Star Wars Live-Action TV Series News Recap From Celebration 2023

Star Wars Celebration Europe 2023 brought a lot of news from a galaxy far, far away, and to make sure nothing got lost in the shuffle while following all of the updates from the weekend, we wanted to recap everything we learned about the present and future of the Star Wars franchise. Having already recapped the film news, which you can check out here, let's now take a closer look at the news from all upcoming live-action series coming to Disney Plus.



While no new shows were announced over the weekend (leaving the current schedule for 2025 and beyond completely empty as far as Star Wars content on Disney Plus goes), updates on all of the series were given, either on Friday's Lucasfilm Studio Showcase panel, or across other panes over the weekend. Let's go through them in order of release.


<h3>The Mandalorian</h3>


Star Wars: The Mandalorian at Star Wars Celebration London 2023



There isn't much to discuss here beyond what has already come to light by the time of this posting. Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, and Rick Famuyiwa, along with key members of the cast Katee Sackhoff (Bo-Katan), Giancarlo Esposito (Moff Gideon), Carl Weathers (Grief Karga), and Emily Swallow (the Armorer) were brought on stage to discuss the third season and tease some details about the final episodes.



The cold open to Chapter 23 was shown to the people in the room, and they were then given the opportunity to attend a fan screening of the full episode on Friday evening, a few days before its Wednesday premiere. Famuyiwa, who directed the last two episodes, described them as bringing 'resolution' to the storylines presented in the show so far, as well as last year's The Book of Boba Fett. During said fan screening, audiences in the room lost their minds during key scenes of the episode, especially during the beginning and at the very end. If you've seen the episode, you know what we mean.



New The Mandalorian poster from Star Wars Celebration London 2023


<h3>Ahsoka</h3>






On Friday, during the Showcase panel, Lucasfilm announced that Ahsoka is targeting an August release date, and also premiered the first official trailer for the series. It was released online as it played in the room, and gave us our first look at some iconic animated characters now in live-action (check out our full breakdown here). We've known for a while that Sabine Wren was a big part of the series, played by Natasha Liu Bordizzo, but now we finally had our first look at her. The trailer also finally confirmed the rumors of Hera Syndulla being in the series, and played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead. Lucasfilm has also confirmed that Eman Esfandi is playing Ezra Bridger, who has a short hologram appearance in the trailer; David Tennant is also coming back as the voice of the droid Huyang from The Clone Wars.



We also got our first looks at some of the show's villains, particularly Ray Stevenson and Ivanna Sakhno as master and apprentice dark side Force-users, Baylan Skoll and Shin Hati, respectively; Diana Lee Inosanto was also confirmed to be reprising the role of Morgan Elsbeth from The Mandalorian season 2. More importantly, though, the Friday trailer included a shot of Grand Admiral Thrawn from behind, while being named 'Heir to the Empire' by Ahsoka, in a shameless reference to the Timothy Zahn novels from the 1990s.



Ray Stevenson as Baylan Skoll in Lucasfilm’s Ahsoka, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. &amp; TM. All Rights Reserved.



Notably, a recut version of the trailer was shown to Star Wars Celebration attendees on Saturday, with additional footage that included our first shot of live-action Thrawn. Dave Filoni immediately confirmed that Lars Mikkelsen is reprising the role from Star Wars: Rebels. (The actor had previously denied any involvement in the series.) The logo of the show, revealed over two years ago, seemed to suggest that we would be going back to the World Between Worlds, and the trailer confirmed as much, by including a fight between Baylan and Ahsoka in the mysterious realm first featured in Star Wars: Rebels. What this means for the story, we don't know yet.



More information was revealed on the Saturday panel, though, even before the trailer was shown. The list of directors for the series was confirmed to include Dave Filoni, Rick Famuyiwa, Steph Green, Peter Ramsey, Jennifer Getzinger, and Geeta Patel. We know from a story by The Hollywood Reporter last year that Dave Filoni is directing multiple episodes, and since the season runs for eight episodes (as Stevenson himself confirmed to Collider), he could be helming up to three of them.



Ivanna Sakhno as Shin Hati in Lucasfilm’s Ahsoka, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. &amp; TM. All Rights Reserved.



Dave Filoni also confirmed that he would be reuniting with Kevin Kiner, who was with him all the way on The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels, and created and developed over the years the main Ahsoka theme. Filoni also revealed that, while composing the score for The Mandalorian season 3, Ludwig Göransson had consulted Kiner on how to weave in the Ahsoka theme in Chapter 13 with the rest of his score.



The extended version of the trailer, which I was able to see in London, included a few additional scenes that left the room completely thirsty for more. If you don't want to know anything else about it, this is your cue to jump to the next paragraph; but because this was openly displayed to the people in the room, we know that Filoni and Lucasfilm don't really consider it a spoiler, so let me add it in here. In addition to the Thrawn scene we also got to see Sabine Wren wielding Ezra's lightsaber and fighting Shin Hati; this was especially interesting because, during the panel, there were a few minutes dedicated to praising stunt coordinator Ming Qui, who helped a lot with the lightsaber fights -- in addition to Rosario Dawson, Ray Stevenson, and Ivanna Sakhno, Natasha Liu Bordizzo (Sabine Wren) also praised her skills; at the time I assumed it was because she also helped her with some Mandalorian action, but it turns out it was also because she has at least a lightsaber fight in the series. The trailer also featured a huge bike chase sequence that I could swear takes place on the Lothal runway that we saw extensively in Rebels (the one in front of the Imperial dome), and ended with a shot of the Ghost coming across a purrgil, with both Ahsoka and a short-haired Sabine on the cockpit.


<h3>Skeleton Crew</h3>






On Friday, the cast of the upcoming Skeleton Crew series, co-created by Jon Watts and Christopher Ford, was welcomed onstage. The series will feature a group of kids that get lost in outer space while trying to find their way home. As announced during the convention, the four kids are Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Kyriana Kratter, Robert Timothy Smith, and Ryan Kiera Armstrong; Armstrong was unable to attend the convention, though. They are led by Jude Law, who is playing a mysterious Force user, perhaps even a Jedi. One of the kids plays an alien character, and it was also confirmed during the panel that The Banshees of Inisherin star Kerry Condon will be appearing in the series.



The first teaser for the show was previewed in the room, showing off strong Amblin vibes. Vane, the pirate character from The Mandalorian season 3, showed up, as previously speculated following his awkward exit from the Din Djarin show. The list of directors was also confirmed, and it includes Jon Watts, the Daniels, Jake Schreier, Bryce Dallas-Howard, Lee Isaac Chung, and David Lowery. Jon Favreau teased last year that characters from the series will be appearing in The Mandalorian season 4.



Skeleton Crew is coming out at some point in 2023; we assume rather late given it wrapped principal photography in January. In fact, we wouldn't be surprised to see it get a January/February 2024 release.


<h3>Star Wars: The Acolyte</h3>


Star Wars: The Acolyte



One of the biggest sources of news to come out of Celebration was Leslye Headland's The Acolyte, which is currently filming in the UK and will wrap next month. No specific release window was given for the series besides that it will premiere in 2024. Two people were added to the previously-announced cast. Joonas Suotamo will be playing Wookiee Jedi Kelnacca, who showed up on stage to receive a warm embrace from the audience; additionally, at the tail end of the High Republic publishing panel on Saturday, Headland made a surprise appearance to confirm that her wife, actress Rebecca Henderson, would be bringing to life the character of Vernestra Rwoh, who first appeared in the Phase 1 High Republic books.



Going back to the Friday panel, Leslye Headland welcomed the rest of the main cast to the stage, including series lead Amandla Stenberg, who was cosplaying as Padmé Amidala, Lee Jung-jae, who is playing a Jedi Master, Jodi Turner-Smith, who is playing a powerful Force user who is neither a Sith nor a Jedi, Dafne Keen, who confirmed she is an alien Jedi character that wields a lightsaber in the series, Charlie Barnett and Dean Charles-Chapman, both playing Jedi Knights, and Manny Jacinto, who is a regular citizen of the High Republic forced into the adventure. Headland described her pitch for the series as Frozen meets Kill Bill.



In the panel, Kathleen Kennedy said that she's seen four completed episodes of The Acolyte and that she was 'blown away'. Of course, by 'finished' episodes she doesn't mean 'ready to be released' episodes, but probably means assembly cuts -- an early version of the episodes featuring all shot scenes in script order and without much edit being done, let alone visual and/or sound effects work, or color correction.



It is interesting, though, that with yet another month to go before production wraps, Leslye Headland's team has already put together an assembly of four episodes. This could mean that Lucasfilm is targeting a specific release date in 2024, which we assume will be sometime in the spring or early summer, and they want to move fast on post-production. It could also mean that Leslye Headland is not one of the main directors on the series, which allows her to get into the editing room while her directors are working hard on shooting the episodes. We know that she's the director on the pilot, but are unsure how many other episodes she's helming.



A trailer for The Acolyte was also shown to Star Wars Celebration attendees, and from reports, it features an Andor-like tone mixed in with some lightsaber and martial arts action.


<h3>Andor season 2</h3>


Andor cast and crew at Star Wars Celebration London 2023



The second season of the Tony Gilroy-created series is currently halfway through shooting. Cameras will be rolling in the UK through August, so there wasn't much to announce. During the Studio Showcase panel, Gilroy and the main cast were brought onstage to briefly discuss the series; they also said that they are targeting an August 2024 release date for season 2.



They showed off some footage, which they replayed during the panel on Friday afternoon that looked back at the making of season 1. It was hard to make out anything from the brief teaser, other than the main players from season 1 are all back, but with new hairstyles and clothes. Oh, and Syril Karn is still eating cereal. The teaser was mainly made up of two-to-three-second shots from different scenes that basically teased the rising Rebel Alliance.



These five shows will cover all of 2023 and 2024 live-action Star Wars projects, and much more will certainly be coming out as  we approach their respective release dates. You can check out Aled's review of The Mandalorian Chapter 23 here, and stay tuned for more news on each of the aforementioned series!



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