Disney Finally Has a Plan To Save Star Wars, but There’s a Catch

Reinvention is the answer

Star Wars video games demonstrate how Lucasfilm can break the nostalgia loop

As Star Wars turns 50 in 2027, the galaxy-spanning franchise’s reputation feels like it’s been on a seesaw. It has scored a handful of wins, particularly with Andor’s Emmy success and the positive reception of Disney’s latest animated offering, Maul: Shadow Lord. But for all the highs Star Wars has delivered, its lows have been so pronounced that it’s hard to imagine expectations sinking any lower.

Worse still, the future of Star Wars doesn’t look particularly exciting, at least if you’re a fan only interested in what Disney and Lucasfilm have in store for Star Wars TV and film projects. Half of them seem to be on ice, and the other half plan on retreading old ground like the Skywalkers. Yawn. Barely worth talking about.

However, there is hope for Star Wars — and it rests entirely on the shoulders of Lucasfilm Games and its open-minded vision for a galaxy far, far away.

The way forward for Star Wars lies in video games

In 2013, Lucasfilm Games and Disney signed a 10-year exclusive licensing agreement that let EA publish Star Wars games, leading to standout titles like DICE’s Star Wars: Battlefront series and Respawn’s Jedi games starring Cal Kestis (Cameron Monaghan). That exclusivity ran out in 2023, allowing Lucasfilm Games to be far less restrictive with the Star Wars franchise.

In an interview with The Game Business Show, Lucasfilm Games executive Douglas Reilly discussed the success of Star Wars video games and how that success came from being “more flexible” about who Lucasfilm Games is willing to take pitches from. “Good ideas,” Reilly explained, “can come from a lot of different places.”

“You don't have to necessarily be a top five publisher to make a great Star Wars game,” Reilly added. He’s absolutely correct. In 2026 alone, Star Wars fans have received two very different Star Wars games. The first, Star Wars: Zero Company, is a phenomenal turn-based tactics game set during the waning days of The Clone Wars. More recently, Star Wars: Galactic Racer is a run-based arcade racer with roguelike elements that puts players in the cockpit of their own speeder as they pursue the title of Galactic League champion. Both games have massively exceeded expectations for Star Wars fans, who are notoriously hard to please.

Notably, Reilly confirms more projects are on the way from both large and small partners, and he believes they will “continue to surprise folks.” Since nobody saw a Star Wars racing game coming, we can expect more for gamers and Star Wars fans alike. For example: anyone fancy a Star Wars fighting game?

What the rest of Star Wars can learn from Lucasfilm Games

Lucasfilm Games’ willingness to consider a wider range of pitches ultimately works in its favor. While both Galactic Racer and Zero Company draw on events and ideas already established elsewhere — such as The Clone Wars and the prequel film The Phantom Menace — they never lean so heavily on nostalgia that Star Wars fans feel they're retreading the same ground. Zero Company focuses on Hawks, someone let down by the system they believed in, who finds solace with a group of outcasts learning to rely on one another, all wrapped up in a neatly packaged war story. Galactic Racer is a racing sports story through and through, following Shade and their rivalry with fellow racer Kestar Bool.

Both games put their own characters and genres at the center of the experience. That alone is a huge lesson the TV and movie sides of the Star Wars franchise could stand to learn.

Since the controversial 2019 release of J.J. Abrams' The Rise of Skywalker, the franchise has made an obvious effort to explain some of the movie’s more nonsensical revelations. The Mandalorian, at least in its first season, seemed to offer a different path: a space Western unlike anything else in Star Wars history. By the second and third seasons, however, The Mandalorian seemed much more interested in explaining how Palpatine returned years later and exploring the ongoing struggles over Mandalorian succession than in focusing on Din Djarin and his ward, Grogu. For every bit of character development the series carried forward — Din letting Grogu go and giving up bounty hunting to care for him, and so on — it quickly reversed course.

By trying to answer questions about material unrelated to its main storyline, The Mandalorian and other spin-offs like Ahsoka and The Book of Boba Fett ended up making the galaxy feel ridiculously small. If everything is connected, then where is the fun in discovering something new?

Star Wars returns next year with Ahsoka season 2. From the trailers, co-president Dave Filoni seems poised to answer questions his other shows, The Clone Wars and Rebels, left open. Trite and predictable. Cautious optimism surrounds Shawn Levy’s Starfighter, also set to release in 2027, which largely hinges on it being set further in the timeline than Star Wars has ever gone before. What does this mean for the state of the universe?

Hopefully, Lucasfilm Games' open-minded approach and fans’ enthusiasm for games like Galactic Racer and Zero Company point to an exciting future for Star Wars. After all, Lucasfilm Games has shown that taking risks pays off. Now it’s time for Disney and Lucasfilm to get on board and take some risks too.