Star Wars goes quiet. How long will the Dark Times last?
The wars in the stars never end. But sometimes they fade away.
That's what happened to the Star Wars franchise after an exhausted George Lucas wrapped the original trilogy with Return of the Jedi in 1983. Decades later, fans still refer to the subsequent 10-year famine of Star Wars entertainment as the Dark Times. It happened again when Lucas wrapped up the prequel trilogy with Revenge of the Sith in 2005, urging fans to "grow up" and leave their moisture farms. It would be another decade before we'd see Star Wars live action on the big screen again.
And it's happening once more in 2025. Lucas himself, of course, is happily divorced from his baby — in his first San Diego Comic-Con appearance ever, the creator was disinterested in Star Wars and focused on his new narrative art museum. But the mouse-eared stewards of his franchise, intentionally or otherwise, are following his lead and letting it lie fallow.
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There are just two Star Wars movies and two Disney+ TV shows that are definitely arriving in the next few years. And they skew toward safety, toward a certain kind of built-in Star Wars fandom. More casual fans, or those looking for live-action originality, may be out of luck.
If the messy Mandalorian season 3 finale left you cold, if you're not a fan of the self-referential work of Lucasfilm Chief Creative Officer Dave Filoni (Clone Wars, Rebels, Ahsoka), there's arguably nothing in your wheelhouse with an official release date. There's volume 3 of Visions, an artsy series of Star Wars aperitifs, coming in October — but no meaty meal for which these bite-size cartoons can whet our appetite.
The Star Wars we're not getting
The critically acclaimed Andor had its series finale, wrapping up Star Wars 2025 on a high note. Despite burning questions that remained, despite the revelation (spoiler alert for the season 2 finale) of an Andor junior, there are no plans to revive Tony Gilroy's thoughtful, uncompromising takes on what the Star Wars galaxy looks like at ground level.
The radar shows no signs of a season 2 for the other critical Star Wars hit of the last 12 months, Skeleton Crew. The High Republic series of books and comics, an attempt to create a brand new pre-Stormtrooper area of Star Wars canon, is wrapping up this summer too, with no ambitious book plans to take its place — just a whole lot of reprints.
The High Republic yielded only one on-screen connection, The Acolyte, canceled at its most interesting moment. Love The Acolyte (we did) or hate it, that dangling Darth Plagueis thread at the end meant the show deserved more than it got this year (fans can order a Visual Guide to the series).
Perhaps the most successful attempt to keep that whole pre-prequel wing of Star Wars open is Bioware's Old Republic MMO, still going strong after 14 years. (And even that money-minting mini-franchise appears to have ended its line of expansions; the last was in 2022.)
So, what is on the docket for Star Wars' future, and when can we expect it? Here's a brief guide to all upcoming Star Wars live-action entertainment on the big and small screens that actually has a title:
The Mandalorian and Grogu (2026)
Finally, 49 years after it first hit the big screen, Star Wars returns to cinemas on May 22, 2026. But what we're getting is essentially The Mandalorian season 4, which Lucasfilm decided to convert to the big screen in the wake of the Hollywood writers' strike. Helmed by Jon Favreau, it promises to be a standalone story that doesn't require audiences to be familiar with the first three seasons, in theory.
Yet it still relies on characters from elsewhere in the canon — hands up: who's excited to see the return of Rotta the Hutt from the 2008 Clone Wars movie? — and the "reset button" problem from season 3 continues: Mando gets a new version of his previously destroyed Razor Crest ship.
If we're lucky, we may get more of the much-loved villain Grand Admiral Thrawn — not that his first live-action appearance was much to write home about.
Maul — Shadow Lord (2026)
Dave Filoni's next animated Disney+ TV series sees the return of sliced and spurned Sith Lord Darth Maul. We get to see what he did during the reign of his former master, Emperor Palpatine, aka Darth Sidious. This is essentially fulfilling a promise made by Maul's cameo in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018), where we learned he was running a crime syndicate during Imperial times.
No exact release date has been set, nor do we know if Maul will take Star Wars into significant new territory.
Star Wars: Starfighter (2027)
The only other slated movie is directed by Shawn Levy (Deadpool and Wolverine) and stars Ryan Gosling. Maybe that information alone is Ken-ough for you to get excited, or maybe you're thrilled about the fact that it's set 5 years after The Rise of Skywalker (2019), finally pushing the franchise's main tale forward into the post-First Order future.
Either way, you'll have to wait until May 2027 to find out if it's any good.
Ahsoka Season 2 (TBD)
The only other TV series we're likely to see around 2027 is Dave Filoni's continuation of his first solo-helmed live-action series, Ahsoka. The eight episodes of Season 2 pick up where Season 1 left off, teasing a continuation of the Mortis arc from Clone Wars. And if that lore-heavy information leaves you scratching your head, you're not alone.
Filoni has teased a larger role for Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen), last seen dueling Ahsoka (yet again) in the mysterious "world between worlds". The result could be a satisfying explanation for why Anakin was named The Chosen One in the first place. Or it could reveal this franchise as being entirely dependent on a single narrative, the tragedy of Darth Vader, more than 50 years after it began.
Even the well-teased tragedy of Darth Plagueis is not a story Disney+ will tell us.
The future of Star Wars: Is there new hope?
The bulk of Star Wars plans going forward live under the heading of "untitled." Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy of Ms. Marvel fame is directing the only other movie in pre-production; this is the one featuring the return of Rey (Daisy Ridley), so it presumably ties in to the Starfighter era of the galaxy far, far away.
Beyond that, here are the slim threads of new hope for the rest of the 2020s: untitled Dave Filoni film, untitled James Mangold film, untitled Taika Waititi film, and Simon Kinberg's untitled trilogy set in a brand new Star Wars era with brand new characters. Hopefully, that effort will have more luck than the untitled Rian Johnson trilogy, which reportedly had the same aim.
And you can at least set your reminders for one more cinematic release in 2027. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope is heading back to theaters on April 30, 2027, in time for the franchise's 50th birthday. Expect breathless anticipation about we're going to see the 1977 original, or the latest George Lucas "Macklunkey!" version, which you can already watch on Disney+; maybe Lucas himself could be persuaded to tweak his creation yet one more time.
The Force of nostalgia will be with Star Wars, always. But the Force of creative originality? That's still TBD.
Topics Star Wars
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.
