Just because fans have been incredibly vocal in their criticism of how Disney and Lucasfilm have handled the recent era of Star Wars projects, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t still one of the most popular and beloved franchises on the planet. If anything, the backlash that seems to greet almost all of the goings on in a galaxy far, far away just reinforces how important it is to a lot of people.
With the fanbase arguably more disenfranchised than ever though, the studio would surely have been planning some major announcements for this year’s Star Wars Celebration in order to win many of them back over, and that would have no doubt included the debut of brand new footage from the second season of The Mandalorian, as well as some more concrete information about what’s to come on the big screen.
However, the event was recently canceled as the domino effect created by the Coronavirus pandemic still shows no signs of slowing down, and won’t return until 2022. That being said, ABC News’ Clayton Sandell claims to have heard that the cancellation of Celebration will lead to Star Wars having a much bigger presence than initially anticipated at next year’s D23 Expo, and you can check out his comments below.
Star Wars Celebration won’t return until 2022. However, if things stabilize, the guidance I’m hearing is that we might see more #StarWars announcements than originally planned at @DisneyD23 in 2021. 🤞🏻 https://t.co/rxdhgJFbnm
— Clayton Sandell (@Clayton_Sandell) June 15, 2020
Last year’s D23 saw the official announcement of Ewan McGregor’s return for Disney Plus’ Obi-Wan Kenobi series, but the expo has always been more focused on the wider Walt Disney Company rather than any of their major subsidiaries in particular. That all might change next year though, given that the future of the Star Wars franchise is arguably more unclear than it’s been for a long time, and the studio were surely planning on at least a couple of huge reveals in order to reassure the fans that the next generation of stories were in safe hands.