You would think that one of the most iconic… maybe the most iconic… villains in all of cinema history would have his own little area to appear in a Disney theme park. The towering Darth Vader would surely be located in the heart of whatever Star Wars themed area the park has. And certainly you would want Darth Vader deep in said area of the park for his return in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series. Yet that isn’t what has happened and it’s so bizarre that even casual fans of both Star Wars and Disneyland are beginning to (finally) take notice. So what is the story behind the giant Galaxy’s Edge Star Wars expansion and why Darth Vader does not appear there?
“We meet again, at last.”
Darth Vader will return to Tomorrowland for a limited-time, beginning tomorrow! And don't miss the limited series #ObiWanKenobi streaming now only on Disney+. pic.twitter.com/1DtZlCnOmn— Disneyland Resort (@Disneyland) June 11, 2022
They (the imagineers) said: “Well, yesterday Bob Iger met with Kathleen Kennedy, who a lot of people may know is sort of George Lucas’ protege, and headed up Lucasfilm, And they had a conversation, a meeting, and Kathleen Kennedy, her point of view was there are way more Disney Star Wars stories ahead of us than behind us. So we really should think about, do we want to build a Tatooine and build what all of the fifty-somethings remember Star Wars as, or do we want to build something else which is going to appeal to all the upcoming generations who are going to know the new stories.”
— Dan Cockerell, WDW Radio Podcast
Readers of this site likely already know that Lucasfilm head, Kathleen Kennedy, intervened in the Walt Disney Imagineering process to convince then-CEO Bob Iger to flush plans for a Star Wars area that would celebrate all of Star Wars. Instead, she wanted Galaxy’s Edge to be a specific land that specifically role-played a time in the sequel trilogy. In her viewpoint, this new trilogy she was guiding would be far more popular and relevant. And so it was decided that all of Galaxy’s Edge would be sandwiched between Rian Johnson’s “The Last Jedi” and the ill-received “The Rise of Skywalker.” It was a critical mistake.
With the two mentioned Star Wars movies being at best divisive, and at worst hated, Disneyland actually saw attendance drop when they unveiled Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge to the public. To have a billion dollar expansion lower demand is something we don’t believe has ever happened before at a theme park. The huge investments of “Project Stardust” at Disneyland which were set in motion to increase capacity for the throngs of Star Wars fans sure to descend on the park… well, it was largely seen as a waste. And though Disney is slow to admit error, the adoption of Favreau-Filoni characters into Galaxy’s Edge (just the beginning of a transformation) is essentially a mea culpa. There’s no way around such a change — Disney is even stuck asking survey participants why their Star Wars hotel based on the sequel trilogy isn’t doing so well.
Disney Hosting Focus Groups About Galactic Starcruiser
All of this is to say that the Disney Parks are stuck in an untenable position. On the one hand, their Star Wars land and hotel were set up on the idea that the sequel trilogy movies and characters would be phenomenally popular. On the other hand, they’re not. And at the same time, they’re stuck with an edict from Lucasfilm not to put Star Wars characters outside of the sequel trilogy into Galaxy’s Edge. You’ll note how careful Disney Parks was in their statement about putting Mandalorian and Boba Fett characters into the themed area:
We are committed to the long history of Batuu and the collection of amazing characters who inhabit the outpost including our legacy characters and original characters and know that we will feel the same about new and future characters from the ever-expanding galaxy of Star Wars storytelling. While we as visitors may be able to experience different stories throughout Star Wars history, the characters on Batuu can not. They will remain in their specific story and timeline and won’t intersect with other characters or stories that would not be appropriate for them. — Disney Parks
All of this is to say that the real, and ridiculous, reason that Darth Vader can’t currently be in the giant Star Wars land Disney dropped a billion dollars on is…
… Kathleen Kennedy.
Seriously.
But change is happening slowly. Disney Parks, Disney Imagineering, and the park operations at both Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge locations are going to be pushing for the next years to transition from the sequel trilogy to all of Star Wars. There’s no better way to attract guests and make money than to have Grogu, Luke Skywalker, Leia, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka, Mando, and even Yoda, all in the same location. Oh… and that includes Darth Vader. It definitely includes Darth Vader. But to make that shift, Disney has to implicitly announce to the public, through their actions not through their words, that the sequel trilogy is no longer relevant compared to the broader Star Wars story. And perhaps that even goes so far as to mean Disney leadership will have to accept that nobody really likes the way the sequel trilogy tried to end the story of Luke, Leia, and Anakin. Nobody.
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