With Ahsoka Season 1 Behind Us, What Is Next for Star Wars on Disney Plus?

After a summer of strikes and absolutely nothing to talk about in Star Wars land, the premiere of Ahsoka in the second half of August was an absolute lifeline. The past few weeks have felt extra rewarding here as we got together and talked about the latest episode of the new Star Wars series while speculating on what could come next -- and before we realized it, it was Tuesday night again. But with Part Eight now out in the world, Star Wars is going back into quiet mode... For now.



To make the wait seem a little easier, we've put together everything we know about the upcoming projects coming to Disney Plus from a galaxy far, far away in the future. This doesn't include the six feature films we know are in active development at Lucasfilm, which would make for a whole other article. (Don't be afraid to comment below if you'd like a whole status report on those!)


<h2>STar Wars: Skeleton Crew</h2>


This is the series that Spider-Man: No Way Home director Jon Watts pitched to Jon Favreau on the set of the Marvel movie, and he immediately made it a reality. Chris Ford scripted it with Watts (and Myung Joh Wesner for a couple of episodes); Watts directs at least one of the episodes. The storyline follows a group of kids lost in outer space, with a mysterious adult companion played by Jude Law, who is a Force user.



Lucasfilm had announced a 2023 release date for the series, and reaffirmed it earlier this year at Star Wars Celebration in London, yet at Disney's Q3 earnings call, the company did not include the series among their listed titles for the near future. With only three months left before the end of the year, it seems more and more likely every day that the series will be pushed to early 2024. Marvel's Echo is reportedly going to come out in January, so sometime in February seems like a good bet for Skeleton Crew to drop on the streaming platform. Lucasfilm declined to comment on this.



Besides Law, the cast includes Ravi Cabot-Conyers, Kyriana Kratter, Robert Timothy Smith, and Ryan Kiera Armstrong as the four kids, and Oscar nominee Kerry Condon in an undisclosed role. The timeline is concurrent with other MandoVerse shows like The Mandalorian or Ahsoka, and creatives involved have already hinted at possible cameos. Besides Watts, the all-star list of directors includes Jake Schreier, the Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), David Lowery, Lee Isaac Chung, and Bryce Dallas Howard.






<h2>Star Wars: The Acolyte</h2>


From where we're standing, The Acolyte seems to be the most anticipated Star Wars show for a large portion of the fanbase. Not only is it going to be the first series to focus on the bad guys or to feature a lot of Jedi, but it's also going to be the first Disney Plus series (or live-action title altogether) to take place before The Phantom Menace. Amandla Stenberg stars as a former Padawan reuniting with her old Master, played by Lee Jung-jae amidst a series of mysterious crimes that are raising suspicions at the height of the Jedi's power.



No release date has been set. We've been speculating for a few months, based on the series' production schedule, that it may be targeting a spring 2024 date -- sometime in May or June. But even though it managed to wrap filming before the actors went on strike in July, it's unclear if the labor stoppages affected it at all. Leslye Headland would have been on strike as head writer, but not as director or executive producer -- a crossroads Tony Gilroy solved by pulling himself from Andor season 2, but not everyone in Hollywood did the same. With no actors, the post-production team also couldn't record additional dialogue they may have needed.



If we were to say something, we'll bet on an early summer 2024 release -- sometime in June or July, although that may be conditioned by our next project.



It's been confirmed that Lucasfilm plans to do multiple seasons of the series, and an overall throughline was put in place before season 1 started production.






<h2>Andor season 2</h2>


The second season of the critically acclaimed Tony Gilroy series is set to fill in the four years in between the first season and Rogue One, with each block of three episodes set in one of those four years. Everyone in the cast is coming back, as is the writing team -- with the addition of Tom Bissell. There will be three new directors this time. We've also been told to expect the inclusion of K-2SO in the new season, as well as some legacy characters (whatever that means). Don't hold your breath for Alex Ferns' Linus Mosk, though.



However, the story with Andor season 2 has been the way the strike has affected it. Filming began back in November 2022 and was scheduled to finish this August in the UK. But with the writers' strike announced in early May, and the role and duties of the showrunner being something of a blurred line, Tony Gilroy opted to step out and let the rest of the team handle the shoot, in solidarity with the Writers Guild of America. This wasn't really an issue for the production -- Gilroy told Collider last year that they never have a writer on set, and Stellan Skarsgård said that Gilroy's absence was not felt because the show is 'director and writer proof'.



But the real problems began in July, when SAG-AFTRA announced they were also going on strike after the studios failed to reach an agreement with them. While Andor films in the UK, the series employs a lot of SAG members, and it was forced to shut down approximately a month before filming was to wrap. It is presumed that once the actors go back to work, the cast will fly back to the UK and finish production. In the meantime, though, it's possible that VFX houses have been working hard on the show and the editors and sound designers have also been putting the episodes together, so that most of the heavy lifting is done, sans the remaining footage.



The series was initially targeting an August 2024 release date, but whether or not it will be able to make it after a three-month stoppage, we don't know yet. It will be the final season of the show.



LONDON, ENGLAND - APRIL 07: (L-R) Diego Luna, Adria Arjona, Kyle Soller, Denise Gough, Genevieve O'Reilly and Andy Serkis during the studio panel for Andor at the Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London at ExCel on April 07, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Kate Green/Getty Images for Disney)


<h2>The Mandalorian season 4</h2>


The fourth season of The Mandalorian is another project that has been impacted by the strike. Jon Favreau said during Star Wars Celebration 2022 that he was already writing away, and confirmed earlier this year that the fourth season was already written. Deadline reported shortly after the WGA strike was announced that plans for its October 2023 shoot were in peril should the strike go on for too long -- which not only it did, but because actors later joined the picket lines, the entire schedule was thrown out the window.



Assuming SAG-AFTRA will close a deal soon with the studios, Hollywood is getting ready for one of its biggest headaches since COVID-19 shutdowns, as all schedules will need to be reassessed. Actors will likely have to exit roles because of several conflicts, and it'll be a while before things settle down again. Because The Mandalorian relies mostly on two stunt doubles that are religiously devoted to the show, it may get away with it. Additional supporting cast members Carl Weathers and Katee Sackhoff are not working a lot these days outside of the Star Wars galaxy either, so their return may also be pretty smooth. All things considered, The Mandalorian may be one of the lucky ones here. (We are, of course, not counting on Pedro Pascal during principal photography, as he's busy shooting pretty much every other movie and TV show in Hollywood.)



We assume that Lucasfilm was targeting a 2025 release pre-strike, and while that still seems doable, it will probably be a bit later than they expected. We expect most of, if not the entire cast to be back, but where the story goes after that season 3 finale is anybody's guess.



LONDON, ENGLAND - APRIL 07: John Favreau, Rick Famuyiwa, Katee Sackhoff, Emily Swallow, Giancarlo Esposito walk onstage during a special screening of 'The Mandalorian' at the studio panel at the Star Wars Celebration 2023 in London at ExCel on April 07, 2023 in London, England. (Photo by Kate Green/Getty Images for Disney)


<h2>Ahsoka season 2</h2>


This is the only title on this list that hasn't been officially confirmed. Over the past couple of months, there have been several reports about Lucasfilm planning to do a second season of the show, and given where the first season ended, we can definitely see why. Most recently, Deadline said that while the second season hasn't been greenlit yet, it is expected to come before Dave Filoni's theatrical film.



But that's about it as far as we know. If we were to guess, Dave Filoni has probably already mapped out the entire thing and whether or not he's actually put pen to paper and written the scripts, we don't really know. But because of how pivotal this story seems to be to the conclusion of the entire MandoVerse, we highly suspect the studio will order it sooner rather than later. In terms of release date assuming his movie will take the December 2026 slot, a late 2025 date seems possible -- that is, if they can start rolling cameras within the next year.






<h2>The Bad Batch season 3</h2>


We enter now the realm of animated content, and kick off with the flagship series of Star Wars animation on Disney Plus -- the spin-off from The Clone Wars, The Bad Batch. The third and final season of the show was announced earlier this year at Star Wars Celebration to be coming in 2024. The quick teaser that was shown to Celebration attendees confirmed the return of Ming-Na Wen as Fennec Shand, as well as Wolffe and Rex. Michelle Ang (Omega) teased in late June that she had wrapped her voice work on the third season, so it's possible the show may not have been severely affected by the strikes and could still debut in 2024.


<h2>Tales of the Jedi Season 2</h2>


Also at Star Wars Celebration, Dave Filoni said he'd had so much fun putting together and playing with new animation techniques on Tales of the Jedi, he decided to do it again. A new season of the anthology series is set to debut in 2024, or so they said back in April. The status of the new season is completely unknown. Because of how much time animation takes, we assume that Filoni had already written the new episodes before the WGA strike and that voice recording was already underway, so the SAG-AFTRA strike may have affected production if that hadn't been completed yet.



We still don't know what the new episodes will focus on. Since it was labeled as an anthology series, it seems fair to speculate that new Jedi characters will take the spotlight. (Qui-Gon? Mace Windu, possibly? Aayla Secura would be cool too.) And yet, with Filoni involved, is it really crazy to think that Ahsoka will have a heavy presence?



(L-R): Count Dooku and Mace Windu from 'STAR WARS: TALES OF THE JEDI', season 1 exclusively on Disney+. © 2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. &amp; &#x2122;. All Rights Reserved.


<h2>Star Wars: Visions Volume 3</h2>


Much like Ahsoka season 2 in the live-action realm, the third volume of Star Wars: Visions hasn't been officially confirmed by Lucasfilm yet, but it's been widely reported and, after the success of the second season, seemed like a no-brainer. However, there's little more info here. No release date is known and we also don't know which countries will be involved this time around -- while Volume 1 was put together by Japanese studios, Volume 2 went worldwide and had short stories from studios all around the world. We assume this will be the modus operandi for Volume 3 as well, but we don't know for sure yet. Because the show uses international studios and is originally recorded in local languages, we assume that neither strike affected production.


<h2>Young Jedi Adventures Season 1, Volume 3</h2>


The third batch of episodes of Young Jedi Adventures is coming on November 8, after a few episodes first came out in May and then another six dropped in early August. The first season will be a total of 25 episodes, with the tail end set to debut on the streamer in 2024. While it's still Star Wars, the target demographics of, say, Andor or The Acolyte don't really cross over with that of Young Jedi Adventures, which is aimed at preschoolers. And yet, Nubs Nation seems to be a thing, so be on the lookout for more! The show is set in the High Republic, the first piece of content on Disney Plus to do so.







There's one additional project in the works we haven't mentioned, titled A Droid Story. This was announced by Kathleen Kennedy back in 2020, and would be an animated special for Disney Plus (story details unknown). But since it's been almost three years and we really haven't had any update since then, there's not much to talk about here.



What is your most anticipated series from this list? Let us know in the comments below!



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