One of the big draws of Disney's still-new Disney+ streaming service was the ability to have all of Star Wars collected together, but, so far, that complete library has failed to materialize. Since having total and immediate access to that galaxy far, far away was always intended to be one of the central pillars of the platform – alongside such heavy hitters as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which also finds its contents marred by absences – such an incomplete status is glaring, not to mention questionable.
It’s important to note that George Lucas’ mega-franchise has, in the eight years under Disney’s control, exploded in several different directions: spin-off films, YouTube microseries, and live-action TV shows (as well as doubling down on the traditional movies and animated TV series that Lucas himself originated, of course). This may have helped round out the Star Wars release calendar for the corporation throughout the entire year, but it is precisely within these newly expanded areas that Disney+'s omissions can be found.
The most notable part of Star Wars missing from Disney+ is Solo: A Star Wars Story, the 2018 offshoot film whose poor financial performance helped create a three-year moratorium for all new theatrical installments. (Solo, it should be pointed out, will arrive on the streamer on July 9, and it’s already been available in the United Kingdom for a while now, softening the blow.) Then there are the animated shorts attached to Star Wars Resistance, the most recent of the animated TV shows, and the collected, expanded versions of the Forces of Destiny minisodes that originally debuted on YouTube.
While these may seem small, the items in question are actually relevant parts of their respective stories, helping to flesh out the characters, situations, and overall themes that their source materials explore. There’s an entire framing device, for instance, introduced in the expanded version of Forces of Destiny that aired exclusively on the Disney Channel that has Maz Kanata narrating the stories directly to the audience, providing more context for her anthologized tales. It doesn’t help that these versions were previously available on Disney’s predecessor app, or that Disney+ already includes the four introductory shorts of the Star Wars Rebels series.
Furthermore, whether all this extra content is present or not on the streaming platform, it invites another question: why doesn’t Disney+ have an option to present all of the Star Wars library in a logical, cohesive manner? It’s a convoluted process to keep track of where everything falls narratively – Rebels’ shorts come before its television run, while the Resistance ones fall right in the middle of its first season and Forces of Destiny’s individual segments land literally all around the various movies and shows. And this doesn’t even begin to address The Clone Wars, whose pilot film is listed as a disconnected “special” on the streamer and whose episodes didn’t even air in chronological order in the first place.
But Disney+’s Star Wars collection isn’t all missed opportunities – in addition to delivering fans the long-awaited final season of Clone Wars, there has also been The Mandalorian, what is arguably the service’s biggest success thus far in its six-month lifespan. However, that doesn't fully account or make up for the fact that Star Wars on Disney+ has been and remains incomplete.
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