Fine, Just Give ‘Star Wars’ To Dave Filoni Already

Fine, just give Star Wars to Dave Filoni already.

If there is a persistent problem with Disney Star Wars as of late, I would argue you could sum it up in one word “focus.”

You may be tiring of the Marvel Cinematic Universe at this point, but at least it’s a somewhat coherent timeline that moves in one direction, featuring a cast of recurring characters that come and go and are always moving forward. That is not true with Star Wars, where Disney seems like it has no idea what it wants to focus on at all, so they are shotgun-spreading everything at the wall to see what sticks. But this has led to:

• The Obi-Wan Timeline – Soon after Episode 3 and before Episode 4 (Cal Kestis and his video game adventures are also in here).
• The Solo/Lando Timeline – 10 years before Episode 4
• The Andor/Rogue One Timeline – Right before Episode 4
• The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, Boba Fett Timeline – After Episode 6 and well before the sequel trilogy.
• The Sequel Trilogy – Decades after Episodes 4-6
• The Post-Sequel Movie – Supposedly a Rey feature set another 20 years past the sequels
• The Acolyte – This is the “High Republic” era Disney is trying to do, mainly with books, set hundreds of years ago, but well after Knights of the Old Republic.

There is little coherence between any of these, nor do they air in anything approaching a chronological order. It’s like they took George Lucas’ funny trick to list his first trilogy as Episodes IV, V and VI and went insane with it. Even within these big projects there’s little coherence, like The Last Jedi throwing away the set-up of Force Awakens, and Rise of Skywalker throwing away The Last Jedi, as if the trilogy was at war with itself.

What’s become clear as time has gone on is that the only person with any clear, coherent vision of Star Wars going forward is Dave Filoni. He certainly has practice, as his brainchildren are Clone Wars, which salvaged the prequels, and Rebels, a great pre-Episode 4 production carrying on that legacy.

Disney has been wise to continue letting Filoni expand on that. He and Jon Favreau brought The Mandalorian to life, and now he’s integrated his Rebels-era storylines there. Ahsoka is a combination of his Clone Wars characters, Rebels characters and some brand new ones. Now he’s supposedly heading for a big crossover movie.

At this point, I would argue that Filoni should simply be the Kevin Feige of the Star Wars Universe, at least hopefully “glory days of the MCU” Kevin Feige when most projects were great and building toward something worthwhile (an era which appears to be over).

If anyone has the ability to A) create and use compelling characters B) write engaging and mysterious storylines and C) have large-scale, cohesive plans for the Star Wars universe, its Filoni, who had been doing all of the above for well over a decade in animation, and now has shown he can do this in live action as well.

Yes, I still believe Andor and Rogue One are overall the best things the Disney era of Star Wars has produced, but I think there are limits to that format. To get back into “mystical” Star Wars and create a grand, large-scale universe again, I think you need Filoni.

Right now, Star Wars is spread thin and lacks any sort of coherent direction outside of what Filoni has created here. I say give him the keys to all of it. It can’t be worse than what we’ve seen so far.

Follow me on Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.