Disney+'s 3 Season Sci-Fi Epic Is Everything Modern Star Wars Should Have Been

Published Oct 16, 2026, 3:15 PM EDT Nicolas Ayala is a Senior Writer for the Comics team at ScreenRant, with over five years of experience writing about Superhero media, action movies, and TV shows. The Star Wars franchise would be much more consistently successful if it left the Skywalker saga aside to focus on its best release in decades. The Skywalker lineage has been the heart of the Star Wars franchise from the start, as it provided the basis for some of the franchise's most historic milestones, like Darth Vader's identity reveal to Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back. Decades later, George Lucas dedicated the entire prequel trilogy to Anakin Skywalker's tragic descent into darkness across the prequel saga, and The Clone Wars animated show expanded Anakin and Obi-Wan's story even further. Later on, Star Wars' sequel trilogy failed to keep the momentum, due in large part to the fact that the Skywalker saga's well had run entirely dry after decades of exhaustive storytelling. Several projects had already explored every conceivable facet of Anakin, Luke, and Leia's legacies across the original six movies, seven seasons of The Clone Wars, and hundreds of expanded universe novels in the Legends continuity. Such over-saturation left Star Wars' modern movies with little new territory to explore, and it led the sequels' attempts at subverting expectations to fall flat, at best. At some point during the sequel trilogy, Star Wars found the perfect way to evolve, but it has taken too long for its full potential to be exploited. Star Wars: Visions Should Have Been The Future Of The Franchise Star Wars: Visions Expanded The Franchise's Possibilities Like No Other Movie Or Show Before Or Since Star Wars: Visions is the peak of Star Wars' creative freedom since George Lucas first devised his galaxy far far away. Disney's animated Star Wars anthology allowed multiple creators to break free from the stifling constraints of strict canon and the Skywalker saga's overarching storylines to imagine entirely new characters, weapons, and conflicts. A single episode can focus on a Ronin Sith hunter wandering a feudal-inspired outer rim, and the very next can follow an alien rock band trying to survive a concert for Jabba the Hutt. Every story has the freedom to start from scratch without having to answer lingering questions from the established franchise. Anthology shows like Star Wars: Visions also inject new visual ideas into the franchise. Visions feature hyper-stylized Japanese anime, striking stop-motion puppetry, and beautiful, hand-drawn European watercolor styles, all technically set in the same continuity, but never obligated to acknowledge the others. As refreshing as The Mandalorian and Andor may have been when they were released, they simply can't risk such artistic choices. Countless captivating stories must exist somewhere out there in the same universe as the Skywalkers, but they can only be explored by bold and unfairly rare experiments like Star Wars: Visions. Star Wars Doesn't Need To Release Another Anthology To Build Upon Vision's Ideas New Star Wars Miniseries Can Continue Visions' Promising Ideas Star Wars seems to have closed Visions' short-lived chapter, but that doesn't mean its legacy should stay confined to the anthology format. Disney can still give Star Wars a breath of fresh air simply by releasing new, self-contained animated miniseries that champion a single, bold artistic proposal. Instead of a collection of short films, Disney could choose a single concept for a completely standalone animated miniseries, where a new group of writers and artists can flesh out its world-building. These projects can deliver a clear beginning, middle, and end before the next miniseries travels to a completely different corner of the same universe. Lucasfilm has already started this exact expansion model with the lore-brimming Star Wars: Visions Presents - The Ninth Jedi, an eight-episode limited anime series that stretches the lore of the original shorts. The Ninth Jedi takes place in a distant, post-war future, where the Force-sensitive young girl Lah Kara goes on a quest to rescue her kidnapped sabersmith father and aid a fellowship of masterless warriors. The Ninth Jedi fleshes out original high-fantasy concepts such as unique lightsabers that physically alter blade colors based on a wielder's precise Force alignment. Several other standout installments from Star Wars: Visions have the rich lore and unique art style needed to launch a full animated miniseries. The samurai-inspired masterpiece "The Duel" by Kamikaze Douga presented an entire feudal alternate universe that begs for deeper exploration, where a multi-episode run could trace the Ronin's tragic past and his ongoing hunt for scattered Sith relics. Studio Trigger’s explosive "The Twins" focuses on Force-powered siblings born from the dark side, with a perfect concept for a hyper-stylized miniseries tracking Karre's mission to redeem his sister, Am. If not these, new animated Star Wars shows could draw inspiration from their concepts and premises. Which Star Wars: Visions short would you like to see expanded?