TV #21 of 2025: Andor, season 2 I went into the second and final season of this Star Wars prequel prequel with reservations on two separate fronts. First, the debut run back in 2022 was simply astonishing, representing the franchise at its utter best. Was there any way the followup could possibly match it? It …
Tag Archives: Star Wars
Book Review: Star Wars: The Mask of Fear by Alexander Freed
Book #69 of 2025: Star Wars: The Mask of Fear by Alexander Freed (Reign of the Empire #1) Just in time for the second season of Andor, here’s another recent Star Wars title that grapples seriously with the idea of life and resistance in an era of growing fascism. In this case, it’s the early …
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TV Review: Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, season 1
TV #2 of 2025: Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, season 1 Call it popcorn entertainment if you want, but this show absolutely nails its Star Wars children’s adventure vibe. The franchise has never really done anything like this before, give or take the old Ewok movies, but the mashup of the traditional science-fiction trappings with the …
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Book Review: Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire by Dr. Chris Kempshall
Book #183 of 2024: Star Wars: The Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire by Dr. Chris Kempshall A staggering work that I would unequivocally recommend to any obsessive-minded Star Wars fans like myself. This book, written by an actual academic historian, applies the investigative principles of that field to the continuity of the franchise …
TV Review: The Acolyte, season 1
TV #32 of 2024: The Acolyte, season 1 Despite a few unfortunate structural flaws, this is easily in the top tier of live-action Star Wars shows — which is to say, a step below Andor but about on par with the first two seasons of The Mandalorian, while far more confident and engaging than The …
TV Review: Star Wars: Tales of the Empire, season 1
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 Review: Star Wars: The Bad Batch, season 3
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 Review: Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View: Return of the Jedi edited by Tom Hoeler
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 Review: Ahsoka, season 1
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 Review: Star Wars: Visions, season 2
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 …
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