Entertainment
Did The Creator Of The Best Star Wars Show Secretly Call Out The Franchise’s New Boss?
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
For Star Wars fans, the opening crawl to A New Hope has more or less come true: it is a period of civil war. In the fandom, there are still plenty of diehards who binge and defend every new show on Disney+ and buy their tickets to films like The Mandalorian and Grogu months in advance. But there is a growing number of fans who have grown cynical of the franchise after major failures like The Rise of Skywalker and The Acolyte, and those fans are worried that the franchise they’ve been in love with their entire life has finally run out of ideas.
That’s why it was relatively controversial when Dave Filoni became the new president of Lucasfilm. Filoni was once an absolute icon to fans because he was the showrunner for The Clone Wars cartoon, one of the coolest things in all of Star Wars. However, Filoni’s creative output has grown so self-referential that it sometimes seems like he is hellbent on remaking this galaxy far, far away in his own image. However, before Filoni held the reins of the entire franchise in his fannish hands, he got a secret warning from the most unexpected source of all: Andor creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy!
Star Wars Rides Again
Andor’s success honestly speaks for itself. It’s not just the best Star Wars show ever made; it’s one of the best TV shows ever made, one that would be just as compelling even if it weren’t part of this famous franchise. The show is a spinoff of the film Rogue One, in which doomed protagonist Jyn Erso opines that “rebellions are built on hope.” Now, Andor has created hope amid fans burnt out by high-profile failures like The Book of Boba Fett and The Acolyte. Whenever people claim that there are no good Star Wars stories left to tell, these faithful fans point to Andor, the labor of love from showrunner Tony Gilroy.
What was his secret to making a killer Star Wars show? Last year, he told Backstory Magazine about the advice that he gave to Andor’s writers and anyone else creating stories in this galaxy far, far away. “A lot of times when you’re working on IP storytelling, your impulse is to open the toy box and start playing with all the toys,” Gilroy said. “You should try to resist that, and what you should do is leave more toys in the toy box than were there when you got there and resisting the impulse to be a child and instead think more like a storyteller who’s adding to the world rather than taking from it.”
The New Star Wars Boss Got Secretly Called Out
Obviously, Gilroy didn’t specifically call out any Star Wars creators in this quote, but it sure sounds like he was taking a swipe at Dave Filoni. While Clone Wars was an undisputed masterpiece, Filoni has spent his entire subsequent career making every Star Wars project he works on a callback to his earlier work. For example, he was the showrunner for Rebels, in which Clone Wars’ Ahsoka became a major character. When he gave Ahsoka her own entire show, he turned the whole thing into a Rebels sequel. He also ensured that both The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett included the live-action debut of Clone Wars characters like Bo-Katan and Cad Bane.
In other words, once Filoni opened the toybox, he never stopped trying to play with all the toys, often at the expense of good storytelling. Like, The Book of Boba Fett was already pretty bad, but the hammy, nonsensical cameo from Cad Bane just made things worse. Ahsoka is a relatively solid show, but Sabine is so different (wait, she’s got Jedi abilities now?) that she might as well be a different character altogether. Katee Sackhoff is crazy good in The Mandalorian, but bringing her character into live-action is going to be a complete waste if we never get a fourth season of that hit Star Wars show.
Don’t Let Your Sons Grow Up To Be Space Cowboys
Arguably, almost every Star Wars project Dave Filoni has worked on would be better if he focused more on telling good stories than jamming in cameos from his favorite creations. Tony Gilroy innately understood this, which is why Andor has (outside of Mon Mothma) so few prominent cameos from or references to prominent franchise characters. He tried to warn Filoni, but the warning didn’t stick, which is why the worst thing about the Filoni-written Mandalorian and Grogu is the return of Rotta, the Hutt we last saw farting his way through Filoni’s Clone Wars movie.
If this is the kind of toy the new Lucasfilm president can’t stop playing with, is it any wonder that Star Wars just keeps stinking?