spotlight series focused these past two weeks on all Sith lords, and Ki-Adi-Mundi. Let’s begin.
Five Things That May Have Flown Casual
- All things Acolyte: We’ll be taking a closer look at the impact on the Star Wars fandom that The Acolyte has had below, but allow me to start with a recap. The viewership numbers we got a couple weeks ago, and which I slightly complained about, were updated with the total of the first five days, giving us an apples-to-apples comparison with Ahsoka‘s numbers. Some of the interviews that have been popping up include conversations with Jodie Turner-Smith and Rebecca Henderson, and Leslye Headland talking about the all-female coven of witches. The score for the first four episodes is also available now on music streaming services. Finally, Claire Kiechel, who co-wrote the fourth episode, provided some explanations for the creative choices of the fourth episode — then, she made her account private.
- Star Wars creators talk non-Acolyte things: Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy provided some minor comments on her take on Star Wars, and how she’s been in conversations with many people at Lucasfilm, including Dave Filoni. Bryce Dallas Howard talks about directing an episode of Skeleton Crew. And the creators behind Ahsoka really want an Emmy nomination and have been doing the rounds lately. Here‘s their conversation with Josh Horowitz.
- Video game news: We got recently a good look at Star Wars: Outlaws, and video game influencers got an even more extended one. We also learned that the story of the game can be completed in about 30 hours. Bit Reactor also discussed briefly their upcoming video game.
- Big comic news: The current wave of Star Wars comics will end in September, as officially announced by Marvel. A new era will begin, possibly before the end of the year. In terms of new releases, Josh reviewed Jango Fett #4 and Darth Vader #47, and Tyler covered The High Republic #8. Viz Media has also announced a new The Edge of Balance manga featuring Yoda.
- The movie we need and the one we deserve: A sequel to Spaceballs is reportedly in the works. Not gonna lie, I’m not the biggest fan of the original — but come on. We need a really clever take on how to address the current state of the Star Wars franchise, from the top floors at Lucasfilm to the online toxicity. Josh Gad is heavily involved, and Mel Brooks is returning to produce.
After the Sith Seized Power, There Is A New Hope in Star Wars Fandom
I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything quite like these past couple of weeks. The Last Jedi opened the floodgates of hate and bigotry, of going after people for having different opinions. But The Acolyte feels something much bigger. Maybe it’s because of the increasingly tense political climate that has divided everyone over every minor thing. Maybe it’s an accumulation of everything else that’s happened in the fandom over the past few years. There seemed to be a sense of improvement around the time of The Mandalorian season 2 finale, but we’re way off the deep end now.
Usual disclaimer here, but it’s unfortunately one that is still needed. This is not directed towards people who dislike The Acolyte and raise their valid criticisms online. This is a work of art and as consumers, we’re allowed to respectfully disagree with the creative vision and/or execution. I, myself, am not the biggest fan of the series. I find myself on the more positive side of the spectrum for now — but if things don’t pick up in the second half of the series, I’ll be vastly disappointed with the final product.
It’s the unfortunate reality of judging a TV series on a weekly basis, especially when it’s as oddly fragmented as this one. It’s close to reviewing an episode scene by scene before seeing it all play out. The sum of its parts should account for more than the individual pieces — and for now, I’m keeping an open mind. Raising these concerns is valid. What is not accepted, and will never be, is a world filled with bullies and trolls deliberately targeting people for either sharing different opinions or for much more harmful reasons. If you feel entitled to protecting “George Lucas’ legacy”, whatever that means, how does spreading hate and harming people online help you with that? It feels like exactly what George wanted to prevent people from doing.
Collider‘s lead news editor, Maggie Lovitt, shared on Twitter that she’d received “DMs telling me to kill myself, rape threats”, and more. Wookieepiedia’s social media has also been inundated with their own wave of threats and death wishes after they changed the age of Ki-Adi Mundi following the release of the fourth episode of The Acolyte. Amandla Stenberg herself shared on June 19 a music video she made replying to all the racist comments she’d received from “fans” following the release of the show.
That sure seems like the perfect way to uphold George Lucas’ storytelling legacy, to follow Anakin’s example: Hate leads to suffering, suffering leads to the dark side. That’s the underlying message of Star Wars, isn’t it?
Obviously not. The situation became untenable after Wednesday, but if the franchise has taught us anything is that whenever we thought there’s too many of them, there are always more of us. In a real-life reenactment of the third act of The Rise of Skywalker, individual fans started sharing their voices on Twitter in a more loudly manner, by introducing themselves to the community with the hashtag #swtwt and sharing their personal stories with the franchise. No organized movement here. It’s not a navy. It’s just… people. And it snowballed from there.
From young fans like Kir or longer-time fans like Skip, we got to Jedi: Survivor co-writer Pete Stewart or Star Wars novelist Jason Fry. Jabba the Hutt himself, Eman Esfandi, also posted. Members of our own staff posted their own messages, as we also did as a brand. Our own Twitter timeline has since been purged from messages wishing the Lucasfilm leadership never existed to random people introducing themselves and sharing their love for a galaxy far, far away.
I don’t know if there’ll be a pushback from crying babies who got the spotlight taken away from them for a few days, but the next time you want to post something about The Acolyte or Star Wars you think it will be harmful for whoever reads it, you should probably remember again why you consider yourself to be a fan and how, exactly, you’re living up to the legacy of the franchise. It shouldn’t be necessary to explain that sharing your honest opinions is very different from sending rape threats, and the fact that you’re not seeing any in the comment sections you read doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Invalidating people’s experiences when dealing with hate of any kind is almost as bad as spreading it.
George Lucas sold the company well aware that Disney would make more stories and that these stories would be made by different artists with different views of the world. He himself changed his mind a lot over so many story threads and characters. Always remember the original one: “What I told you was true, from a certain point of view.”
We pride ourselves in having created a corner of the Internet where the hate isn’t as prevailing and looking at the comments from the past week, it seems that this is also something our readers appreciate. If you enjoy this, please share it with someone you think might enjoy this space. Not because it helps us, but because we want to make this a safe haven for everyone in the Star Wars community fed up with negativity and hatred. It doesn’t mean we’ll love everything, but we always try to approach anything new in Star Wars with an open mind and a fair point of view. To not think how the audience will react to what we say or don’t say, as complicated as that’s getting these days.
What did you think of the latest edition of “This Week, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away”? Let me know your thoughts and suggestions down below in the comment section. You can also send them, or reach out with any information tips, directly via our Contact page.
Have a great week!
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
