When Lucasfilm announced Jon Favreau would be helming a new live-action Star Wars series for Disney’s upcoming streaming service, that was… well, pretty much it. We had zero details on what the series would actually entail. But Favreau himself has finally let slip the first, very intriguing, tidbits.
The Battle of Endor, as seen in Return of the Jedi. Image: Lucasfilm
Speaking to Nerdist‘s Dan Casey at yesterday’s Solo: A Star Wars Story premiere – Favreau plays the alien Rio Durant in the movie – Favreau surprisingly also teased what fans could expect from his own Star Wars project: A TV show set roughly seven years after the battle of Endor in Return of the Jedi.
Exclusive: @Jon_Favreau confirms that his live action #StarWars series takes place 7 years after Battle of Endor, between #ReturnOfTheJedi and #TheForceAwakens. Will feature all new characters, using cutting edge tech a la THE JUNGLE BOOK. Story coming to @nerdist… pic.twitter.com/iRyPS8hPDR
— Dan Casey (@DanCasey) May 11, 2018
Favreau also mentioned that the series would utilise the similar sort of CG work the director had previously used in Disney’s Jungle Book reboot and, unsurprisingly, will focus on a new cast of characters. But the seven-year date is particularly interesting because it places the show in a very specific and relatively untouched piece of Disney’s Star Wars timeline.
Seven years after Return of the Jedi would place Favreau’s show in approximately 11 ABY (that’s “After Battle of Yavin” for the unfamiliar, the standard dating metric in the Star Wars canon).
From what we know of Disney’s timeline in this between-trilogies period so far, this would be around six years after the New Republic is officially founded with the signing of the Galactic Concordance in 5 ABY, and the development of what would eventually become the First Order – hiding in the Unknown Regions – is still in its most secretive and earliest days.
Imperial holdouts battle New Republic ground forces on Jakku in 5 ABY, during the last major conflict of the Galactic Civil War. Image: Star Wars: Battlefront (EA/DICE)
This is a period when the New Republic was essentially at its height, as far as we know – Mon Mothma, the Republic’s first Chancellor, had relinquished many of the emergency powers still granted to the office of Chancellor when Palpatine was bestowed upon them by the Old Republic, and had pledged to widely diminish the New Republic Fleet down to a fraction of its size at the height of the end of the Galactic Civil War.
Major conflict, after years of setting the galaxy alight, was seemingly over, and our beloved heroes from the original Star Wars trilogy had gone their separate ways – Han and Leia raising their young son while Leia served in the Senate, and Luke exploring the galaxy for Jedi artefacts and knowledge he’d eventually use to establish his own Jedi academy.
All this we only really know from tidbits in books and comics that have been released since Disney took over Lucasfilm – and it’s still barely explored. Although between this show and the upcoming animated series Star Wars Resistance (which, given that it features Leia’s Resistance founded in 28 ABY, will be set several decades after the live-action show anyway), Favreau’s series will give us a chance to actually see what the Star Wars galaxy looks like in a period of peace, a fascinating opportunity given that interstellar conflict has driven so much of the saga’s main stories.
That isn’t to say the show won’t be without its conflicts and action, of course – war is literally in the name of the franchise! – but it will be interesting to see what Favreau does with this time of relative peace in the galaxy far, far away.
The live-action Star Wars show will release on Disney’s streaming service, so we won’t be seeing it until 2019 at the least, if not after. We’ll bring you more on this latest chapter in the Star Wars saga as we learn it.