Star Wars is in a weird place right now. On the big screen, we saw the not-necessarily-beloved release of The Mandalorian & Grogu, the first theatrical adventure since 2019. And there is next year’s Star Wars: Starfighter, a done-in-one flick starring Ryan Gosling. But that’s pretty much it. On the small screen? The live-action series have been diminishing returns, with The Mandalorian remaining a massive hit but suffering critical and fan concerns over time, The Acolyte getting canceled after one season, and Ahsoka debuting a belated second season next year after a not-world-shattering first season.
So thank goodness for Lucasfilm’s animation division, which is giving the spark of excitement needed in the galaxy far, far away. They may not be ratings powerhouses, but fans thrilled to the dark Maul – Shadow Lord. And the anthology series Star Wars: Visions has been doing something I’ve been asking for, for decades: giving someone else the keys to Star Wars and letting them reboot it from scratch. In this case, a variety of animation studios allowed to craft their own Star Wars, keeping some pieces, ditching others, and infusing it (mostly) with an anime flair.
Out of one of the most popular segments from Star Wars: Visions comes The Ninth Jedi, following up on the short “The Ninth Jedi” from the first season, and “The Ninth Jedi: Child Of Hope” from the third season. In those we met Lah Kara, the young daughter of a lightsaber maker who watched her father be taken (and possibly killed) by villains, and teamed up with three veteran Jedi to hopefully bring back the Jedi Order and restore peace to the galaxy. Now, that continues in eight episodes which debut simultaneously on Disney+ (all eight episodes were provided for review to critics), and follow the continuing adventures of Lah Kara as she battles Nawaam, a seeming Sith who wants to control the galaxy through terror, wears a helmet, etc, etc.
The greatest strength and weakness of the expanded Ninth Jedi is that unlike the shorts, which skirted classic Star Wars to tell virtually done-in-one stories, the eight episode season hews relatively closely to your classic Star Wars story structure. There are riffs, like the show’s neat focus on the color and strength of your lightsaber indicating your mental state/alliance with good and evil. And it leans into fantasy in space more than even the main series with the introduction of a race of Dwarf smiths who fly rock ships (rock-et ships? You get it). But the basic plot finds a plucky young padawan traversing the galaxy to stop a helmeted bad guy who hides some big secrets from using his massive space laser to blow up planets.
And it would be unfortunate that The Ninth Jedi didn’t skew further from the “like poetry it rhymes” ethos put forth by George Lucas if the show itself wasn’t so much darn fun to watch. While I personally would have loved a ground up reinvention of the franchise, this eight episode season is a more thrilling retelling of the classic Star Wars myth than we got in two out of the three sequel trilogy movies. As a not-insignificant note, I watched the English dub of the season (feel free to judge me), and Kimiko Glenn does a bang-up job as the extremely anime-voiced Lah Kara, ably channeling heroes past like Rey (Daisy Ridley), while Young Mazino is straight up just doing Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) for his take on Nawaan.
Add in a climactic lightsaber battle on the outside of a starship and other reminiscent plot points and even more than a redo of the original trilogy, The Ninth Jedi plays like a laudable and not abysmally toxic version of the troll-fueled online push to remake the sequel trilogy. Whatever the actual, er, vision was for this season of TV, Supervising Director Kenji Kamiyama, Director Shunsuke Tada, and Writer Mitsuyasu Sakai have crafted a story that takes those familiar elements and keeps them briskly moving throughout the eight half-hours with all the lightsaber battles, space battles, and pleas to not turn to the dark side you might want from a remake.
There are some odd choices throughout, though. The first half of the season keeps Lah Kara mostly in a support capacity, when the side-pony wearing hero is the main event of the show. The rest of the usually supporting cast is fine – J.P. Karliak as the grumpy droid pilot Gramps is a stand-out – but nowhere near as interesting as our central child of destiny. Late in the season the show adds a Han Solo-type bounty hunter to the mix, and it adds that extra spark of fun. But as usual, the Jedi are mostly serious drips and giving them the limelight drags the proceedings down.
Also a strange choice? Episodes will often resolve the main conflict early – think about 10-15 minutes in – and then move on to something else. It’s less cliffhangers than two shorter episodes of varying lengths jammed together, and it makes for (from my American perspective, perhaps this is par for the course for anime) an oddly paced and often jarring watch.
But everything else is enjoyably, intrinsically Star Wars. The score uses classic themes from John Williams and expands them to match the anime take on the world(s), the action is tightly choreographed, and even if you know exactly where all this is going it’s still a blast from start to finish. Star Wars may be struggling with live-action on both the big screen and small, but animation has you covered. Can you see the vision?
Star Wars: Visions – The Ninth Jedi premieres is now on Disney+.
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