Happy New Year, Star Wars fans! We are halfway through the third season of Rebels, and according to the rumor a year ago rebels will be ending soon. That said, there are rumblings that a new show is already in the works. Lets look at what are the most likely timeframes for this cartoon to fill out Star Wars lore.
Personally i don’t think it will be ended that soon and we will get two more seasons. There are a lot of rumors that we will see the events of Rogue One in the series finale of Rebels. We do know that Dave Filoni got a promotion to oversee all Star Wars cartoons and that means we will likely be getting a new one soon, probably before Rebels goes off air. These new rumors suggest that hiring is underway, which means that the actual show could be years away. It takes a long time to hire a team, then also a long time for concept-art and development of a concept, if that hasn’t happened already.
A recent trademark suggests one possibility for a title. While many people think that the trademark for “Forces of Destiny” by Lucasfilm is the new title for Episode VIII, this seems unlikely. It doesn’t sound like a movie title. The trademark itself does include the possibility for a “motion picture film”. However, motion picture is broad enough to include TV shows I would think, so that possibility is there. This could still, however, just be something very minor like a video game.
There are six timeframes that we can come up with for a new cartoon:
- Concurrent with Sequel Trilogy
- Post Rotj-preTFA
- Concurrent to ANH-RotJ
- Post RotS pre ANH
- Concurrent/immediately pre- TPM-AotC
- Old republic/Sith Wars.
Don’t worry I’m going to break it down. To examine this we are going to take a leap and assume that recent trademark from Lucasfilm has something to do with the new TV too.
Concurrent with Sequel Trilogy
This one would be a show that expands on the adventures of Rey, Finn, and Poe. It would perhaps fill in the gaps between episode VIII and IX if there are some. It has been confirmed that Episode VIII takes place right after The Force Awakens, so there isn’t much room there. However the space beetween VIII and IX is potentially fair game.
Post RotJ- Pre TFA
What do we know about this era? We have the current batch of novels which all seem to take place right after RotJ or right before TFA. That means there is about 25 years worth of unexplored stories. This would allow them to explore anything from the rise of the first Order in the unknown regions and the Knights of Ren to Luke’s Jedi academy. You may be thinking they won’t leave that for a cartoon but they did cover the entire Clone War for a cartoon. With a name like Forces of Destiny, it seems like Jedi are a likely focus. Another possibility is this show could give an origin story to the Knights of Ren, which JJ Abrams had stated was a story that he is interested in exploring.
Concurrent to OT
There is a lot of content out there on this era from Legends. The writers of a new series would have a tremendous source of material to work with to derive the TV episodes from. There are books, comics and other material from this era. However, the name Forces of Destiny doesn’t really fit the time frame to me. Also, it seems like we have so much media going into this time frame that it would be a waste of a show to focus here if they are going to focus on Jedi as there are only two alive at this time, Luke and Yoda.
Post RotS pre-ANH
Again this is unlikely as that is the Era that Rebels has been going over. There are exceptions that they could do a show with. One an Ahsoka show that covers her time alone right before she meets up with the Rebels crew. This would be interesting but I think unlikely as Ahsoka seems to have been hiding and she wouldn’t have many people to fight with her lightsabers. The other would be a focus on Vader and the Inquisitors and them hunting the Jedi down. This would be awesome… and unlikely as Vader killing a bunch of people would not be a great idea for a kids show. The ONLY other idea would be a Saw/Jeddha focused show, with Chirrut and Baze cameos. Or visa versa. Speaking of Chirrut and Baze, they could probably carry a show depicting the “Guardians of the Whills”, which are now canon after Rogue One.
Concurrent/immediately pre-TPM-AotC
This would cover either Obi-wan and Qui-gon before TPM(or another Jedi pair I guess which would grow the universe) or it would cover the exploits of Anakin and Obi-wan between TPM and AotC. Both of these ideas would be great and both fit the name Forces of Destiny. We now have nothing that covers Anakin’s development into the Jedi we meet in AotC(Comic on the way though). This is of great interest to me and it could give us insight into Dooku’s leaving of the Jedi and the fostering of a relationship between Anakin and the eventual Emperor. Who doesn’t want see that? The era expanding on Obi-wan at a young age reminds me of all the recent information coming out about an expansion of Obi-wan in the Star Wars saga. Showing his adventures with Qui-gon right before TPM would be a great way to expand his story.
Old Republic/Sith Wars
This is a possibility for one reason. Nothing that happens in this time frame will have much affect on the timeline we are familiar with. This would allow Lucasfilm to add to the lore of the Jedi and Sith. We could also hear the prophecy of the Chosen One, set up whatever order Snoke belongs to, visit Jakku before it was destroyed and possible see what was buried there 1000 years ago. This gives us backstory but doesn’t change what we know… and it REALLY fits the name Forces of Destiny.
Tell us what you think on Twitter and in the comments!
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