At the top of Monday morning, Disney and Lucasfilm dropped the first trailer for their highly anticipated Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu. The 2026 blockbuster will pick up where the Disney Plus series left off back in 2023, which these days feels like a long, long time ago in a news-cycle galaxy far, far away.
Instead of feeling like a massive event, the first look at Mandalorian and Grogu feels more like the media conglomerate version of Obi-Wan Kenobi’s Force handwave — a “These are not the droids you are looking for” for a media-conglomerate controversy. On Sept. 17, Disney, which owns ABC, announced that Jimmy Kimmel Live! would be pulled from the air after host Jimmy Kimmel referred to “the MAGA gang” in connection with the suspected shooter of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. The move has been framed by critics as corporate capitulation to intimidation from FCC chair Brendan Carr and the Trump administration. The backlash was immediate and harsh, first with calls for reversals, then boycotts after Disney’s sustained silence.
Maybe a new Star Wars trailer could heal? When Mandalorian and Grogu arrives next summer, the blockbuster stands to pay off the revitalizing work of director Jon Favreau and Star Wars story master Dave Filoni. It’s exciting, but not so exciting that the trailer release hasn’t caught the attention of fuming fans who think they’re now the ones being placated. None of this would seem devious if not for trade-reporting on the fact that Disney apparently sat on the trailer in the wake of Kimmel’s dismissal. An unusual Monday morning drop, forecast with little fanfare, makes the release timing all the more suspect. (Polygon has reached out to Disney for comment and clarification on the timeline of the trailer release, and we will update this story with any response.)
If Disney thought a Star Wars trailer was bigger than the backlash might be by Sunday night, John Oliver showed up to prove the company wrong. During his Sept. 21 broadcast of Last Week Tonight, Oliver followed Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and even Jimmy Fallon (ish) in standing on his late-night comedy soap box to decry the placating actions of the Walt Disney Corporation. Over 27 minutes, Oliver analyzed the situation as an alarming case of censorship, scorched Disney’s continued tendencies to indulge the Trump administration — including a $15 million legal settlement in late 2024 — and made multiple references to Donald Duck’s anatomically correct corkscrew penis. But his rant wasn’t all facts and figures; by the end, Oliver made a very clear statement to his audience: If you don’t like when a giant corporation silences a critic of an American president, do something about it.
“As for Disney, I’d argue they need to stand by Kimmel and his staff,” Oliver said. “And there are ways that you can encourage them to do that. You could exert pressure on them by canceling Disney Plus or Hulu. And you can be specific about it because it turns out there’s actually a box when you cancel, where you can tell them exactly why you are doing it. So you could easily write, say, ‘cowardice in the face of pressure’ or ‘refusing to protect freedom of speech’ or ‘Donald Duck’s corkscrew penis.’”
Oliver fanned a fire that was flaring up every hour over the weekend. Some of Disney’s biggest stars have now openly broken ranks to support Kimmel, including The Avengers star Mark Ruffalo, who warned on Threads that Disney’s stock would “go down a lot further” if the suspension becomes permanent, adding that the company “does not want to be the ones that broke America.” Tatiana Maslany, who headlined She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, went further, urging followers to cancel their subscriptions in protest. Olivia Rodrigo, a former Disney Channel star whose concert film driving home 2 u is also on Disney Plus, called the suspension “blatant censorship and abuse of power.” Fantastic Four actor Pedro Pascal took to Instagram to stand in solidarity.
Writers who have worked for the company went even longer, as they are prone to do. Damon Lindelof, who has spearheaded everything from ABC’s Lost to Disney’s Tomorrowland and a shelved Star Wars movie, posted a lengthy defense of Kimmel, vowing he could not “in good conscience work for the company that imposed” the suspension. In a Deadline op-ed, Andor writer Dan Gilroy tied the moment directly to the authoritarian themes in their series, with Dan warning that Disney’s compliance amounted to “pavement for the road to a brave new Trumpian world.” The rage has spilled over into real life, with protests popping up outside Disney offices and a sharp rise in Google searches for “cancel Disney Plus” and “cancel Hulu.”
Maybe the speeches and quips won’t leave a mark. Maybe Disney will succeed in trying to serve society’s four quadrants. Maybe a new Star Wars trailer does heal. As of Monday, it’s unclear if Kimmel will return to airwaves as negotiations over the future of his late-night show remain ongoing. But also, as of Monday, the debate around Disney’s decision to proactively avoid the Trump administration’s wrath has not moved on — regardless of a Mandalorian-sized trailer drop. Even in the Star Wars subreddit, a place that’s usually home to pure salivation and hype, eager fans are bemoaning the choices they’ll face in 2026.
“Shame, would’ve loved to have seen this. Right your wrongs Disney and maybe I’ll consider supporting your projects again.”
“I’m not giving Disney another dime until they decide to get back on the right side of history,” said another. Many more expletives followed.
We know little about the direction of The Mandalorian and Grogu other than it probably won’t combat fascism as overtly as Andor, but still exists in the Star Wars universe, where evil forces aim to control the lives of interplanetary innocents. It is a political franchise even at its most pulpy, which makes Disney’s choice to drop a Mandalorian and Grogu trailer on the heels of censorship backlash even stranger. If it’s a tactic to subdue heat, it’s not working. If it wasn’t, it’s an uncomfortable reminder that the situation has still not been resolved. And while a few fans on Reddit are wondering if we’ll really see Mando fight an IRL Mantellian savrip, a creature from Chewbacca’s dejarik board, most of them just want some answers about Kimmel. The question is: Can Star Wars devotees, at the end of the day, truly resist enough to leave a dent in Disney’s earnings?
But in terms of sentiment, Oliver channeled most of what is brewing on Star Wars channels across the internet a full 12 hours before The Mandalorian and Grogu trailer.
“History is also going to remember the cowards who definitely knew better, but still let things happen,” he remarked. “And I will say this, if we’ve learned nothing else from this administration’s second term so far, and I don’t think we have, is that giving the bully your lunch money doesn’t make him go away.”
