Playing the "What If" game in Star Wars

Maybe! The biggest problem with this I can think of is that Star Wars nowadays isn't really built for "what if" sort of scenarios. Alternate worlds don't have a place in here, despite how cool it would be (and the ways I've thought it could work). Comics already have that "alternate history" and "reboot if we need to" mindset in their DNA, but Star Wars has only really done something on that scale two, maybe three times. Doing it here would be cool, but I just can't see fans reacting to it in any decent way. Either there'd be outcry claiming that Star Wars is turning into "common sci-fi" or some such malarkey, or people would start to prefer some of the What-If scenarios instead of the canonical ones.* Heck, we already see that with Legends!

What if we got a story where Anakin won in the fight over Mustafar and took over the Empire; and Obi-Wan was the one trapped in the Vader outfit? Do you think fans would be satisfied with seeing just this change? Or would they want to see a whole world affected by this? I know I would.

The best scenario for these I could think of would be if it's a bunch of travelers telling stories together in a Cantina or some such thing. But even in that scenario I'd rather have each traveler tell a story about a different time and place in a sort of Anthology, like American Horror Story (from what I hear about it anyways). So you could have an archaeologist tell a story of a grand empire, an alien tell a story about the origin of his pilgrimage, a smuggler tell the story of a great con, and a veteran tell a war story. Each could last 4 episodes to a season (long enough to get to know the characters but short enough to tell a complete story).

Overall, I could see this happening, but to me it feels like a "what if" sort of series would end up disappointing everyone, either by the premise set up or by the lack of exploration in order to get to the next scenario.

*This isn't a problem in comics since the writers can just make spin-offs with those characters. That's how Spider-Gwen came to be, and sort of how Miles Morales came to be (it's a little more complicated than that, but the point is that Miles didn't exist in the same timeline as "Standard" 616 Peter Parker).

 

What an amazing answer. I agree with you on all points. I only put down maybe because I liked the idea, but I don’t think thonk it would fit well in Star Wars.