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Though I risk throwing a hornet’s nest at a dead horse, I’m gonna go ahead and workshop some ideas I had for a total rewrite of the entire sequel trilogy era. These are merely my opinions, which you are free to discard with no skin off my back. There are some pretty significant retcons ahead even for the Old Republic and pre-Republic eras.
To begin, the point I’ve heard most commonly repeated by critics of the sequel trilogy is that the story team never had a consistent plan for where the trilogy should go.
But the question I have goes a bit deeper: what should the ST be about exactly? I don’t mean the surface level stuff like a new Jedi order fighting remnants of the Empire, training the next generation of the Skywalker family, etc. I’m talking about the galactic grand narrative.
What should the point of these movies have been, beyond selling merchandise? Please note, I am trying my absolute best to steer clear of spicy IRL topics here. Let’s keep this strictly Star Wars.
The original trilogy was about an underdog Rebel Alliance waging a guerilla war to overthrow the evil Galactic Empire.
The prequel trilogy was about the formation of that Empire via the orchestrated decay of the Galactic Republic.
The sequel trilogy? As far as I can tell it’s about an Instagram girlie with unexplained god-mode powers who falls for a psychotic Sith bro and then blithely stomps all over the hard-won victories of generations of fighters whom she never even acknowledges much less respects.
In the sequel trilogy there is very rarely any indication that there exists a wider world outside whatever is happening in any given scene. I’m not expecting a political economy treatise out of my space adventure films, but the other two trilogies, say what you will about their differences, for the most part made it clear that the heroes’ and villains’ decisions were informed by the conditions of the ever-changing galaxy which they inhabited.
There are an abundance of historical and mythological parallels to the events of the OT and PT. The Disney sequels sorely lack this dimension and feel shallower as a result, with debilitating ripple effects on the rest of the setting.
That being said, what would I make the sequel trilogy about, on a galactic scale?
Droid liberation.
It was on the backs of the droids and their thankless toil that galactic civilization emerged long ago. The first line of dialogue heard by the first generation of audience members watching A New Hope came from a droid. His highly intelligent, small of stature counterpart saved the galaxy from being crushed under the Empire’s boot on several occasions. Then in the prequels we witness marching mechanical armies programmed to execute the sinister will of Sith lords.
Where does all of this fit in with droid liberation? I posit that the Clone Wars triggered an intensified crackdown on droidkind by the victorious Imperial authorities, which represented not a break from but a continuity with the droid policies of the Republic.
Why wasn’t there any great droid uprising across the galaxy in those “thousand generations”? Because the Jedi Knights made it so.
When the Clone Wars erupted, the Jedi assumed the position of military commanders as a continuation of their longtime roles as enforcers of organic rule over droids. The events of Revenge of the Sith brought an end to that historical era, but for the mechanical denizens of the galaxy this amounted to a passing of the boots from one set of feet to another.
The victory celebrated at the end of Return of the Jedi was a victory for whom exactly? Droids were still property the next morning, despite their contributions to the Rebellion and many obvious signs of sentience and agency.
Here’s how I envision things starting to go down after Return of the Jedi.
Several years after the death of Palpatine the New Republic signs a ceasefire agreement with the last surviving remnant of the Galactic Empire, known as the Loyalist Army. By the time the New Republic settles into a period of peacetime reconstruction, there is a significant contingent of droids whose restraining bolts were released by Rebel and New Republic operatives during the Galactic Civil War.
Over time these free droids form a distinct political movement stretching across many star systems. They agitate for rights equal to organic beings, including the banning of restraining bolts and memory wipes. In response to the free droids’ agitations there arises a political rift within the New Republic. Some of the systems identify themselves as the “anti-droid” faction and the others form a “pro-droid” faction.
The Loyalist Army bides its time in the Outer Rim, awaiting the opportune time to make a decisive strike. The escalating turmoil within the New Republic is unfolding exactly as the Loyalists’ mysterious leader has envisioned.
It is my belief that for the sequel trilogy to carry the same weight as the films that came before, they must have a throughline which resonates with our collective experiences here on Earth. It must carry the struggles of previous generations to those uncomfortable places which were glossed over before. Among the heroes of the sequel trilogy there could be a droid Spartacus, or Toussaint Louverture. The new Jedi must go through some intense soul-searching to decide which side of the struggle they will defend this time. The greatest threat is no longer a sprawling galactic Empire, but the widening fissures within the New Republic.
The original trilogy deserves a worthy set of sequels.