TV #20 of 2024: Star Wars: Tales of the Empire, season 1 This six-part animated Star Wars anthology is pretty clearly modeled on the similar Tales of the Jedi project from 2022, and it inherits some of the same structural weaknesses. At least this time around, the story pushes forwards for one of its two …
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TV #18 of 2024: Star Wars: The Bad Batch, season 3 A satisfactory enough conclusion to this corner of the Star Wars franchise, but not one that really pushes the titular characters anywhere exciting. Mostly, the season seems built to lay plausible retroactive groundwork for the infamous “Somehow Palpatine survived” line from the movie The …
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Book #7 of 2024: Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi edited by Tom Hoeler Another batch of 40 stories to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a Star Wars movie, this one centered around the background characters and/or events of Episode VI, Return of the Jedi. Some of these entries …
TV #50 of 2023: Ahsoka, season 1 This latest Star Wars property is solidly mid-tier for the franchise. I don’t want to downplay that: it’s still really cool that we’re getting big-budget live-action Star Wars shows at all, and this one is better than, say, the latest season of The Mandalorian in terms of providing …
TV #22 of 2023: Star Wars: Visions, season 2 I’m pleasantly surprised by how much I like this second year of the experimental Star Wars anthology, given how lukewarm I felt towards the first season. As before, these episodes are short anime films, each from a different production studio, handed free reign to remix and …
TV #16 of 2023: The Mandalorian, season 3 A very uneven installment, and one that probably seems even weaker for being the first live-action Star Wars property to follow the franchise-high achievements of Andor’s debut year. While not awful, this is certainly the worst (or more generously, the most inconsistent) the Mando show has ever …
TV #14 of 2023: Star Wars: The Bad Batch, season 2 The first year of this Clone Wars spinoff was a surprisingly propulsive affair, but this sophomore season struggles to recapture and maintain that sense of momentum. It’s still a solid delivery of weekly Star Wars thrills — although I question the decision to have …
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Book #191 of 2022: Star Wars: Brotherhood by Mike Chen A good but not great Star Wars novel, taking place after Anakin and Padme get married at the end of Episode II but before he takes on Ahsoka as his padawan in the Clone Wars movie. The premise / goal here seems twofold: to show …
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TV #57 of 2022: Andor, season 1 On paper, this prequel to a prequel might have sounded like a wholly unnecessary franchise extension, but in practice, Star Wars has literally never been better. Ostensibly a show about Cassian Andor five years before the movie Rogue One takes place, it has turned out to be more …
TV #51 of 2022: Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi, season 1 I don’t quite see the point of this latest Star Wars anthology series — and I’m not sure that Disney does either, given their decision to drop the entire first season in the middle of the ongoing Andor release schedule. Theoretically I think …
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