Everything Announced Last Night At Star Wars Celebration [Updated]

Star Wars Celebration is finally back, the annual convention for fans of a galaxy far, far away.

Lucasfilm came loaded for bear this year, with trailers and announcements flowing from the show every hour overnight. Let’s run through everything Disney had to talk about.

Updated 30/5/22: Updated to include The Bad Batch and Star Wars Visions.

Star Wars Visions: Season 2

Anime anthology series Star Wars Visions will return for a second season. In a break from the anime-centric vibe of the first season, Visions Season 2 will be produced in concert with animation houses from the United Kingdom, Japan, Chile, Spain, Ireland, and South Africa. It is set to land on Disney+ in early 2023.

The Bad Batch: Season 2

The Clone Wars spin off, The Bad Batch, will return for a second season, and teases the surprise return of Commander Cody. The expectation is that Cody will become a chief antagonist in the show’s second season. As Clone Wars fans would know, Cody was not able to remove his inhibitor chip and fell victim to Order 66 along with many of his clone bretheren. His fate, following the end of Episode III, has been a significant question mark for fans. Here, we may begin to see what has become of the once-revered Commander Cody.

Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi

Dave Filoni is back working on Star Wars animation again. This will either raise a giant cheer or a low groan, depending on how you like your Star Wars. As someone who considers Filoni, well-known as Lucas’ protege, to be the future of the franchise, I’m personally psyched to see him back in the animated space he loves so much.

Tales of the Jedi is an animated anthology series that takes its name from the famed 1992 Dark Horse Comics series. It will spotlight the stories of various Jedi across the Prequel era, and is confirmed to feature episodes devoted to both Mace Windu, Count Dooku, and Qui-Gon Jinn. Liam Neeson is confirmed to reprise his role as Qui-Gon, while his son Michael Neeson will voice the younger version of the character.

I hold out hope for a Tales from the Outer Rim show about the galaxy’s greatest scoundrels to balance it out.

Ahsoka

We’ve known an Ahsoka series was on the way for some time, but now we have a first look at the show. As with the new Mandalorian Season 3 teaser, the first Ahsoka teaser has only been screened for audiences at Star Wars Celebration. Maybe it will see the light of day on YouTube some day.

Not only will the show be Ahsoka’s first solo live-action adventure, it will also resume the story Star Wars Rebels left open. In that show, Jedi-in-training Ezra Bridger made a significant sacrifice to fling both himself and the evil Grand Admiral Thrawn into the unknown reaches of the galaxy. This new show will focus on Ahsoka and Sabine Wren’s (played by Natasha Liu Bordizzo) long-time hunt for what became of Ezra.

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, the anticipated sequel to Respawn Entertainment’s megahit Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order has dropped its first-look teaser trailer. It features the return of Cal Kestis and his buddy BD-1. The trailer shows Kestis locked in battle with a cloaked Sith, and the game’s familiar ship, the Stinger Mantis, in serious strife. We’re looking forward to this one. Hopefully Respawn can smooth out the original’s rougher edges, and meaningfully iterate on its Soulsvania-lite approach. It’s due to launch in 2023 (so probably October-December next year).

Light & Magic

Light & Magic is a Disney+ documentary series about Industrial Light & Magic. ILM is the special effects house created by George Lucas to help him make a little movie called Star Wars. Its innovations changed special effects in blockbuster movies forever, and it has worked on practically every major sci-fi and fantasy movie ever made since. The documentary will be a six-parter, tracing the company’s origins and staff, its process, its myriad innovations and breakthroughs, and its present-day projects. It is directed by someone who knows his Star Wars very well, Lawrence Kasdan. Kasdan wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark, Return of the Jedi, and co-wrote on The Force Awakens. He also contributed significant rewrites to The Empire Strikes Back, moulding it into the film it is today.

Light & Magic debuts on Disney+ July 27.

The Mandalorian Season 3

First things first, let’s check in with Mando. The Mandalorian is set to air its third season on Disney+ in February 2023. Though showrunners Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni were on hand to talk about the show, and run a brand new trailer. The trailer itself won’t be released online. In a bit of a throwback to San Diego Comic-Con in the early 2010s, the trailer was just for the people in the room. Our friends at Gizmodo were in the room, however, so we know what happened in the trailer.

The trailer features quite a bit of Mando and Grogu on a journey home to Mandalore. “You have removed your helmet,” intones The Armourer. “What’s worse, you did so of your own free will. You are no longer Mandalorian. Redemption is no longer possible since the destruction of our homeworld.”

“Your cult gave up on Mandalore long before the purge,” spits Katee Sackhoff’s Bo Katan. “Where were you then?”

Mando’s route is clear: He’s going home to Mandalore to seek redemption. If he makes it, it will be the first time Mandalore has been represented in live-action Star Wars media. Very exciting times.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew

News broke only a few weeks ago that Spider-man: No Way Home director Jon Watts was working on an Amblin-style Star Wars show for Disney+. Now, we know a bit more about it.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, which will star Jude Law, will focus on a group of children who find themselves lost in the galaxy and are trying to find their way home. Expect a throwback to the Spielbergian, 80’s kids-in-trouble movie like The Goonies. Right now, Caravan of Courage is sort of the closest in-canon approximation we can think of, but there’s definitely room for this kind of story in the Star Wars universe. The show hasn’t begun filming yet but is slated to hit Disney+ next year.

Andor

The one major Star Wars trailer we did get today was a teaser for Andor, the Disney+ spinoff of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The trailer feels extremely similar in tone and aesthetic to Rogue One and only briefly features Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor. The show is during the Empire’s reign before Rogue One and A New Hope and shines a light on the Rebellion’s earliest, most nervous moments.

Andor premieres on Disney+ in August this year and will run for 12 episodes. The show is confirmed for a second season, which will tie its story into the events of Rogue One.

Indiana Jones 5

Not every facet of Star Wars Celebration is focused on Star Wars itself. Rather, the show is a celebration of everything to come from the mind of George Lucas and Lucasfilm. Thus, we got a look at a pair of new projects underway at LF. The first, of course, is the still-untitled Indiana Jones 5.

The new film is directed by James Mangold (Logan) and follows the now elderly Henry Jones Jr. on a new adventure to stop Mads Mikkelsen’s villain. Antonio Banderas and Phoebe Waller-Bridge also star. Whether this will be Harrison Ford’s last appearance as Jones remains to be seen. John Williams returns to provide the score.

Willow

This one’s just such a nice Star Wars Celebration homecoming. Willow is an often-overlooked Lucasfilm classic, a high fantasy story about an aspiring sorcerer named Willow, played by Warwick Davis. In this new Disney+ series, Willow comes out of retirement to help a group of plucky young adventurers restore balance to a world thrown into disorder and disunity. Willow drops on Disney+ this coming November.

And that’s all we’ve got for you from Star Wars Celebration so far! What are you most excited to see? Was there anything you wish had been at the show this year? Sound off in the comments below, and may the Force be with you.