Pablo Hidalgo Addresses Rumors About Seminar Discussion.

It's not every day when your message board becomes the subject of focus for one of the key creators involved with the Star Wars universe! Recently, a fellow Star Wars reporter posted a screencap of a recent rumors based on a seminar held by the Lucasfilm Story Group's Pablo Hidalgo. Hidalgo verified that some of the things he talked about are true, but some details were misinterpreted. Here's our take on the situation.





Some of you who have followed Pablo Hidalgo's Twitter Feed will know that he's recently been on vacation - and he's evidently hitched a ride on a Disney Cruise Line. During one of the Star Wars At Sea events, Hidalgo apparently had a seminar followed by a Q&A session. A little while later, someone posted about what they heard at The Cantina, our message boards. Furious Fanboys writer Jeremy Conrad screencapped the post and sent it to Mr. Hidalgo, who replied with the following:






We were trying to get these rumors verified before making a post about them, but it seems that there's no point to it now that the story's out there and the man himself has mentioned some of this. The text of the posts is as follows:

That's a lot to take in at once. Given what we know, however, it's worth looking into these claims individually since Pablo Hidalgo basically said that not all of these are accurate. Here are my thoughts on each point:
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[*]Difficult to say, as this could go either way, but I'm going to lean toward the side of 'not likely to be true'. The only reasons that I think that the show could end with Season 4 is that that's how long Disney XD shows generally last, at least as far as their most successful programs go. Rebels is about to have a big panel for Star Wars Celebration Orlando, and if such an announcement were to be made, it would be made either there or when the season was first announced - not on a tiny public event in the middle of the ocean. I seriously doubt that Mr. Hidalgo would be so loose in his language about this sort of thing, considering how tight-lipped he is about future content in general. Furthermore, Freddie Prinze Junior has previously made the statement that Dave Filoni has a blank check on the series by Disney on his various podcast appearances, and there are plans for as many as seven seasons. Syndication is also a big factor in how long a cartoon runs, and that magic number is 100 episodes. This Saturday, they'll be up to 59, so for the series to reach syndication, it would necessitate not only a full fourth season of 22 episodes, but a full fifth season as well before they could safely put an end to the series. My personal guess is that they'll go for six seasons, as in that scenario, the show would wrap up shortly before Episode IX is released on home video (provided that they go for a December 2019 release window for the movie itself). Lastly, the other Star Wars animated projects that Dave Filoni got a promotion to make most likely won't be completed for a long while - at most, we might see a small teaser of what's to come at Celebration, but for now, Rebels remains to be the primary focus of Star Wars television.
[*]Seems a bit like wishful thinking as far as substantive connections that the television shows would have on the movies (at least insofar as, say, Ahsoka Tano showing up out of nowhere), but Saw Gerrera and the big Rebels Easter Eggs at the end of Rogue One stand against that line of thinking. It certainly seems as though the ideas about the Force that are touched upon in both shows will carry over into the film, especially since there's speculation about a certain scene that was shown in Disney's investor's conference sizzle reel which is tied to the way the Force is shown in the cartoons. (That Dave Filoni also visited the set of The Last Jedi makes it pretty likely that there's fire to this smoke.)
[*]This has long since been confirmed, on both counts - The Clone Wars is largely George Lucas's baby when it comes to matters of the nature of the Force, and while he came up with some ideas that weren't exactly universally-adored (IE: the Jar Jar episodes and Jabba having Truman Capote as his uncle), he came up with a lot of the stuff that's regarded as the best material in the series (Cad Bane being based off of Lee Van Cleef and Darth Maul's surprisingly-effective return among them). There's only one problem with this particular account that I can recognize - and that's the fact that there is no Seventh Sister storyline in The Clone Wars. She doesn't show up until Rebels, at which point Lucas more or less retired from working on Star Wars.
[*]I don't find it incredibly likely that someone asked Pablo Hidalgo any questions up close, but still. Again, I don't expect any mind-blowing full preview to happen at Celebration considering that Rebels is in for an entire season before they're going to set anything else for a release date. The lack of a Celebration event next year makes me think that they won't be able to fully preview what they're currently working on until 2019, because I don't see it as being too likely that they'd use someone else's convention now that Celebration is a near-annual event.
[*]To my understanding, Dave Filoni's been in favor of the whole 'Yoda was speaking relatively' thing up until this point, and I don't see that suddenly changing, much less a not-so-subtle signal that two characters are going to die. There will definitely be a reason why we don't see Kanan and Ezra around the Rebel Alliance by the time that Luke Skywalker shows up, but for all we know, it'll be for the same reason that we didn't see Ahsoka in A New Hope. But they do pay attention to existing continuity (notice how Obi-Wan was never addressed as such in last week's episode of Rebels), and that much has always been clear.
[*]Both of these are a given, particularly in regards to Luke. Next!
[*]Ditto. The only reason they aren't exploring more of it now is because it would inadvertently give stuff about how The Last Jedi is going to play out away.
[*]This is consistent with what he - and other in Lucasfilm - have stated in regards to the lead-up to The Force Awakens. The First Order isn't a standard system of government, it's a military junta that's vying to restore the Galactic Empire.
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So the only things that are really questionable with this particular rumor dump is the first one, while there are some other details that feel off about the others. If there's stuff that isn't immediately clear right now, then I suspect that some of it is going to be corrected in the near-future. As we said earlier, we're still waiting for verification on some of these details. We'll be back to provide it once we get word one way or the other.



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