The follow-up to Star Wars Rebels may have been revealed thanks to new filings for merchandise by Lucasfilm. Though the story of Star Wars has proliferated across comics and books - both in the Expanded Universe and the new canon - TV adventures in the galaxy far, far away have been more sparse. That’s changed since Disney bought the property, with more films getting the greenlight seemingly every day and questions over multiple Star Wars films a year coming up. Meanwhile, the TV side of Star Wars has grown as well.
When Disney and Lucasfilm refocused the canon of Star Wars around only the existing films, they also include the popular series The Clone Wars that George Lucas himself helped create. That show’s end was soon followed by Star Wars Rebels, which arrived alongside the premiere of the first Star Wars books and comics since the new canon began. Now in its fourth and final season, Rebels has featured cameos from movie characters, had Easter eggs in Rogue One, and is on the verge of connecting the early days of the Rebel Alliance to the original trilogy. But when Rebels concludes, it’s no surprise that a new Star Wars series will take its place: and now we may have an idea of what it will be about.
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Yakface Forums discovered a number of new patent registrations Lucasfilm recently filed regarding a project titled "Star Wars Resistance". You can see the full filings on the site, but the four listed detail toys, clothes, accessories, audiobooks, various digital media, and video and mobile games. There’s no indication what the project is, but the scope of the merchandise suggests a major piece of media or an overarching campaign (think Forces of Destiny). While a new video game could soon follow-up Stars Wars: Battlefront II, the skew makes it seem more likely that Star Wars Resistance will take the place of Rebels.
The Clone Wars filled in the two years between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. It also took a world-spanning conflict as its source of inspiration, providing plenty of story points and the intersection of some major plots. Similarly, Rebels dove into things well after Revenge of the Sith, with the Empire in full swing but a nascent band of rebellion growing in different corners of the galaxy.
Season 4 of Rebels has been inching closer and closer to Rogue One with stories built around massive green Kyber crystals, stopping the growth of the TIE Defender, and featuring the Emperor and Death Star. The plot of the original trilogy is looming and whatever series follows Rebels is unlikely to operate between those chapters.
We’ve seen countless books and comics detail what happened in between A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. Likewise, the immediate aftermath of Episode VI has been explored in various media. Conversely, a successor to The Clone Wars and Rebels that examines the ascent of The First Order and shows the early days of the Resistance seems perfectly in line with what Lucasfilm has done so far.
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Of course, that's not the only TV entry on the way. Along with news that a new animated series will follow Rebels, we recently learned that Disney’s streaming service will include the first live-action Star Wars show. Lucas himself had such a series in mind for years, but the limitations of a TV budget forced him to stick with animation. That’s hardly a factor anymore, however, as shows like Altered Carbon, Star Trek: Discovery, Game of Thrones have shown. In fact, combining those three shows paints a pretty good picture of what Lucasfilm could accomplish on a digital platform.
Whether animated or live-action, a prequel series to The Force Awakens has a lot of potential when it comes to exploring what happened to Luke, Leia, Han, and the galaxy as a whole following the Alliance’s big victory. Whatever Star Wars Resistance is, it’s likely to be another exciting chapter in the overall saga.
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Source: Yakface Forums
