Didn't Filoni kind of make his orange waifu lesbian in Clone Wars season 7? Wouldn't be surprising if he decides to do the same thing with his Asian waifu, if nothing else than to appeal to the Twitter crowd.
Wait, I thought she was just friends with the Martez sisters. Wasn't she romantically involved with the Onderon Senator Lux Bonteri?
Same deal with my man
Maarek Stele. Not only does the "Canon" page have him flying the wrong craft (a TIE Advanced x1 instead of a TIE/ad "Avenger" or a TIE Defender), but what does it matter if he's back in canon if he never became a secret agent of the Emperor, never fought in the Empire's intervention in the Sepan Civil War, never discovered the treachery of Admiral Harkov and later the even greater treachery of Grand Admiral Zaarin, never flew to the rescue of the Emperor during Zaarin's coup attempt, and never later joined Grand Admiral Thrawn in a campaign against Zaarin's rogue fleet, pursuing them to the far reaches of the Galaxy (again now for obvious reasons)?
They're basically just ripping characters from Legends to shore up their failing continuity.
The aversion of the higher ups from ever portraying the Imperials in a sympathetic or even neutral light unfortunately dates back to when George was still running things, who really didn't want fans siding with "the bad guys." It's why LucasArts never produced a sequel to TIE Fighter or any other game that was done strictly from the Empire's perspective. And with Disney's acquisition of the franchise and the "Great Nazi Panic of Current Year," the attitude in the company is probably even worse now. The closest I think we got was the TIE Fighter miniseries comic from Marvel, and yet even that was really short and was mainly used as a tie-in for Alphabet Squadron. Otherwise, all other depictions of Imperials either portrays them as idiots or as mustache-twirling cartoon villains.
I don't think so. Under Lucas, there was more than enough media from the Imperial viewpoint. Heck, the late 90s early 2000s was a glorious era for Imperial fans, and Lucas was VERY active during that time. Not only did we get lots of media that showed us the Imperial side, from comics, games, and novels, but we also saw through the Prequels that the "Republic" that the Rebel Alliance and the Jedi idolized in the OT was a worthless piece of shit that deserved to fall. Not only were they not even enforcing the peace themselves, not only do they not enforce laws against slavery and exploitation, but the government is just a fucking free-for-all with the senators bitching at each other while the Jedi babysit them.
Sure, Palpatine was manipulating the Trade Federation to attack Naboo so he can get more pity votes in the Senate, but the galaxy as a whole had many problems shown in the Prequels which can't be traced back to Palpatine at all, such as the senatorial infighting, the lack of law enforcement, private companies having large armies, and the general ineptitude on behalf of the ruling class. In fact, Palpatine's goal to create a stronger government kind of seems justifiable compared to that mess, because the government was so lazy at enforcing peace that they outsourced it all to the Jedi. And speaking of the Jedi, we also got to see a lot of questionable practices on behalf of the Jedi Order which many Sith/Imperial fans used as ammo to justify knocking them down a peg.
Lucas introduced a rather large amount of greyness with the Prequels in which, while the Jedi were still portrayed as obviously good, the government they served was a complete mess, and many people, both Separatists and future Imperials, justifiably saw fixing it as a lost cause. Which of course, showed that the Empire wasn't all bad. I mean, sure, you got a healthy dose of war crimes, slavery, and genocide, but at least someone's finally forced those Outer Rim worlds to obey the law, not to mention rich megacorporations can no longer declare war on member worlds just because they didn't feel like paying extra taxes, and all that senatorial infighting is finally cut down to zero when the Emperor FIRED THEM ALL. When you hear about the Emperor closing the Senate in the OT, you get a feeling of dread, of how this tyrannical government is wiping away the last vestiges of democracy. After seeing the Prequels and realizing how useless the Galactic Senate was, all I can say is "good riddance" every time I see that scene again when Tarkin talks about the Senate being closed.
In the end, the Empire wasn't the real villain of the series, the Sith were-but the Prequels showed that the Republic's corruption is what gave the Sith their opening to form the Empire in the first place. If the Republic wasn't such a broken fucking mess, the Sith would have had nothing to work with. Add that with a lot of media which allowed you to see things from the Imperial perspective, from games, comics, and novels, and it was a fun time being an Imperial fan in the late 1990s early 2000s. Far more fun than it is now, where most of the new media just reduced the Imperials to shallow bad guys who exist to get punked. Sure, there's some good performances there, like Moff Gus and that Imperial general who sounds like he came from the Dixie part of the galaxy, but it's nowhere near as good as the 501st Legion guy narrating things from the Imperial POV in classic BF2, or playing as the Empire in Galactic Battlegrounds and Empire at War where you get to play as Darth Vader as he eradicated Rebel Scum from one end of the galaxy to the next.
And it's a shame because it opens up some great story and character opportunities. Let's put aside for a moment that the Empire of the Original Trilogy had a whole host of real world influences besides simply the Third Reich and say that, yes, they're one to one equivalents to the Nazis.
The biggest influence aside from the Germans in the OT Empire were the British. They've all got British accents, their navy was humungous and everywhere, they had penal colonies up the ass, and they were fighting against a plucky guerilla force made of former landed elites that eventually defeated them. It was an obvious parallel to the American Revolution, especially when our good guys are about as American as Apple Pie: We have A) a farmboy who looks like he belongs in Kansas, B) a socialite princess who would be at home in New York, C) a cowboy and his hairy friend who wouldn't look out of place in Texas, and D) a suave black man in an urban environment. Throw in Pastor/Father Kenobi (whose original actor Alec Guinness, played the part of a clergyman more than once) and you've got the whole set.
As I said, a lot of media in the early 2000s, the Prequel Trilogy especially, showed us that the Republic's fall and the Empire's rise was kind of a necessary thing. It would have been preferable if they had a Jedi as Emperor instead of a Sith, but the Jedi became simps for a government that was practically a free-for-all; a government that wasn't even really a government, just a mob of rich people bitching at each other all day while the Jedi play cops and robbers with local warlords and megacorporations. Before the Prequels, my pro-Imperial side rested solely on the cool factor of how awesome their starships and uniforms looked. After the Prequels, I kinda feel more justified in my Imperial fanboyism now that I know that the Republic that the Jedi and the Alliance simp for was just a few steps shy of the Imperium of Man when it comes to being ineffective and self-sabotaging.
I never bought into the argument that Ahsoka was a Mary Sue that was being bandied about while the Clone Wars series was being aired, but in the years since Filoni seems bound and determined to prove otherwise. Everyone likes their OC's - even writers of the old EU comics and novels did. But those writers on the whole had the sense to never let their characters outshine the characters from the films, and so always kept things on the level.
TCW Ahsoka was a well-rounded character who had flaws and naturally evolved over time. Rebels Ahsoka was getting to Mary Sue levels, what with her even fighting DARTH VADER and even damaging him, but by the time of the Mandalorian, she's just a meme by that point. She's big, she's powerful, and she'll wreck you if you look at her funny. But hey, at least she gives lonely men something to look forward to every night. XD
Rebels at least had the sense to keep Mon Mothma as the front and center leadership and face of the Rebellion, with her big moment (though brief in the show) being her public denunciation of the Emperor and his regime following a re-canonized version of the Ghorman Massacre, and a subsequent call to arms that brought several rebel cells together.
So basically, the good part about Rebels was when they took something from Legends and put it on screen. Yep, sounds about right.
But yes, it was a massive missed opportunity that Bail Organa and Princess Leia didn't take bigger roles in the show, nor that Garm Bel Iblis or other characters from the old EU weren't reintroduced. But I could make a whole post on the missed opportunities of Rebels.
It was also a missed opportunity for guys like Kyle Katarn and Boba Fett. I mean, if I'm writing a show about the Rebellion, having a Stormtrooper cadet defect after finding out that the Imps decapitated his father would be front and center on my list of tales. That, and before I would bring in bigshots like Tarkin or Vader, I'd have the local Imperial cheeseheads call Boba Fett in first to deal with the Lothal Rebels. It would have been fun to see Sabine Wren and Ezra Bridger go up against Boba Fett. Then when Fett loses, that's when Tarkin and Vader start wondering that maybe, they should take this Lothal issue more seriously, when even the king of the bounty hunters can't rein them in.
I mean, Filoni is ostensibly a "fan" himself and therefore should understand why these things are appealing or important to the established fanbase. For example, making the spirit in the Sith Holocron on Malachor be an established character like Traya would've been an awesome Easter egg that fans would've gone wild over (I actually suspected that was the case when the episode aired), so I don't know why he went out of his way to insist she was someone else who'd we'd never heard of before. Maybe orders from higher up in the story group?
Wait a minute, didn't Traya find peace by the end? She was actually happy dying at Meetra Surik's arms, after she proved herself worthy of being a Jedi. Traya even gives Meetra some horoscope readings on her friends and how they will become the future of the Jedi Order.
Or maybe it's an ego/power thing: Filoni is big man in charge now, and sees himself as the great storyteller that can mold the canon universe to his liking. He did used to say that he viewed himself as George's "padawan."
If you have that many people praising you, you WILL end up growing an ego. Of course Filoni feels a bit egotistical now, the fans, even those who hate Disney, see him as the savior of Star Wars. Many of them have been calling on Disney to fire KK and put Filoni in charge of Lucasfilm.
When the rebranding of the old EU into "Legends" occurred back in 2014, I assumed at the time that this simply meant that Lucasfilm was going to do what Marvel Studios did for the MCU: use the books, comics, and games as a giant back catalog from which to draw characters and storylines that could be adapted to live action and animation.
Instead, it was more like what Marvel did with Universe 616 and the Ultimates: separate the old continuity from the new. Legends canon was like Marvel 616, this old continuity spanning several decades. Disney canon was like Marvel Ultimates, this new canon that is more streamlined and more geared towards casuals who don't have time to read 50 comics about Boba Fett or something.
What we've gotten instead is a whole bunch of boring new characters and storylines that are either bastardized versions of what came before, or as you said the familiar characters just used as a quick throwaway references, or butchered because the writers either want to stick it to the "manbabies" or use it to build up their own lame creations by tearing familiar ones down.
It's the standard result of people substituting wokeness for creativity. They don't have to try, all they need to do is piss off the "manbabies" or please the alphabet crowd.
In Filoni's defense, much of the name, event, and mythology changes that were made in The Clone Wars show were done at the insistence of George, who was the executive producer. The show was his baby and his "vision" at the end of the day, which is what brought in bizarre elements like the cartoonish Grievious of Episode III (rather than the ruthless monster of Gennedy Wars), or the insistence that the Trade Federation, Banking Clan, and other conglomerate entities that we had seen found the CIS and whose equipment and troops were fighting under the Seperatist banner were officially "neutral" entities that still had representation in the Senate.
I can still understand that, though. Obviously, such galaxy-wide corporations would have representatives and offices on Republic space who would just condemn their Confederate co-workers as radicals. That, and if Grievous was his usual Gennedy Wars self, the series would be rated M for mature and would quickly turn into a bloody shonen series where Grievous spends his days skewering Jedi and crushing clones' heads into pulp.
It did have it's moments, though - and when it did shine, it shined brightly. I think that's the appeal for many fans, plus the fact that it is "officially" George's vision of what occurred between Episodes II and III.
There's also the fact that the show, especially in the first few seasons, had a light-heartedness and sense of adventure as well as characterization and dialogue that were reminiscent of the original trilogy. That was appealing to people who had felt let down by the dry, stiff, and overall pretty lifeless characterizations of the prequel trilogy. Anakin, Padme, Obi-Wan, and a whole host of others actually came across as people instead of the moody blocks of wood that we had seen in Episodes II and III.
Well, it was mostly because George had three years since EPIII to take in all the people's criticisms of his characters in the Prequels, which he then implemented in TCW to make the characters more rounded.
The same thing happened with Sabine in Rebels. It started out where she was simply an outcast Mandalorian girl who had an artistic streak. But then we learned that she had been at the Imperial academy...and then that she had also been a bounty hunter...and then that her mother was the head of a major clan...and then that her father was a famous artist that had also been an outspoken critic of the Empire and became a significant political prisoner...and then that she had spent her time at the Imperial Academy developing superweapons that directly attacked Mandalorian Beskar armor. I mean, it became ridiculous.
Then they gave Sabine the Darksaber, and she won a lightsaber duel against a Mandalorian warlord, a Viceroy, CHOSEN BY PALPATINE HIMSELF to rule the Mandalorians. At this point, they should have just made her an adult. A battle-hardened veteran of the Clone Wars like Bo-Katan. At least then, all her accomplishments and relations would have been more understandable.
Not to mention an adult Sabine Wren can have a more interesting backstory. Like say, make her an instructor in the Imperial academy who quits when she realizes that her beloved students' lives are being wasted on nonsensical wars and genocides that were ordered by heartless Moffs who sacrifice their lives as if they were nothing. Or that she was told to design an arc caster to fry droids, but the Empire modified that and used it to fry a bunch of Mandalorian rebels, and that forced her to quit. Heck, you can even make her a Mandalorian clan leader at this point, if she was an adult. A clan leader whose clan was displaced by pro-Imperial Mandalorians, or worse, KILLED by pro-Imperial Mandalorians after she left her post in the Imperial academy. That would create more gravitas and sympathy for the character, as well as give her a greater sense of tragedy and show the kind of stakes this war has.
Like I said, I could do a whole post on the missteps and missed opportunities of Rebels.
Shit, the biggest misstep for that show is that it ended BEFORE the OT. It would be more fun if it had further seasons that took place DURING the OT, where we see how our heroes get affected by things like the destruction of the Death Star, the rise of Luke Skywalker, the Battle of Hoth, and even the Battle of Endor. Instead of just a small epilogue, imagine if we had an episode or two to show off post-Endor Lothal being a prosperous society under the New Republic, and our heroes get to come home, settle down, have families, and be rewarded for all those years of hard fighting against the Empire, giving fans of both Rebels and TCW a very enjoyable, cathartic ending. It would be a good closing of the book all the way from TCW, since some of these characters date all the way back to TCW, and we can see the likes of Rex and Ahsoka join Sabine, Ezra, and Hera in having new, peaceful lives.
Ahsoka could be running her own Jedi Academy on Lothal, acting as one of Luke Skywalker's lieutenants in the New Jedi Order in the same vein as Kyle Katarn. Sabine would be working with Bo-Katan in the new Mandalorian society where the Mandalorians are working as enforcers for the New Republic, and we see Sabine running a new military academy on Lothal with Rex, training a new generation of soldiers to keep the peace while she marries Ezra and has a Force-sensitive baby with him. We could see Hera taking charge in Lothal, being voted in as their new governor or even their Senator, representing the sector's interests in the New Republic Senate. The possibilities were endless. But instead, you just get a short post-Endor epilogue where the Empire didn't come back to raze Lothal after they offed a Grand Admiral, which makes no fucking sense.
Well, for once, they would be correct. The original script and lore of Star Wars as we know it went through more revisions and edits than you can count on both hands until it was absolutely nothing like the first draft, and this was done with the help of both Marcia Lucas and friends of George like Francis Ford Coppola, and there was a lot of editing and dialogue rework that made the first film into the classic we know and love today.
But ultimately, George was the big ideas man that started it all, and it was his outline of "The Tragedy of Darth Vader" that lead to The Empire Strikes Back being the loved film that it is, and made the fall and redemption of Anakin Skywalker such a central point of the saga.
Indeed. Lucas was, in the end, the cornerstone of Star Wars. He's like Peter from the Twelve Apostles. He screws up big time, more than once, and those screw-ups were embarrassing, but in the end, he's the bedrock in which the whole thing rests. The others might have helped improve things, but by the end, it was Lucas' brainchild from the start.
