Watch Rey and BB-8's first thrilling adventure in 'Star Wars: Forces of Destiny'
"In the morning, you go."
You probably remember Rey's admonishment to BB-8 after she saves him from a scavenger on Jakku in Star Wars: The Force Awakens -- as if anyone could kick the adorable soccer ball droid out on the sand.
What changed her mind? It could have something to do with what happened next -- a previously unseen encounter with a nasty creature called a nightwatcher worm, revealed in the opening chapter of Forces of Destiny.
This is a series of Disney animated shorts focused on the women of the Star Wars franchise, and we're premiering it exclusively on Mashable.
In "Sands of Jakku," Daisy Ridley voices Rey, reprising her role for the first time since The Force Awakens. Lupita Nyong'o voices Maz Kanata, who narrates the key message: small moment-to-moment decisions can have important consequences.
"They may be simpler missions, but they have to feel like stories that happened in the Star Wars universe," says Dave Filoni, executive producer of Star Wars Rebels.
Case in point: that sandwatcher worm did actually appear briefly in The Force Awakens, though we never knew it subsisted on machine parts and considered BB-8 to be a tasty snack.
"My hope is that you learn a little more" about the wider world of Star Wars, Filoni added. "If something happens in Forces of Destiny, it happens in that other universe too. The heart of the story would still be the same if you changed the medium."
Filoni helped oversee Forces of Destiny -- the first time Lucasfilm has dabbled in 2D animation since Genndy Tartakovsky's acclaimed Clone Wars shorts in 2003.
"I've been wanting to do 2D for a while," says Filoni, who arrived at Lucasfilm to produce the 3D Clone Wars after working on Avatar: The Last Airbender. "It's my roots."
"Sands of Jakku" is the first of 16 shorts set throughout the Star Wars timeline that will start screening on the Disney Channel this month. Other shorts will star Jyn Erso (voiced by Felicity Jones), Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), and Princess Leia (America Horror Story's Shelby Young).
And yes, as Filoni teased, there will be meetings between the characters that we never knew happened.
Here's a closer look at Lucasfilm's design process on the groundbreaking women-focused series:
Chris is a veteran tech, entertainment and culture journalist, author of 'How Star Wars Conquered the Universe,' and co-host of the Doctor Who podcast 'Pull to Open.' Hailing from the U.K., Chris got his start as a sub editor on national newspapers. He moved to the U.S. in 1996, and became senior news writer for Time.com a year later. In 2000, he was named San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine. He has served as senior editor for Business 2.0, and West Coast editor for Fortune Small Business and Fast Company. Chris is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a long-time volunteer at 826 Valencia, the nationwide after-school program co-founded by author Dave Eggers. His book on the history of Star Wars is an international bestseller and has been translated into 11 languages.
