Star Wars is doing what the MCU cannot.

From high-stakes blockbusters to small character-driven series.

[Spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Watchmen, and season 1 of The Mandalorian]

Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker was critically panned as both a finale to the trilogy and to the whole Skywalker Saga, as the lack of planning and direction across the 3 sequel films was apparent. The obvious comparison to make was to Disney’s other popular franchise, The Marvel Cinematic Universe, which only months prior had released Avengers: Endgame, the conclusion to its saga spanning 22 films. Unlike Rise of Skywalker, Endgame was received well by fans and critics alike. Since both saw their conclusion in 2019, both have been trying to answer the biggest question for any franchise: Where do you go from here?

Chapter I: Humbling a Pop Culture Giant

In their review of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, RedLetterMedia introduces the film by saying, “A new day has dawned. One in which we get a new Star Wars film or two every year until we’re all dead.” While that trajectory was hyperbolic in retrospect, it was the exact trajectory Star Wars was heading in at the time. The Force Awakens was released in 2015, Rogue One in 2016, The Last Jedi in 2017, Solo in 2018, and Rise of Skywalker in 2019. A film every year.

And then…it stopped.

As of today, there has not been a new Star Wars film in roughly 4 years. On March 9th, 2023, Disney CEO Bob Iger made an appearance at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, explaining this gap. He explained that the disappointing box office return from Solo “gave us pause.” He continued, “maybe the cadence was a little too aggressive.”

“We’re going to make sure when we make one, it’s the right one. So we’re being very careful there.”

Mind you, Star Wars hasn’t been dormant. Since 2019, there have been 4 new live-action shows on Disney+, making for a total of 6 seasons so far. These series have seen beloved characters return and fresh faces make their debut under the modern Disney umbrella, from Obi-Wan Kenobi to The Mandalorian. These series have had a focus not on the fate of the galaxy, but on little pockets of time between films where most of the stakes lie in the characters’ own survival.

Chapter II: The End(game) is Never The End

What the Marvel Cinematic Universe got right compared to the Star Wars sequel trilogy is not something that really needs to be repeated; they planned things out and didn’t place all of their bets into making a 2-part crossover back in 2008. They hedged their bets, alluding to Thanos without committing to him as an impending threat until Age of Ultron.

Avengers: Endgame saw the Marvel Cinematic Universe face the greatest threat one can imagine: the end of the universe, to be remade in the antagonist’s image. After over a decade of planning, the journey that began in 2008 with a playboy arms dealer concluded with a film with a talking raccoon, a depressed Norse god, and shrink-based time travel that revisited some key moments in the franchise’s history. Dozens of developed characters fighting to save the universe, it doesn’t get much bigger than that.

After Endgame, Marvel had a choice: scale things back, or amp things up. Granted, some installments like Shang-Chi, season 1 of Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and season 1 of Hawkeye are all on scales comparable to films pre-Endgame, but that’s one side of the coin. Five installments in phase 4 have interacted directly with the kind of existential threat that will clearly be central to the next Avengers film. Season 1 of Loki, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and most recently Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania all directly indicate that the threat will not just be interdimensional, but will hold all of the multiverses in the balance.

The scale has to be bigger than Endgame, and the stakes have to be higher than ever. But the stakes Marvel is going for also imply that nothing really matters.

Chapter III: No One’s Ever Really Gone

“Somehow, Palpatine returned” is a meme for good reason. Prior to The Rise of Skywalker, there was little reason to believe that Palpatine would be the ultimate evil that The Resistance would face. I’m not here to defend it in any capacity, but Marvel has been doing a more graceful version of the same concept: characters don’t stay dead.

After over 20 films with very few true, permanent deaths: many adults watching Infinity War knew that most losses would just be undone, because the film’s MacGuffin is a weapon with the power to rewrite reality to the wielder’s will. Loki’s death was seen as definitive, (“no resurrections this time”) but he (effectively) got just that. Now with the multiverse, even the losses of Black Widow, Iron Man, and Captain America hardly feel permanent when you can just pluck an “alternate reality” version of them. In fact, season 1 of Marvel’s What If… has already done this, without even Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downy Jr., or Chris Evans in their respective roles.

All of this is to say: we as the audience are less and less likely to feel anything when any of the characters in Avengers 5 die because Marvel won’t let these characters just stay dead. Season 1 of Loki has characters who use infinity stones as worthless paperweights. The same analogy can be applied to the characters; if one dies, there’s theoretically infinite more to replace them. There’s no dramatic tension.

Chapter IV: Just Some Guy

Star Wars post-Rise of Skywalker hasn’t escalated. There is no solar system of Death Stars or some secret war that also decides the fate of the galaxy; it’s been about people. A bounty hunter, a Jedi in hiding, and a man becoming a rebel. The closest thing to “fate of the galaxy” stakes is the protection of young Leia and Luke in Obi-Wan Kenobi, but we already knew how that was going to end.

Modern Star Wars doesn’t try to engage the audience with a threat as big as Palpatine. These characters’ struggles may be a matter of life and death, but not for the whole galaxy. So the writers have to make sure people care about the characters and ensure the threat against them is credible.

Season 1 of The Mandalorian is the greatest example of this; we see Mando grow a bond with the child, and the antagonists kill off Kuiil in their pursuit. Mando has no previous appearance in any shows or films taking place after the show, so there was real tension at the possibility that he could die by the end. Beyond that, the best part of Star Wars has never been its scale. Episode VII: Return of the Jedi is a battle for the fate of the galaxy centered on a single father-son relationship. The Empire winning is bad, but you want to see Luke get through to Vader.

One could argue that some of the Disney+ series have been more concerned with adding legacy characters into the modern Disney timeline rather than trying to tell an engaging story, and I’m not here to defend that. The “gulp shitto” meme is not without merit, but at least with Andor and Obi-Wan Kenobi they’re presenting fans with characters they care about and putting them into compelling situations. I don’t care about Andor because he’s going to stop sith lords from mind-controlling a whole system of civilians, I care about Andor because he wants to get back to his home and mother.

Imagine for a moment if Marvel did with the snap that Star Wars did with the Death Star. There’s a story to be told about a community in some corner of the galaxy, grappling with the loss of half their friends and family. There’s so much potential in how the whole universe now suffers the same trauma during that 5-year window. But that story wouldn’t push the MCU closer to Avengers 5, so it won’t happen.

Chapter VI: The Audience is a God

In chapter IX of the graphic novel Watchmen, a woman is reasoning with an all-powerful figure on Mars about saving the Earth from nuclear destruction. She says “Earth’s too important to hinge on one relationship” to which the blue figure replies “Not to me. My red world here means more to me than your blue one.” It’s a line that I think translates well into how an audience is invested in a story, no matter the stakes.

I’ve seen enough bad movies that try to get the audience to care because “the fate of the world is at stake” but I just don’t care about that world. I know my world will still be here no matter how the movie ends. In fact, sometimes there’s entertainment value in seeing a world end. You can’t just make the stakes bigger-er-er and hope the audience will care, because what they care about isn’t the world; it’s the characters. The audience has to know these people in order to care; they have to feel for their struggles, understand their wants, and root them on as they escape the prison, fight the bad guy, or save innocent people.

Eventually, the Marvel Cinematic Universe will have to de-escalate. They can borrow from the comics as much as they’d like, but the stakes only get so big. When they do, I hope they learn from Star Wars and are willing to tell smaller stories in the world they’ve created.