Star Wars Won’t Survive Without Resetting Itself
As a franchise, Star Wars is in the midst of an attempted Disney renaissance: after the Sequel Trilogy landed with all the cultural resonance of a wet fart, the House of Mouse is trying to get things back on track with multiple films (including a solo Rey film) and a deluge of television shows. Unfortunately, Star Wars is already experiencing the sci-fi equivalent of superhero fatigue, and this franchise is starting to turn fans off in the same way that the oversaturated Marvel Cinematic Universe has been doing. If Star Wars wants to survive, the solution is simple: it needs a good, old-fashioned reset.
Why Reboot Star Wars?
If you’re cynical about this idea, we get it: Hollywood is already dominated by resets and reboots, so you might be wondering why Disney should reboot a franchise as big as Star Wars. Our answer is that this franchise has gotten a bit too big: like the MCU before it, Star Wars has started to feel like homework, with fans having to watch multiple TV shows just to understand what is going on with their favorite characters.
Instead of focusing on telling a good story, Disney has gone all-in on creating nonstop content that keeps us glued to Disney+ month after month.
We don’t have Force visions of the future, but we’re confident in telling Disney that this is not a sustainable model. Just as Marvel fans have begun abandoning the MCU in droves, Star Wars fans are going to stop tuning in; in fact, many walked away from the franchise after the disappointment of The Rise of Skywalker.
Another decade of following this model is going to run Star Wars into the ground; however, resetting the universe could allow Disney to reset how they handle the franchise, and it could even be a good excuse to bring back the great characters that were taken away from us.
Somehow, the Star Wars EU Could Return
The idea of resetting Star Wars shouldn’t be that shocking. After all, it already got something close to a soft reset after Disney bought the franchise and shuttered the Star Wars Expanded Universe. While upsetting to fans, the company’s logic was straightforward: it’s difficult to compete with decades of novels, comics, and games when trying to tell new stories of your own.
Unfortunately, we now have plenty of game tape showcasing that Disney’s new Star Wars movies and films are often more disappointing than the EU stories they removed from the canon. In fact, some of the only shows currently exciting fans contain remnants of the EU, including the return of the EU character Grand Admiral Thrawn.
With a hard Star Wars reset, Disney could ditch the stories that didn’t work (like Luke Skywalker plotting to murder his nephew) and bring in more of the great EU characters they once abandoned (like Luke Skywalker marrying fan-favorite character Mara Jade).
Disney Is Already Testing the Waters
Recently, it was announced that Disney was going to give Star Wars its own What If…? style of television show. It’s a good idea, and one we previously argued the franchise should model after the success of the Star Wars Infinities comics. As an added bonus, fan reception to the storylines featured in such a show could give Disney an idea of what audiences might want from a Star Wars reset.
For example, those Infinities concepts dealt with heady ideas such as what a galaxy far, far away would look like if Luke Skywalker never blew up the Death Star. By extension, a show could explore other changes that might have a major ripple effect on this entire fictional universe.
By seeing which changes resonate with audiences, Disney could give us a reset Star Wars universe that best represents what most fans actually want to see from their favorite sci-fi franchise instead of shoving something nobody asked for down our throats (looking at you, Solo: A Star Wars Story).
The Easiest Way to Reboot Star Wars
While this hasn’t been confirmed by Disney, there is a general consensus among fans that the MCU will get a hard reset of its own. Fortunately for Marvel creators alike, there are plenty of plausible in-universe and even multiversal methods that would explain how this universe got reset. As luck (or perhaps The Force) would have it, Star Wars also has an easy way to explain a franchise reboot.
In Star Wars Rebels, we were introduced to The World Between Worlds, a place where the Living Force and Cosmic Force are joined. In practical terms, this allows time travel, and we have seen Ezra Bridger use it to save Ahsoka Tano and have even seen Ahsoka use it to interact with Anakin Skywalker. Given that this area allows someone to directly manipulate the timeline, it should come as no surprise that Emperor Palpatine once coveted access to The World Beyond Worlds.
If and when Disney is ready to reboot Star Wars, all they need do is have one or more characters change something in the past that potentially transforms most of the future. For example, what if a future time traveler could keep Padme Amidala from dying, or maybe just keep Palpatine from becoming Chancellor? Just like that, we could reboot Star Wars and make familiar characters and locations seem fresh and interesting once again.
