a New Hope for the Franchise, from an Unexpected Source

It is a dark time for Star Wars. The Mandalorian and Grogu was a box office flop, earning less than the low-budget horror films Obsession and Backrooms – a failure that puts the franchise’s cinematic future in jeopardy. Ahsoka season 2 was postponed until 2027 and The Acolyte was canceled. Yet there is a new hope. The Ninth Jedi, an anime first developed by Production I.G. for the Star Wars: Visions anthology series, is exactly the sort of refresh Lucasfilm needed. The stylish, heartfelt series remixes the most iconic elements of Star Wars to create something that feels vital after decades of iterating on the Skywalker Saga.

The Ninth Jedi is set in a future where both the Jedi and Sith are in decline, while the Jedi master Margrave Juro (Andrew Kishino in the English dub) hopes to rebuild the Jedi Order to take on the powerful warlord Nawaam (Young Mazino). That plan involves the work of the sabersmith Lah Zhima (Shang-Chi star Simu Liu), one of the only people who knows the secret of building this elegant weapon for a more civilized age. But Nawaam has captured Zhima, and is hoping to construct a kyber crystal cannon powerful enough to bring the entire galaxy under his control.

Setting the story in the far future disentangles The Ninth Jedi from established lore while also heightening it by reinforcing the endless cosmic struggle between light and dark. Nawaam’s goal is to break that cycle through conquest. He’s a twisted zen master seeking to embrace nothingness through his riff on the Death Star, which is reimagined as a black hole ripping through the fabric of space. Even a failed test has devastating consequences, leaving a planet scarred and burning.

The Ninth Jedi writer Mitsuyasu Sakai, supervising director Kenji Kamiyama (who helmed the original short), and series director Shunsuke Tada embrace the best parts of Star Wars and learn from the franchise’s biggest mistakes. They fully realize the potential of Kylo Ren, borrowing his character design and some of his motivations, while using eight episodes to tell a singular powerful story rather than undermining the character with hard narrative pivots. Like Darth Vader, Nawaam raises the tension level just by walking into a scene. His prowess is established early when he’s introduced addressing his army and demonstrating that he’ll take any challenger foolish enough to face him. The show keeps finding new ways to reinforce how terrifying he is, like the feeling of deadly inevitability Nawaam creates as he shatters the lights with every step through the Jedi vessel he’s infiltrating.

The idea that Star Wars is made for kids has often been used to dismiss criticism of its failings, but The Ninth Jedi is a reminder that you can have young protagonists without juvenile storytelling. Zhima’s daughter Lah Kara (Kimiko Glenn of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Hazbin Hotel) is somewhere between Ahsoka Tano and Luke Skywalker – a prodigy in the Force who remains fiercely devoted to the mission of the Jedi even as she learns dark truths and experiences terrible loss. The show even finds a brilliant way to harken back to the Ewoks, removing the goofiest elements of Return of the Jedi while using some adorable aliens to demonstrate Kara’s strength and the stakes of her struggle.

Not all the characters are so well realized. Homen (Patrick Seitz), one of the aspiring Jedi who showed up to receive a lightsaber from Zhima in The Ninth Jedi short, has nothing to do in the new series. That’s especially a shame since he’s one of the only main characters who’s truly alien. Rather than using classic Star Wars species, the anime’s creators instead introduce characters who look a lot like dwarves and elves and don’t have much personality beyond the traits you’d expect from them in a Lord of the Rings story.

But those are minor shortcomings. The Ninth Jedi also embodies the marriage of pathos and action in the best Star Wars stories. Giant space battles take place concurrently with daring escapes and acrobatic lightsaber duels between warriors with unfinished business. The elements all stack on top of each other to create a layered story rather than pulling the narrative in too many different directions. The action is spectacular, but the show’s creators also recognize that less is sometimes more. A singular destroyer droid proves a terrible threat because the Jedi have to figure out its weaknesses on the fly. The spectacle and big emotions of anime prove to be a perfect match for the space opera George Lucas created by borrowing from the films of Akira Kurosawa.

Image: Disney

This isn’t the first time animation helped get Star Wars through a dark era. Before he took over Lucasfilm, Dave Filoni worked to redeem the prequel trilogy with The Clone Wars, which filled in the blanks to add depth and nuance to the story of Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Ninth Jedi joins Matt Michnovetz’s stylish noir Maul – Shadow Lord, which premiered in April, in charting a bold new path for the franchise, even as Lucasfilm’s live-action projects falter. Just as the heroes of The Ninth Jedi dream of restoring the Jedi Order, the show itself is evidence that Star Wars can still have a bright future with the help of fresh creative voices.

The Ninth Jedi is now streaming on Disney Plus.