Star Wars: Visions executive producer James Waugh has explained why escaping the franchise’s canon is such a major boon to the animated anthology series.
Speaking recently to Anime Corner, Waugh responded to a question regarding the process of introducing new characters, concepts and versions of the Star Wars Galaxy while juggling established canon within Lucasfilm. “Well honestly I think the nice thing about Visions is that we’re not trying to make this part of the ongoing canonical narrative,” Waugh explained. “Some of these stories fit perfectly within canon. I mean that’s the thing, we’re not saying don’t do that.”
New Star Wars: Visions ‘Less Worried About Contradicting’ Franchise Canon With Unique Stories
Image via Lucasfilm
“I don’t think we’d ever get things like ‘The Duel’ if we tried to fit it into that,” Waugh continued. “We wanted people to celebrate what they love about Star Wars and so you know that was very clearly a love letter to Kurosawa and George Lucas. I’m open to bringing in things from the expanded universe into Visions because it meant something to that person from that cultural perspective. I think it’s liberating and where we really try to hold the line is in Star Wars. Like if I think Star Wars still speaks at a very universal mythic level and I think it should always do that. And so that’s where we try to find and steer our stories too. But I’m less worried about something directly contradicting something in this space, if the story warrants it within the unique expression of Star Wars: Visions.”
Star Wars: Visions premiered in 2021 on Disney+ and quickly established itself as the latest hit Star Wars series, albeit not one that resembles anything fans have seen before. The animated anthology series’ first season featured shorts from numerous fan-favorite studios and introduced instantly iconic characters such as the Ronin, F and Lah Zhima. In 2023, a second season of Star Wars: Visions arrived, bringing with it another set of stories pulled from the most remote corners of the galaxy far, far away, not to mention versions of it that would have never been glimpsed otherwise. Star Wars: Visions has been met with widely positive reviews since its release, currently boasting a near-perfect 98% “Fresh” rating via review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
In July, incoming Star Wars: Visions director Shinya Ohira opened up about what restrictions he faced while developing his short for the series. “There was a few things that we got from Disney and Star Wars. It might not be obvious, but they didn’t want us to portray any of the main characters from the original series and things like the Millennium Falcon. They said, ‘Please stay away from them,’ which is fair enough,” Ohira recalled. “It’s set in a ‘galaxy far, far away,’ so they were very specific about not having any Earth-based creatures. They can be similar, but make sure they’re alien.”
Ohira added, “Also, there are limits on the portrayal of gore as well, because it’s on the Disney+ platform, obviously… That was the one condition that didn’t upset me, but it was the one condition that I had to really think about because in my animation, I’m used to drawing quite graphic material, and I was thinking about potentially making this relatively graphic.”