Lucasfilm, via the official Star Wars website, announced a new direction for Lucasfilm Animation. There are many answered questions, but many more left unanswered.
First, and perhaps most important, is that The Clone Wars television series is ceasing production. They’ll finish work on episodes and arcs in the pipeline, but there is no indication where or how we’ll see them. “Season Six” is not mentioned anywhere at all in the release or the accompanying video (featuring a very classy and stoic Dave Filoni), and we’re told that we’ll be seeing some of the outstanding arcs as “bonus content.” That seems to say that we shouldn’t expect a traditional release. Will it just come out on a double-sized Season 5 Blu-ray set with as much “bonus content” as real content? There are no answers. Filoni did tease a clip from the Order 66 arc that Matt Lanter and Dee Bradley Baker talked about on Full of Sith, Episode IX, and it looks incredible.
There is no timeline for any of these.
The next bit of news is that Star Wars: Detours is on hold indefinitely. They may or may not release it in the future. Their official sentence about it: “Detours was conceived and produced before we decided to move forward with the new Star Wars trilogy, and in the wake of that decision, Lucasfilm has reconsidered whether launching an animated comedy prior to the launch of Episode VII makes sense. As a result, we’ve decided to postpone the release of Detours until a later date.”
And finally, the best bit of news in the announcement, was that there will be a new series, in an untouched area of the Star Wars universe. A good speculative guess would be that it’s in the sequel trilogy era, further wiping out Expanded Universe continuity.
Head over to StarWars.Com for the video.
I’ll be honest. The news wasn’t as bad as I was bracing for. Sure, The Clone Wars is done and certainly before its time, but we’re getting what’s left.
And a new series. I hope Filoni is in charge of that new series as well, and much of the same talent is involved.