The Forgotten Star Wars Story Disney Needs To Make Into A Series

While the recent MCU television shows have been largely hit or miss, one of the more successful series has been What If…? which adapts the comic books of the same name.

Those comics had a simple conceit: each one examined how Marvel’s fictional history would change (and often change dramatically) if a single thing was different.

The What If…? show now does the same thing for the MCU, allowing us to explore different multiverses where Captain Carter became a supersoldier, T’Challa became Star-Lord, and other crazy stories for Disney+ audiences to enjoy.

However, when the Prequel Trilogy was still coming out, Dark Horse Comics gave fans of that galaxy far away their own What If…? style comics called Star Wars Infinities.

Rather than the single-issue multiverse stories of Marvel, however, Dark Horse created one four-issue story for each movie in the Original Trilogy.

Accordingly, each of these stories had its own slight variation on the original Star Wars films that ended up sending our favorite familiar characters in some very different directions.

For example, Star Wars Infinities: A New Hope explores what would have happened if Luke Skywalker failed to destroy the original Death Star.

Leia gets captured and turned to the Dark Side by Darth Vader, Luke gets years of Jedi training instead of weeks, and Yoda crashes the Death Star into a planet to kill Palpatine.

Needless to say, this was one of the weirdest and coolest Star Wars stories ever printed.

The next two Star Wars Infinities stories were equally ambitious. The comics for The Empire Strikes Back explore what would have happened if Luke Skywalker simply froze to death on Hoth.

And the comics for Return of the Jedi explore what would have happened if C-3PO was damaged and couldn’t translate for Leia when she came disguised to Jabba’s Palace.

As with the What If…? comics, much of the fun of reading these issues (all available on Marvel Unlimited, by the way) comes from discovering how even the slightest differences in how these movies unfolded could have changed the galaxy forever. 

Just as the What If…? series on Disney+ helps us see how the MCU could have been completely different, a Star Wars Infinities animated series could explore the Star Wars stories that might have been.

What if Kylo Ren didn’t kill Lord Snoke, for example, or what if Rey really did turn to the Dark Side and embrace her genetic destiny as a monster? For that matter, what if   Din Djarin never decided to rescue Grogu after delivering him to his creepy client in The Mandalorian?

An ongoing Star Wars Infinities show could answer all of these questions and more, all while revisiting some of the most famous (and infamous) moments in the franchise to create new stories.

Even better, Disney could use fan responses to various episodes as a way to gauge interest in bringing certain characters back for their own films and television shows, just as fan interest in Rogue One led to the successful Andor spinoff. 

Until that happens, though, we’ll have to do what Star Wars fans do best: keep pretending shows like The Book of Boba Fett weren’t awful in hopes that Disney won’t keep canceling every planned film and television show that sounds interesting.

Think of it as our own Infinities episode where we’re discovering the answer to a very bleak question: “what if Disney bought Star Wars and barely had any idea of what to do with it?”