However, it’s important to acknowledge that the team at Lucasfilm has also brought several noteworthy contributions to the “Star Wars” universe since Disney took the reins. Beyond the corporate missteps, the franchise has seen a mix of triumphs and blunders, with some standout successes arguably compensating for the less favorable moments.

In the spirit of appreciation, let’s highlight the positive strides Disney has made with “Star Wars.” From groundbreaking series that have revitalized the franchise to the introduction of an endearing little green character who captured the hearts of fans old and new, Disney has made some impactful decisions.

Presenting the top 10 achievements Disney has accomplished with “Star Wars,” ranked for your consideration.

First on our list is a strategic move that, while initially appearing modest, has grown into one of Disney’s most significant contributions to “Star Wars.” In a saga populated with legendary figures, Darth Vader stands unparalleled. He eclipses characters like Yoda and the Skywalkers, often hailed as the most iconic villain in cinematic history.

Starting off our list is a creative effort that might seem small at first but which has compounded over time to become one of Disney’s best “Star Wars” moves. In a franchise full of iconic characters and fan favorites, there’s no question that Darth Vader is the most famous. He’s bigger than Yoda and the Skywalkers, and most would call him the greatest cinematic villain in history.

Despite having a far more mixed resume overall, Disney has nearly always hit with Vader. More than that, the modern “Star Wars” era has invested in him deeply as a terrifying villain and icon of evil. Since the acquisition, Darth Vader has appeared frequently, but never so much that he loses his aura. The “Rogue One” hallway scene, the duel with Ahsoka in “Rebels” season 2, bringing back Hayden Christensen in “Obi-Wan Kenobi” and “Ahsoka,” and a stellar run of Marvel comics — it’s hard to cite a use of Vader in the Disney era that hasn’t absolutely hit.

At the end of the day, a lot of these examples amount to little more than fan service — the flashback episode in “Ahsoka” stands out in particular — but it’s fan service done the right way. Lucasfilm has put out plenty of slop for the YouTube-clip factories to farm ad nauseam, but the company has done right by its biggest villain.

Well, aside from the whole James Earl Jones AI voice situation. And hence, the number 10 spot.

We all know that the Disney+ “Star Wars” shows have been a mixed bag. There have been absolute megahits (we’ll get there), and there have been a handful of extreme misses (“Obi-Wan,” we’re looking at you). Overall, though, the strategy of force-pushing things at the wall and seeing what sticks paid dividends. Even in instances where a show didn’t make it to a second season, or where an idea failed to gain fan traction, these more experimental one-offs have opened new possibilities for what mainline “Star Wars” can look like.

“The Acolyte” may have stumbled through its front half, but it also brought something totally new — young-adult genre sensibilities, high-drama romance, and a fantasy bent that “Star Wars” hasn’t embraced nearly enough in live action since the prequels. “Skeleton Crew” took a swing in a different direction with a preteen focus and a self-contained adventure story that garnered some of the franchise’s strongest reviews in years.

Then there’s the animated “Tales” series and “Star Wars: Visions,” which jump between different corners of the “Star Wars” universe — both canonical and not — for bite-sized stories that lean more on strong aesthetics than traditional story structure. “Visions” in particular has blown the scope of the franchise wide open, allowing tons of new creative voices to put their spin on it. The overwhelmingly positive response to the series speaks to how much fans are looking for more unique projects.

“The Last Jedi” is the most polarizing Disney Star Wars movie by a parsec. There’s a vocal contingent who claim it’s the greatest of all the films, Disney or otherwise. And then there’s the other side, who would like to bring federal charges against writer/director Rian Johnson.

We don’t have the space here to rehash that discourse for the 1,138th time. Instead, let’s acknowledge what for some may be a difficult truth: the very fact that the film sparked such dramatic conversation is one of the best things that’s happened to “Star Wars” since the Disney acquisition. Did “The Force Awakens” make a Corellian shipload of cash? Sure. It also garnered major criticism for failing to generate a single new idea. “The Last Jedi” showed that, in this new era, the franchise could still surprise you. It could do bold things and subvert expectations. And let’s not forget that, despite all the naysayers, it also was a massive box office success and one of the most critically acclaimed entries in the entire series.

Disney may have immediately reeled in all the line they let out for Rian Johnson after moving to “The Rise of Skywalker,” but “The Last Jedi” remains the only part of the sequel trilogy that still generates real excitement.

When Disney took over “Star Wars,” there was no lack of clarity regarding the state of the canon. If you were a theatrical film, or an episode of “The Clone Wars,” you were safe. If you were absolutely anything else, you got swept into the big, non-canonical bin dubbed the “Legends” timeline.

Many of the series’ more diehard fans took umbrage with this move, claiming it erased decades worth of stories and all the commensurate time those fans had spent investing in them. But while it can be sad to start over, the idea of rebooting franchise canon is nothing new. Marvel and DC do it constantly in their comic book and film universes, and to be frank, the “Star Wars Expanded Universe” had already contradicted itself on numerous occasions.

What’s arguably more important is that rather than bury those old stories, Disney has embraced them, publishing reprints of old books under the “Legends” banner and even putting together new, annotated special editions of beloved classics like Matthew Stover’s “Revenge of the Sith” novelization. The same is true of many of the old “Star Wars” video games, which have been rereleased on modern consoles. You can even watch the made-for-TV “Ewoks” movies on Disney+.

By embracing these parts of the “Legends” timeline, Disney has kept it alive, even though it isn’t currently being expanded on. Putting the old stories side-by-side with the new ones makes the whole universe feel bigger, and it doesn’t hurt that Disney has brought back authors to do new versions of their old books, like contracting Timothy Zahn to pen a fresh series of Grand Admiral Thrawn novels.

Many of Disney’s big “Star Wars” projects have been directly tied to preexisting material — either set during the span of the original films or drawing direct inspiration from old “Expanded Universe” stories. But early on, the company also carved out a distinct space for entirely new stories: “The High Republic.”

A multimedia publishing initiative, the premise of “The High Republic” was simple: set aside a few hundred years before the “Old Republic” of the “Legends” canon and the prequel era, then fill it with entirely new stories, characters, and ideas. The result — now essentially finished as of 2025, though more stories will surely be added — was one of the biggest success stories since the Disney acquisition.

The unique aesthetic, strong character relationships, various points of entry, and lack of obligation to the larger franchise all helped “The High Republic” thrive. In time, it developed its own distinct sub-fandom, with many calling it their favorite part of “Star Wars.” The era even got its own live-action series with “The Acolyte,” and while that series didn’t receive a second season order, it likewise brought a fresh angle on the franchise that many enjoyed.

It remains to be seen if Disney will do a similar project again, perhaps choosing another unexplored point in the timeline. But given the immense popularity of “The High Republic,” it would make sense.

This may sound like a pretty specific item to rank so highly on this list, but then, maybe you forgot how good “Andor” is. Don’t worry, we’ll be discussing it in detail. But before that, we have to talk about the whole reason we got “Andor” in the first place: “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.”

These days, “Rogue One” is generally viewed as a high watermark for the Disney “Star Wars” era and the most universally loved film of the five produced by the company. But before Tony Gilroy was brought on for rewrites and reshoots and to oversee the final edit, we were due for a very different, and from the sound of it, cataclysmically worse film. Discussing the state of the production in a 2018 interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Gilroy didn’t mince words. “They were in such a swamp,” he explained. “They were in so much terrible, terrible trouble that all you could do was improve their position.”

Fortunately, the film had another north star in the form of generationally underappreciated talent, Diego Luna, playing the supporting protagonist role of Cassian Andor. After Gilroy’s efforts helped turn “Rogue One” into one of the big Disney “Star Wars” success stories, Luna’s star power was spun out into a plan for a prequel series. However, like with the film, Gilroy wasn’t involved at first. Stephen Schiff was the original showrunner announced in 2018, with Gilroy only being publicly confirmed as his replacement in 2020.

All told, it’s a wild series of chance circumstances that led to arguably the greatest writer/actor duo in the history of “Star Wars” and the most critically acclaimed entry in the franchise to date.

When Disney first announced it was making a new trilogy of “Star Wars” films set after “Return of the Jedi,” it was only right to bring back Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford to reprise the roles of Luke, Leia, and Han. Some certainly took issue with the use of those characters (Han’s death at the end of “The Force Awakens” and Luke’s struggle with failure in “The Last Jedi” in particular), but regardless of your exact feelings, those reprisals led to many of the trilogy’s standout moments.

Thankfully, Lucasfilm didn’t stop there. After a few years spent pretending the prequel trilogy never happened, Disney finally gave its stars the same respect, bringing back Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen for “Obi-wan Kenobi.” Christensen’s return was particularly special, as he is an actor who received an undue portion of blame for the prequels’ critical failings but who has become a beloved icon to the fandom in the years since. His second reprisal in “Ahsoka” season 1 was a particular highlight.

These second-chance opportunities for the franchise’s older stars provide feel-good moments, but they also help connect the new and old parts of “Star Wars” into a cohesive whole. Bringing back Temuera Morrison as Boba Fett and then giving him his own spin-off show was a great way to bring the prequel continuity into the post-original-trilogy era. And of course, a salute of respect is due for Ahmed Best, AKA Jar Jar Binks, who returned to the franchise as Jedi Master Kelleran Beq in “The Mandalorian.”

Now we’re at the podium — the top three things Disney has done with “Star Wars.” And you know that “The Mandalorian” has to be up here, even if it only makes it to the bronze medal spot.

When the show kicked off in 2019, we were nearly at the end of the sequel trilogy, and already the Disney era had dramatically polarized the fan base. Disagreement over “The Last Jedi” and a lackluster box office performance from “Solo: A Star Wars Story” had put things on unstable footing, and right as the first season of “The Mandalorian” was wrapping up, “The Rise of Skywalker” closed the sequel era with a lame-duck finale for the ages.

Who knows where “Star Wars” would have landed after all that if not for Baby Yoda? The timing could not have been more ideal for Disney. When the company desperately needed a huge hit with casual appeal that pleased all corners of the fan base, Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni delivered. We could talk all day about some of that duo’s later creative decisions, which haven’t all been great, but the decision to put Pedro Pascal in Mandalorian armor and give him the cutest alien baby ever was a stroke of genius.

“The Mandalorian” required very little prior knowledge of “Star Wars,” it looked great (at least at the start), and it had all of the accessible action, comedy, emotion, and sci-fi style that originally made “Star Wars” such a sensation. Everyone from diehard superfans to total newcomers got onboard, saving the franchise from what would have otherwise been a disastrous end to the 2010s.

George Lucas’ last big creative push before selling “Star Wars” was all about animation. With “The Clone Wars,” he started a new era, defined by a distinct visual style and a broad narrative approach that filled in all kinds of gaps in the galaxy far, far away. When Disney bought Lucasfilm, Dave Filoni stayed on, and while he quickly became a central creative influence on the entire franchise, his foundation in animation — and “The Clone Wars” specifically — never faded.

Well over a decade later, “Star Wars” has produced a massive amount of animated content, and the hit rate there dwarfs the rest of the franchise. “Rebels,” “The Bad Batch,” “Clone Wars” season 7, “Tales of the Jedi,” “Tales of the Empire,” “Star Wars: Visions,” the list goes on and on. And with a new animated Darth Maul show coming in 2026, the streak isn’t ending any time soon.

The ways in which these shows have been worked into the larger storylines — like “Ahsoka” being a sequel series to “Rebels,” for example — haven’t always been the smoothest. At the same time, their slightly subordinate status to the live-action movies and shows has allowed a greater level of experimentation. “The Bad Batch” is kind of a crazy show in premise to run for three full seasons. It’s a unique way to explore the first few years of Imperial rule, and despite being in a completely different medium, it’s probably the closest show tonally to “Andor.” Its emphasis on strong visuals and moments of silence over constant exposition and adventure pacing stands in stark contrast to something like “Skeleton Crew.”

And then there’s one other thing: the Star Wars animated shows just look outstanding now, and as long as Disney keeps making them, they’re only going to look better.

“Andor” is the best thing Disney has done with “Star Wars,” and it isn’t even remotely close. It’s a show so good, at every single level, that it has singlehandedly bumped the whole franchise to a new level. Any argument that Disney’s stewardship has only cheapened the brand falls flat, solely because “Andor” is so monumentally good. And not only that, but it extends the best parts of George Lucas’ “Star Wars” to their natural conclusion.

Lucas always meant for “Star Wars” to be a real-world political analog, critiquing American imperialism, fascist governments, and violent systems of power everywhere. Where the rest of the Disney “Star Wars” portfolio twists that targeted intention into hollow slogans about hope and resistance, “Andor” digs deeper, attaching a rich, mechanical foundation to the entire franchise that we didn’t even know it needed.

Every actor is spectacular, every character is written with deftness and precision, every action set piece is a jaw-dropping moment, and every storyline is riddled with intrigue and drama. Diego Luna, Adria Arjona, Stellan Skarsgård, Genevieve O’Reilly, Kyle Soller, Denise Gough, and Elizabeth Dulau all turn in career-defining performances, and composers Nicholas Britell and Brandon Roberts provide one of the most unique and moving scores in a franchise that’s packed full of them.

“Andor” is a miracle, and not only because it showcased people at every level of production — from costume designers to set dressers and location scouts — executing their best work. It’s a miracle because it cost Disney a reported $645 million to make, and the company paid it anyway. Maybe the vision was so clear from the start that Bob Iger just couldn’t say no. Maybe Tony Gilroy is just that convincing. Either way, spending that money is the best “Star Wars” decision that Disney has ever made.