Star Wars Celebration 2022: news from Disney’s big event

While live-action announcements grabbed most of the attention during this year’s Star Wars Celebration, the event came to a close with more than a handful of new developments on the animation front that are set to broaden the Star Wars canon in the near future.

Though most of the news out of this year’s Celebration was focused on stories about the adult heroes and villains who’ll be duking it out across Star Wars’ history, the conversation turned toward younglings on Friday as Michael Olson and the rest of the creative team behind Disney Plus and Disney Junior’s Young Jedi Adventures revealed some early details about the upcoming project. Set during Star Wars’ High Republic era, Young Jedi Adventures — due out in spring 2023 — will follow the journeys of multiple Jedi-to-be as they first begin to learn the ways of the Force.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) II: The Sith Lords is heading to the Nintendo Switch on June 8th, as announced at this year's Star Wars Celebration event. The sequel to the classic KOTOR RPG is supposed to feature some performance enhancements and resolution upgrades, as well as a Restored Content DLC set to arrive post-launch.

As you might’ve guessed, the Restored Content DLC comes with the content that Obsidian Entertainment and Aspyr Media, the game’s developers, left out during their rush to launch the game in 2004. There’s already a fanmade mod for KOTOR II on Steam that restores some of this lost content, but it’s unclear how similar the official DLC will be when it comes out.

During day two of the weekend-long Star Wars Celebration event, we got a first look at the sequel to Jedi: Fallen Order, called Jedi: Survivor. It’s expected to launch in 2023 for the PS5, Xbox Series X / S, and PC.

Cal Kestis, who happens to be the galaxy’s least interesting Jedi (especially when Cere Junda is right there), is back, kicking space fascist ass with the help of his extremely cute droid helper BD-1. The Jedi: Fallen Order series follows Cal as he works to rebuild the Jedi after the infamous Order 66. The sequel takes place five years after the original game and is once again described as a “third person, narrative-driven action-adventure game.” Director Stig Asmussen says the sequel will include some next-gen features as well, most notably ray-tracing support and faster load times.

Once upon a time, Ron Howard and George Lucas wanted to try and replicate the success of Star Wars by creating a whole new fantasy, Willow. The film came out in 1988, and while I personally have very important and fond memories of the movie, I am a rarity. The film only did okay at the box office, and any nascent plans for a sequel were put on ice.

Now, 34 years later, we’re getting an entire series dedicated to Warwick Davis’ titular wizard. No longer a wizard in training, Willow now has a staff — and can apparently do magic beyond poorly turning people into a wide variety of animals. The trailer for the new show features a few returning characters, including Joanne Whalley’s Sorsha and at least one of the brownies (played by Kevin Pollak and Rick Overton in the film).

The Star Wars universe on Disney Plus continues to expand with the official reveal of Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, which stars Jude Law and is coming to the streaming service in 2023.

Announced during Star Wars Celebration in Anaheim, the series is a coming-of-age tale set in the sci-fi universe. In addition to Law, it will also star “kids,” though we don’t know who they will be just yet. It’s led by director Jon Watts and writer Chris Ford, who previously collaborated on Spider-Man: Homecoming, and produced by Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni. The series was teased in a Vanity Fair article last week. During today’s event, Filoni said that the show is “as much for kids as The Clone Wars.”

Disney announced at Star Wars Celebration that The Mandalorian’s third season will debut in February 2023 on Disney Plus.

The third season of The Mandalorian has been a long time coming — season two debuted all the way back in October 2020. Thankfully, we’ve seen Mando and Grogu a bit more recently than that, as they starred in some of the later episodes of The Book of Boba Fett, but it still feels like it’s been quite a while since the last dedicated season of The Mandalorian.

Disney kicked off its Star Wars Celebration event with the first look at Andor. The upcoming Disney Plus series stars Diego Luna, who is reprising his role as Cassian Andor from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. The show will hit the streaming platform on August 31st.

Details about the show have been relatively light, though Disney’s website describes the show as a “tense nail-biting spy thriller.” At today’s panel, it was confirmed the season will be 12 episodes long — much longer than a typical Star Wars show — and will take place five years before the events of Rogue One. “You’re not going to recognize Cassian Andor in the beginning,” Luna said during the panel. Here’s the official description: