Why There Won't Be Any More Star Wars Spin-Offs (& Why That's A Good Thing)
Why This Is A Good Thing
Since Disney took over, Lucasfilm have played it relatively safe with Star Wars. The Force Awakens did so largely out of necessity, but it can't be denied how much it hued closely to A New Hope, while both Rogue One and Solo told stories that were very much connected to the Original Trilogy. The Last Jedi took a lot of risks, and though that divided audiences, it's the kind of thing we should be seeing more of from Star Wars in the future.
With the movies, TV shows, and comics all so centred around the Original Trilogy timeline, it becomes harder to make stories feel fresh and new, and that's especially the case with the spin-offs. While you can debate the 'point' of just about any movie, one of the reasons Solo didn't quite work is how much of the story we already knew and how much it needed telling, and the same critiques will apply to the likes of Obi-Wan, Boba Fett, Maul and so on.
It runs the risk of turning Star Wars into a MCU-like brand, with the episodes serving as the Avengers movies and the standalones as the solo hero films. But Star Wars isn't Marvel, and every movie should feel like a true event, which something like Solo simply didn't.
Shifting away from these spin-offs for a period, and keeping the focus on one movie at a time, should ensure that whatever comes next does feel worthy of being a part of the saga, whether it's the first of Johnson's new trilogy or Weiss and Benioff's series.
The opportunities are there to tell stories that are still recognisably Star Wars in a more thematic sense, but don't feel connected by characters and time periods moviegoers are already familiar with, instead going into the past, future, or a whole other part of the galaxy, and delivering stories that are truly worth getting excited about.
How do you feel about Lucasfilm halting Star Wars spin-offs? Let us know down in the comments.