Earlier in March, as The Mandalorian season 3 was premiering and the showrunners were doing the media tour, Jon Favreau did an interview that hinted at some significant developments for the Star Wars franchise in the coming years.
Speaking with Moovy TV, in an interview that was picked up by Star Wars News Net, Favreau talked about the stories he’s telling and how it fits together in the timeline. He said:
“There’s definitely a conversation that’s going on. And then, also what happens after the sequel trilogy. Because the sequel trilogy only takes place over the course of a few years. And it’s a big thing on the screen, and it’s very eventful. But it is a relatively brief moment in history over the course of the thousands of years that Star Wars takes place. And so what happens after it is interesting too, and I know that there’s some discussion, exploration going on about what happens after it. So I think that there are certain markers that we have – it’s almost like studying ancient history, where you kind of know a few things that happen, but there’s a lot of murkiness in between, and we just don’t have archaeological evidence in the real world to know exactly what happened, so we kind of connect the dots.”
Favreau has a ton of open space in the timeline to work with, as even with the muddy timeline of the Mandoverse there’s still a few decades before the start of the sequel trilogy. That allows the stories that he and his team telling, which have included The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, and Skeleton Crew, to be explored in their own right – while hints are already being established of what is to come.
But the most notable part of his answer is that he mentioned Lucasfilm is having discussion exploring what happens after the sequel trilogy. That’s the most direct we’ve heard it, and the first time we’ve really heard it from anyone ‘in the know’ at the company, but that probably won’t be the case for long. Star Wars Celebration is right around the corner, where the company will roll out their plans for future theatrical films. There has been plenty of talk about how the next film(s) could actually take place after The Rise of Skywalker in the timeline, and even though they wouldn’t necessarily be continuing the Skywalker Saga, they could include some known figures (here’s hoping for Daisy Ridley as Rey).
It’s no surprise, then, that as Lucasfilm explores this next era of films it would also be seeking to explore what happens after the films we’ve already seen. These next movies, and especially the one in 2025, are going to be the among the most significant projects of Kathy Kennedy’s storied tenure at Lucasfilm, alongside The Force Awakens (re-kindling the franchise), Rogue One (the first non-saga film), and The Mandalorian (the first live-action series). All three were met with tremendous applause and success, so there’s hope for this one, but it’ll be important to get it right to usher in a new era of Star Wars on the big screen.
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