So, how has this era fared? Well, it’s “Star Wars,” a franchise that has always seen its share of highs and lows. The past decade-plus has delivered standout moments like “The Bad Batch,” the triumphant seventh season of “The Clone Wars,” the engaging “Star Wars: Jedi” video games, and the critically acclaimed series “Andor.” Yet, it’s also been marred by questionable decisions that have, in various ways, stunted the franchise’s potential.

Key issues such as sudden changes in plans, peculiar visual effects choices, and a lack of strategic foresight have plagued the Disney “Star Wars” era. Although the franchise has experienced a lull in activity in recent years, fan discontent resurfaced in 2025. The rejection by Disney’s executives of a Ben Solo film—proposed to be directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Adam Driver—left many fans scratching their heads, adding to a list of perplexing decisions that have puzzled the “Star Wars” community.

Let’s delve into some of Disney’s pivotal choices that have arguably undermined the beloved galaxy far, far away.

Picture this: It’s a crisp December evening in 2015, and you’re queued up for the premiere of “Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens.” The atmosphere is electric with fans in makeshift costumes, buzzing with speculation. You’ve dissected the trailer countless times, and as you leave the theater, your enthusiasm is palpable. The fresh faces shine, the action is exhilarating, and Kylo Ren leaves a lasting impression. “Star Wars” is reborn. Yet, lurking beneath the excitement is a significant issue.

It’s a chill December day in 2015. You’re waiting in line for an opening night showing of “Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens.” Everyone around you is decked out in closet cosplay. Buzzing with theories. You’ve watched the trailer 27 times. And when you walk out, you’re smiling ear to ear. The new young stars were great, the action was electric, and that Kylo Ren guy really left an impression. “Star Wars” is back. There’s just one problem.

You have no idea what was actually happening in that movie.

While a perfectly fun movie, “The Force Awakens” was crafted with a clear ethos — ignore everything about the “Star Wars” prequels and jam in as much original trilogy iconography as humanly possible in 138 minutes. All that “boring” time spent in “The Phantom Menace” laying out the state of the galaxy and the different political powers? Nope, can’t have any of that either.

Who are the First Order? Do they control parts of the galaxy? Why is the New Republic not fighting them? Did they just blow up Coruscant? No, sorry, that was Hosnian Prime, a planet you’ve never heard of. Don’t worry, it’s all in the books.

While novels and comics are great for extra worldbuilding, they’re a poor venue for major story-setting when your franchise is a film franchise first and foremost. This wobbly start to the sequels set the whole trilogy off at a disadvantage, and unfortunately, it never fully got back on track. Despite some attempts in “The Last Jedi” and “The Rise of Skywalker,” the scope of the conflict never gets properly nailed down, leading to wild inconsistencies in tone and a three-film arc that rarely feels tethered to anything concrete.

It cannot be overstated how much the “Star Wars” prequels were a cultural punching bag going into the Disney acquisition. While a certain subset of fans always supported them, most subscribed to the same opinion: The prequels were an unmitigated disaster, and George Lucas was more a lucky madman than a creative genius.

These days, that opinion has largely faded. Retrospectives on the prequels acknowledge their many faults but also give credit where it’s due — namely, revolutionary special effects and filmmaking techniques, a strong anti-authoritarian message, and an epic melodramatic style that, while not for everyone, has stood the test of time.

There’s nothing else like the “Star Wars” prequels, in part because Disney tried so desperately to bury any thought of them in the early years of its “Star Wars” stewardship. That meant no references to midi-chlorians, no Clone Wars flashbacks, no Separatist politics. But more than that, it meant a strict mimicry of the original trilogy in a desperate attempt to give fans what they claimed to want. That backfired in its own way when people started accusing “The Force Awakens” of being a hollow remake of “A New Hope.” And now, years on, the prequels are beloved, with Hayden Christensen, Ewan McGregor, and others all returning to the franchise to great acclaim.

Maybe things would have been better if there had been less effort spent cutting out any prequel material from the start.

Cue the boos.

“The Last Jedi” is a movie with problems. It’s also the best entry in the sequel trilogy, and it’s not close. It’s the only film of the three with real ambitions of its own, and while they don’t all pan out, lots do. It’s arguably the best-shot of all the numbered “Star Wars” films, it anchors itself in distinct themes of failure and redemption, and it ends with a strong foundation for future stories to build on.

And then “The Rise of Skywalker” came out and threw all that away.

We can spend all day debating which decisions were made in direct reaction to the backlash against “The Last Jedi,” and which were unrelated choices from Disney brass. There were certainly other factors at play. Carrie Fisher’s death, for instance, led to some changes on the story side, but that doesn’t account for the walking-back of so many “Last Jedi” details.

Kylo gets redeemed after doubling down on the dark side. Rey rebuilds the broken Skywalker Lightsaber. And most embarrassing of all, Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), who became one of the main targets of maladjusted fan rage over “The Last Jedi,” was relegated to a tiny role with hardly any lines. John Boyega suffered a similar relegation with Finn. And that’s without even mentioning the “Somehow, Palpatine returned” of it all, or Rey’s secret backstory.

A lot of these problems could have been smoothed over if the trilogy ended well. But sadly, the Battle of Exegol is a massive mess — an “Avengers: Endgame” swing that misses by a mile, due in part to the aforementioned lack of worldbuilding in the sequels, and in part because the trilogy spends so much time fighting itself over what the actual story is about.

If you were a prequel kid growing up in the early 2000s, video games were a massive part of your “Star Wars” experience. “Battlefront,” “Jedi Knight,” “Lego Star Wars,” “Knights of the Old Republic,” “Rogue Squadron,” the list goes on and on. It was an endless treasure trove, giving countless fans countless entry points into the galaxy far, far away.

And then Disney bought Star Wars and sold the exclusive video game rights to Electronic Arts, one of the largest and most reviled video game companies in the world, for a decade. In that decade, only a handful of games made it out of development hell — a pair of new-age “Star Wars: Battlefront” releases that took years to patch into something good (though they got there), the space combat game “Squadrons,” and toward the end of EA’s tenure, the now-beloved “Jedi” games.

It might not sound bad, but it was essentially a wasteland during the entire span of the sequel trilogy, a time when the franchise was in desperate need of interactive ways to further develop the story of the films. Other than a couple more “Lego Star Wars” games, presumably allowed through licensing technicalities, EA was the only shop in town until very recently, when Lucasfilm reopened the flights to allow a wider array of games.

Would more video games have fixed the sequel trilogy? Surely not, but they might have helped pad out a period that cried out for more detail in the gaps. And beyond that, it would have made the whole thing a lot more fun.

For those who don’t know, the Volume, also known as StageCraft, is a production approach developed by Industrial Light & Magic that uses a massive LED-laden soundstage. The technology was first used in a major way on Season 1 of “The Mandalorian,” and after that show achieved critical and popular acclaim, Disney began to use the Volume for a range of other projects, including other shows in the “Star Wars” universe.

On its face, it’s incredibly cool technology. The basic idea is that instead of shooting actors on a green screen and creating the CGI backdrops later, the backdrops are made first and projected in a full-wraparound via LED screens. The scenes are then shot with the actual backgrounds in place, providing more accurate lighting and a stronger grounding for the actors.

In the right circumstances, the Volume looks great. The problem is that Lucasfilm began to embrace it as some sort of catch-all miracle technology, leading to diminishing returns. While the environments of “The Mandalorian” worked well for StageCraft, it shows its cracks in series like “The Book of Boba Fett,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” and “Ahsoka.” The limited space of an enclosed soundstage makes a lot of the more urban or grand environments in those shows feel choked out and small, breaking the illusion. This shared approach also gave all of these shows a similar, generic look, making it more difficult for each to stand out.

Dave Filoni has done a lot of undeniable good for “Star Wars,” going back to the George Lucas days and “The Clone Wars.” His love of the animated side of the franchise, where he got his start, is a big reason why we’ve gotten so many spectacular animated series since the Disney acquisition. However, that dedication has also added a lot of homework to the average fan’s plate now that mainline series like “Ahsoka” and “The Mandalorian” have tied in more and more to the lore of “The Clone Wars” and “Star Wars Rebels.”

Zeb Orrelios is going to play a core role in “The Mandalorian & Grogu” after making one CGI appearance in Season 3. “Ahsoka” is not only a spin-off from “Mando,” but a sequel series to “Rebels,” featuring many of that show’s core characters, plus a lot of Force lore first introduced in the middle seasons of “The Clone Wars.” If you haven’t seen “Rebels,” or read Timothy Zahn’s books — and most casual fans have done neither — who exactly is Grand Admiral Thrawn to you?

For diehards, all the interconnectedness can be fun, but it also makes “Star Wars” less accessible when casual viewers don’t have natural roads in. The whole appeal of the early “Mandalorian” seasons was that they required no prior knowledge other than a basic understanding of what “Star Wars” was. Six years later, those easy entry points aren’t as easy to find, and the franchise’s disappearance from cinemas certainly hasn’t helped.

Even with some misses scattered in there, most dedicated “Star Wars” fans would tell you the Disney+ era has been a win. Between “Andor,” and “The Mandalorian,” and a number of other, admittedly more divisive shows, it’s been a pretty good run overall. But “Star Wars” will always be a film franchise first and foremost, and the abject lack of a theatrical presence since “The Rise of Skywalker” has hurt the franchise in numerous ways.

In Disney’s defense, it’s been a particularly insane six years in Hollywood. A global pandemic and multiple Hollywood guild strikes forced various delays, and the lackluster reception to the last couple of “Star Wars” movies clearly gave the company pause when considering where to take things next. However, some level of blame is still due. Just look at the number of canceled projects, from Patty Jenkins’ “Rogue Squadron” movie, to that Rey movie we keep not getting, to the recently revealed-as-real-but-not-happening “The Hunt for Ben Solo.”

2026 is finally ending the drought with “The Mandalorian & Grogu,” and we’re theoretically getting another standalone in the near-future via “Star Wars: Starfighter,” starring Ryan Gosling. But after so much time spent away from the big screen, there are a lot of question marks. Do the people still want to come out in the old droves for a “Star Wars” movie like they used to? We’ll soon see, one way or the other.

Justice for Alden Ehrenreich: That Han Solo movie was absolutely fine, and he was good in it, and then everyone was mean, and now we can never have anyone new play an original character again. Instead, we have to watch a CGI deepfake corpse of Luke Skywalker walk around the uncanny valley, held up with duct tape and string, forever.

The deepfake trend in “Star Wars” not only stands on slippery ethical ground, it severely limits the kinds of stories that can be told. If Disney weren’t so frightened of simply recasting popular characters, we could have had new arcs for Luke, or any number of other characters, by now. No de-aged muppet is compelling enough to do more than a guest appearance. And then, of course, there’s the uncomfortable precedent of turning an actor’s one-time performance into IP maintained by a corporate superpower.

It was all fun and games the first time. Everyone cheered as Luke carved up those droids. But now, the deepfake trend is like a pile of trash that the river of “Star Wars” keeps struggling to break through.

Cue the boos again. They hated him because he told them the truth.

“The Acolyte” is only half good. The first four episodes are awkwardly paced, with some stilted writing and a general lack of direction. The back four are great, with some of the best lightsaber duels in the franchise, a compelling philosophical angle on the Jedi and Sith, and some of that sweet sweet forbidden romance we all crave.

The mechanics of why Disney canceled “The Acolyte” — high production costs amidst diminishing returns in viewership and a general move away from streaming for “Star Wars” — are understandable. Unfortunately, those material realities coincided with a massive hate campaign from the worst element of the fandom, with review bombing, backlash against the actors, and a cottage industry of single-brain-cell video essays decrying the franchise’s supposed fall.

By canceling “The Acolyte,” Disney doubled down on the idea that it can be cowed by the most toxic “fans.” Even worse, the company proved, as it did during the sequel trilogy, a despicable refusal to stand by its own actors when they become the targets of hate campaigns. But if all that weren’t damaging enough, “The Acolyte” was also the franchise’s last big swing at something new — a different point in the timeline, with original characters, and a shift in tone that embraced romance, YA melodrama, and wire fu to create something that at least felt different.

It’s that willingness to try new things that “Star Wars” needs right now, and it’s easy to imagine “The Acolyte” truly hitting a stride if it had been renewed for another outing. Instead, Disney opted to go back to the Baby Yoda well yet again.

By the end of the sequel trilogy, Disney had squandered a lot of franchise goodwill, but “The Mandalorian” brought much of it back with an accessible adventure story and an adorable new character easy for fans new and old to love. Those first two seasons were huge successes, and they end with a bittersweet goodbye between Din Djarin and Grogu. If you only watched “Mando” and none of the other Disney+ “Star Wars shows,” you would have been shocked to tune into Season 3 and discover that the little green guy is … back … somehow.

That’s because an entire, pivotal arc for both characters takes place in the middle of “The Book of Boba Fett,” a spinoff that was not marketed at all as necessary viewing for the casual “Mandalorian” fan base. Hiding so many key moments in a show a lot of people never watched was a baffling decision in itself, but it was compounded by the fact that it essentially undid the ending of Season 2. Yes, many people probably would have preferred more Grogu and Din adventures, but that’s not the show Lucasfilm made. The reversal was so blatant that “The Mandalorian” Season 3 was forced to spend a good deal of time unworking all the messy details, all so that Disney could keep selling those adorable little plushies.

Let’s finish with a big one, shall we? Like any artist, George Lucas has his flaws. We can talk all day about how he wrote female characters — namely Padmé — or some of his more questionable production decisions in the prequels. But at its core, the Lucas-made “Star Wars” saga was grounded in a cohesive set of political convictions — that authoritarianism rises from the inside first, that corporate interests cannot be granted too much political influence, and that warmongering is always the tool of tyrants.

In the Disney era, the edge is sanded off those ideas. Instead, we get a much more lukewarm ideology, centered around vague themes like “hope” and generalized “resistance,” absent of the specificity that made Lucas’ films hit. It’s hard not to read this shift as a sort of kid-gloves corporate approach, designed to avoid backlash from any single political corner.

Fortunately, Disney+ has rebalanced things a bit with “Andor,” the most politically convicted entry in the entire franchise. But that show has only made going back to the sequels, and their milquetoast ideas, more difficult.