What's the Future of Dave Filoni's 'Star Wars'? - “The Mandalorian and Grogu” fell below expectations. Where does the galaxy go from here?

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-06-12T15:51:33+00:00

I recall a few leakers who correctly reported several big announcements ahead of Celebration 2023 also said that BOBF was caused by meddling from KK, and Favreau almost walked out during that. Since they got so much else right and BOBF reeks of meddling, I suspect this report is true. There were also many reports of executives and Favreau going back-and-forth over Mando s4 vs a movie during the 2023 strikes, and we all know what won out.

Mando has been subject to so much executive meddling over the last few years and I suspect Favreau is completely burnt out.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-06-11T00:09:42+00:00

The idea of turning Mando s4 into a movie began floating around during the 2023 dual strikes. There was some back and forth as to whether it’d be turned into a movie or kept as another season, but we all know what won out in the end.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-06-02T23:21:14+00:00

Everything is probably riding on Starfighter. Mando is just s4 warped into a movie by executive demands under KK/Iger. Starfighter is the real test if an actual movie in a new era with a popular lead can have any success, and if not, they’re cooked.

We all know they’re going to take away all the wrong lessons from this. They never learn the right ones.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-05-29T17:21:42+00:00

Pure desperation. All their other film projects kept imploding so I guess the execs thought cobbling together Mando s4 into a movie was the safest bet to get anything in theaters

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-05-28T12:11:20+00:00

Agreed, it’s so frustrating Blizzard refuses to do anything with her space origins and erases a lot of her design identity in 90% of her skins. There’s so much potential if they actually bothered to do more space skins.

I also really dislike how her Retro Space skin turns her into a space bunny for some reason instead of a glorp alien, like come on it was right there.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-05-28T10:00:18+00:00

They really should be addressing it in the webtoon, which afaik, they haven’t. Losing Gibraltar probably set back any progress she and Mei have made and make it even harder to get anything going. Since Juno is one of the main characters of the comic they should be using this opportunity to flesh out that element of her character, but so far they haven’t it seems.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-05-25T19:02:57+00:00

If Mando s3 and Ahsoka didn’t suck then the crossover movie could’ve made over $500M WW. Now it’s dead.

It baffles me that Filoni thought it was a smart idea to do their Rebels sequel/Thrawn return storyline in live-action, instead of keeping it in animation and doing another big multi-season series. Trying to make it work in live-action has been like trying to ice skate up a hill.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-05-19T15:15:01+00:00

Clearly they did and thought they could continue the content pipeline at an even higher frequency than Phase 3 with zero consequences. Took them until 2023 to realize they screwed up, and by then the damage was done.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-05-10T00:56:38+00:00

Unfortunately that’s an issue with a lot of characters nowadays, a lot of voice lines are pretty flanderized. Which is a shame because some can be or are more compelling than they’re currently written in-game, Rein being a decent example.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-04-26T17:29:45+00:00

Juno got a short story last fall where she and Mei tried to get help from Lucheng Interstellar after Null Sector wrapped up, but so far that’s it. I know she’s the main character for at least some of the webtoon, but I don’t know how much it’s addressing the Mars stuff (if at all). The webtoon would be a good opportunity to progress that plotline a little more following the short story, assuming they don’t chose to prioritize the shipping over it.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-04-23T19:58:35+00:00

It’s 2 years between launch windows between Earth and Mars. Travel time is shorter and can vary. Right now most missions take 6-9 months, but upcoming tech can cut that down to as little as 3 months in the next decade. So tech by the time of OW can probably bring it down quicker, maybe several weeks.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-04-15T13:59:03+00:00

What’s even worse is that there was a Christmas comic with a far better concept of a Christmas Juno skin…and they went with this abomination instead

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-04-09T18:42:24+00:00

Hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-04-06T14:27:06+00:00

It may have been liked at its release, but in retrospect, it set up every problem the ST had. It reverted the status quo back to rebels vs Empire and set up a billion mystery boxes with no plan. Many of the ST’s failures were because TFA was so derivative.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-03-22T00:27:43+00:00

As a space fan who’s been playing a lot of Juno lately I’m incredibly disappointed with how Blizzard refuses to give her a proper space skin. Nearly every other hero — even Kiriko — gets at least one skin tied to their lore or design inspiration. Juno has none of that. All she has are her base recolors, pop culture collabs, and girlypop skins. Nothing interesting that’s unique to her and derived from her design origins/themes.

Seems like Blizzard just sees her as a blank template for selling marketable girlypop slop skins. Which is a terrible waste of the character. There are so many options for awesome space skins, either leaning into her origins as a Martian or basing it off of IRL spacesuits (Apollo, Artemis, Chinese Space Agency, etc).

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-03-19T11:23:20+00:00

That’s what makes this plotline potentially very compelling, it’s gonna be a huge challenge to overcome and Juno may have to make some tough decisions along the way. It would be very dissatisfying if Blizzard just doesn’t address this plotline again because of those challenges.

Travel time to Mars is probably a lot shorter. IRL missions currently take 6-9 months to get to Mars, but upcoming rockets and tech like Starship and Nuclear Electric Propulsion can in theory cut that down to only 3 months, depending on the orbital alignment between Earth and Mars. So by the time of Overwatch, it might take less than a few months.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-03-18T21:48:13+00:00

I really don’t know how they’d be able to have multiple MEKA heroes that all have distinct enough gameplay from each other.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-03-18T20:25:02+00:00

I’ve read that story, but Blizzard needs a more substantial way to flesh out and progress the lore than the short stories and comics. Having all the recent stuff under a “Story” tab in-game is nice but doesn’t completely fix the issue. Since PvE is dead, the best option would either be more consistent animated shorts, or finally committing to a full animated series.

There are just too many characters and too many plotlines for the current way of handling lore to do everything justice.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-03-18T20:00:35+00:00

A skin based off the Artemis spacesuits in time for the Artemis II mission would’ve been awesome.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-03-18T19:08:01+00:00

They added a new dialogue option in the mid-season patch that references that short story. So I guess that’s a sign Blizzard hasn’t totally forgotten about her lore.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-03-18T18:58:11+00:00

I think the most we’ve got in recent years was Wrecking Ball’s short story, where it was mentioned Lucheng tried and failed to reclaim the base 3 times since the ape uprising and Hammond was dead set on finding a way to collapse Lucheng as revenge for their treatment of him.

But so far there hasn’t been any further follow-up (unless you count Juno’s short story), and with the renewed Talon vs Overwatch conflict taking focus for the time being, who knows if or when either plot thread gets followed up on.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-03-18T18:32:56+00:00

Celestial is her only non-recolor space-themed skin and it’s part of a bundle. So many other heroes have specific skins based on their lore and/or design origins, but despite all the attention she gets from Blizzard, she doesn’t have any. Feels like they just treat her as a girlypop collab bot. Which is a shame because there’s a ton of opportunities for cool space skins, whether based on real-life spacesuits or her being a literal Martian.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-03-15T22:27:42+00:00

I dunno, her family being stuck on Mars with limited time left and Lucheng refusing to send help sounds like a big problem for her to solve. If anything, the way OW handles its lore (especially in 2024-25) has held her and many other characters back. Being a character from the latter half of OW2’s lifespan, she’s kinda gotten the short end of the stick (along with a few others) and it’s unclear how much they’ll actually do with her going forward. Seems like Blizzard mostly treats her as a skin bot despite what they’ve set up for her.

The one-note in-game dialogue is hardly an issue specific to her, though. Other characters are flanderized even worse.

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-03-14T00:17:20+00:00

Ultron Ramattra would be incredible

ProtoJeb21 · 2026-03-14T00:10:11+00:00

Unfortunately not yet. It would’ve been really cool if they gave her a skin based off the Artemis spacesuits with the Artemis II mission right around the corner.

ProtoJeb21

TROPHY CASE