Fans know that “Star Wars” was kept alive on the small screen long before the new string of feature films post-Disney merger. This success was due to the embrace of animated series like “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” and its follow-up “Star Wars: Rebels.” In addition to the return of “Star Wars: The Bad Batch,” Disney announced at D23 this weekend that we’ll also have a brand new project in “Tales of The Jedi,” which will see six shorts focusing all on sorts of Jedi characters.
During the presentation, Lucasfilm dropped a first-look teaser trailer for “Tales of The Jedi.” The company also shared that the animated original would drop on Disney+ on October 26. The animation style for this new series is more familiar and nowhere near as wild as the anime shorts from “Star Wars: Visions,” which saw famed Japanese animation houses tackle the “Star Wars” universe.
“Tales of The Jedi” features new stories about young Ahsoka Tano and her mother, an early Qui-Gon Jinn tale, and even more. Executive producer Dave Filoni also confirmed that Clone Force 99 would return in a second season of “Star Wars: The Bad Batch,” which will arrive on January 4, 2023, with a two-episode premiere on Disney+.
This round of news/teases should get fans of the animated side of the franchise excited. If “Tales of The Jedi” is a hit, we can only assume that we could see many more installments of animated “Star Wars” stories. And given that the title comes from the old Dark Horse Comics run of stories that included the Old Republic setting, we’ll keep our fingers crossed that this could add some of the expanded/legends characters to the current canon. We still haven’t seen Lucasfilm tackle the Old Republic era, but animation could be our first entry point to it beyond comic books and video games.