This week in Star Wars Q&A - We're off! Thanks to a strange blip in our hosting, email was down and if any questions were sent in, they were not delivered.

But I feel like writing something. The Acolyte starts this week with an air of excitement, apprehension, and also whatever lingering sense of trepidation you probably have from something from the last ten years of Disney Star Wars "content." One size no longer fits all, but things do seem to be very appealing to separate groups within the fan community. And like all things pop culture, it's worth giving pretty much everything a chance. If it's great? Congratulations on having a good time. If it's awful? Well, someone is going to make $200,000 off a four-hour YouTube takedown of it eventually. I think that's the new entertainment attention economy in a nutshell.

Read on!

After some pretty intensive behind-the-scenes and public pre-marketing for other shows like Obi-Wan Kenobi, this is one where it feels like it's just being quietly put out and they'll see what happens - which is probably the way to go. They're not doing more, and they certainly felt like they were doing less than the bare minimum when it came time to play up the then-new and by-all-accounts-100%-what-fans-wanted first season of The Mandalorian. Hopefully this winds up like that - underpromise, over-deliver, and leaving us wanting a lot more.

Star Wars tends to do pretty well with fans making the noise, unless it doesn't, in which case it isn't like it was going to do much in the first place. I assume it's going to be pretty quiet this time, at least for the first week or two. It's great that they have new faces, and a new place on the timeline, and minimal continuity obligations. But also that means that people have very little to go on so far. We've seen a couple of trailers, what looks like a shadowy armored guy, and a slate of action figures that look like they could all slip in to your Attack of the Clones shelves with the other Battle of Geonosis Jedi and fit in seamlessly. The marketing continues to give us almost nothing about plot, as has been the style of things for most of the last 25 or more years since The Phantom Menace opted to promote itself solely on "vibes."

And what performers they are in those robes! Granted I'd rather have more rubber monster Cantina aliens and space weirdoes, but those don't tend to move the needle on $25-$275 lightsaber sales as much. I don't know if a show like this is timed to end with Comic-Con to encourage costumers either - so far, the bulk of outfits all seem very doable, and it's set to end right around the time of the show. Coincidence? Most definitely. But I wouldn't be surprised if this show was engineered in a lab to be accessible and easily promoted if fans take to it, and given Hasbro support is no longer indicative of a "good" or "middling" story, we have no reason to assume either way. At least the showrunner worked on Russian Doll, which you should probably go ahead and watch now because it's awesome and Natasha Lyonne is in it.

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I haven't read a lot of the speculation on the show because people haven't seen it and generally fan media is increasingly an underinformed echo chamber about whatever bent it may or may not have, because these shows are made to entertain people and hopefully make a lot of other people money. I have to say that I appreciate that someone over at Lucasfilm is doing something that's not about a planet destroyer or someone taking over the space government for once. Or at least, that's how the trailers make it look. I'm hoping for fun adventures and lots of fantastic ships, aliens, and droids... I'm not seeing those yet and as far as I know, other than Young Jedi Adventures, there's not much else in terms of screens for the High Republic era that could well be a new jumping-on point for fans and writers. I know there are books, and comics, but I don't think any of us are going to do the reading (let alone buy the course syllabus) for an era that has no chance of the Empire showing up.

Trying to wrestle people away from the Empire vs. Rebels paradigm can be tough unless kids grow up with the new thing, and "space murder mystery" may not bring the tots to the table. Or it might! We'll see this week when two episodes go live on June 4, and I really hope we're going to dig it. Ahsoka and Andor were admittedly not my favorites, so I'm hoping that something seemingly free of obligations to an expanding cinematic universe beyond "The Force" and "lightsaber" might be really fun for once. I'm told it worked well for Knights of the Old Republic.

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FIN

I'm out of questions! Email me if you have one.

As far as I know there are no extensive full-line merchandise plans for The Acolyte beyond what we've seen - I haven't heard any whispered rumors of big ships (or small ships) or kid toys as of yet. But leaks of rumored (or "rumored," I don't know if this is true or a gag as I don't know the original sources) Cantina HasLab aliens have been making the rounds on Discord and if true, that's pretty exciting. The names on a thing passed around included Greedo (meh), Arleil Schous (the other wolf man), both Tonnika Sisters (whoa), a new Wuher (sure!), and a new Nabrun Leids. Previous rumors said there may be as many as eight figures, so who knows for sure how it'll shake out. At least it sounds like there are some interesting things on the horizon. Also, you may want to go ahead and start scooping up and Cantina alien figures that you've missed now. When the playset hits I assume Hasbro won't be bringing back a lot of old ones, and certainly not all of them, so it's probably worth scooping anything that you can't go without before the prices start to creep up as demand will no doubt increase.

We saw this happen with old video games - when a company like Analogue puts out a new clone video game console, corresponding software would shoot up. Game Boy Cameras went from $4 to $40+ when the Analogue Pocket hit, and a lot of other games behaved similarly. Unless Hasbro has a new Ellors Madak coming, it probably behooves you to check your local collectible, comic, or second-hand toy shops to see what you can get cheap - just in case. The last decade of Cantina Alien toys has been pretty thin so I wouldn't get my hopes up about reissues of anything, especially not from The Legacy Collection era of figures.

This week you can enjoy something new while waiting for something old and hopefully, everything is going to be exciting and fun. But also, it's far more likely that you're over 40 and it's not like pop culture tends to favor older fans - it's about what you liked as a kid, and hoping it stays relevant long enough to get some cool things before the world moves on to something else. I guess we're "lucky" that not a lot else has come up to give toy companies a chance to chase something new and I really hope The Acolyte sticks the landing in the ways that the last season of The Bad Batch didn't.

--Adam Pawlus

Got questions? Email me with Q&A in the subject line now! I'll answer your questions as soon as time (or facts) permit.

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