The Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter: June 6, 2025

Zonama Sekot starships aren't cheap

Jun 06, 2025

Hello there

Welcome back to another edition of the Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter. This week the streaming wars heat up. Remember headlines like that? They don’t seem particularly relevant anymore. Everything’s ~~computer~~ streaming. Mando and Grogu are breaking free of the small screen and taking their talents strictly to the big screen. While Tony Gilroy opines that Andor will never happen again because he took a lot of money from Disney. Like, a lot. And we’ve got the first non-New Jedi Order entry in the Death Star HR book club in over a year.

This Is Where The Fun Begins

Star Wars and cats. Doesn’t get much better than that.

The Mandalorian Cannot be Contained by Television

Whether or not The Mandalorian was going to get a 4th season has been, like a Mandalorian with a jetpack, up in the air for a while. First they were going to, as far back as 2022 showrunner Jon Favreau had said he was working scripts. Then The Mandalorian and Grogu was announced and that was going to take the place of season 4. Then it seemed like it might be back on again. I had always kind of figured that the success of The Mandalorian and Grogu would determine whether or not there was a season 4. Now, it looks like Disney is pulling the plug.

According to insider Daniel Richtman (shared via his Patreon), The Mandalorian Season 4 was shelved because Disney viewed it as a theatrical franchise rather than a TV series. The Mando-centric feature film The Mandalorian and Grogu, which is set to be released on May 22, 2026, seems to have had an impact on The Mandalorian's future, as its success will determine what comes next for Din Djarin and Grogu.

There is, of course, no official word from the Mouse House at this time. Which seems to be Disney’s preferred method of communication. A show isn’t canceled, it’s just never renewed or talked about again. I’m not a subscriber to Daniel Richtman, but I do see his name pop up on the Nerd News sites as an insider. Reddit seems to think he’s a hack, but it is Reddit and it can get a little testy over there some times. Other sites say he’s reliable. I have no idea if this guy is plugged in, or he’s just obsessive enough to spend all day on Reddit and the rotting corpse of Twitter and put enough rumors together to pass them off as info.

Still, it does make sense that The Mandalorian is potentially on the big screen only. Disney is clearly moving the focus to movies. The article I linked above has a rundown of all the potential Star Wars TV shows. The only confirmed one left is season 2 of Ahsoka. Andor and The Acolyte have officially been cancelled. Everything else is just stuck in the limbo of the World Between Worlds. Season 2 of Book of Boba Fett isn’t cancelled. It’s just not in development. And Disney would really appreciate it if Temuera Morrison would stop bugging them about it, thank you very much.

The other tidbit from Richtman is that the Filoniverse movie maybe isn’t as sure of a thing as we thought.

"There won’t be a Season 4 of 'The Mandalorian,' but if the movie succeeds, a sequel will be made. However, if it flops, it will serve as the final chapter for Mando and could also put Filoni’s movie at risk."

There are various ways a movie can succeed or not succeed. It can have good reviews but a poor showing at the box office. It can be a cult classic. Critics can hate it but audiences can love it. And even if a movie is successful at the box office, it’s only successful if the accountants want it to be. Hollywood accounting is a real thing. In fact, at least as of 2009, Lucasfilm was telling David Prowse that Return of the Jedi wasn’t profitable.

"I get these occasional letters from Lucasfilm saying that we regret to inform you that as Return of the Jedi has never gone into profit, we've got nothing to send you. Now here we're talking about one of the biggest releases of all time," said Prowse. "I don't want to look like I'm bitching about it," he said, "but on the other hand, if there's a pot of gold somewhere that I ought to be having a share of, I would like to see it."

Of course Prowse, who passed away in 2020, had a fairly contentious relationship with Lucas going all the way back to A New Hope when George replaced his spoken lines with James Earl Jones. I am inclined to believe Prowse because A) Hollywood math is real and B) it would be a fairly easy thing for to be disproven.

Getting back to Dave Filoni’s movie, I think that The Mandalorian and Grogu would have to be a complete flop for the Filoniverse movie not to happen. I’m talking critics hate it, fans hate it, and it’s an unequivocal box office bomb. Filoni is a big deal within Lucasfilm, they’ve been building towards the Filoniverse movie for a while, as a way to cap off The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, and some other threads. It seems pretty unlikely he’s not going to get his movie to finish everything off.

Back to The Mandalorian, I’ve been saying the last month or so that seeing Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope in the theaters has reminded me that Star Wars was meant to be seen on the big screen. I have some fond memories of watching The Mandalorian with my neighbors, seeing the first appearance of Baby Yoda at the end of the premiere, or the season 2 finale when Luke shows up to battle the Dark Troopers and save the day. But I’m ok with not getting season 4 if it means we get a pivot back to the big screen where Star Wars belongs.

We’ll Never See Another Andor

It’s been discussed quite a bit, like in the section right above, that Disney is taking Star Wars from the small screen to the big screen. Right now the only live-action TV show in development is season 2 of Ahsoka. Unless Disney decides to green light a second season of Book of Boba Fett or Obi-Wan Kenobi or Skeleton Crew, it really seems like once Ahsoka is done, likely next year, that will be it for a while for live action streaming.

This article was going to just be in the News from the HoloNet section, but I decided to expand it on it a little. The headline, "Streaming Is Dead": Andor's Showrunner Just Revealed The Real Reason Star Wars' Best TV Show Will Never Be Repeated is a bit click-baity, but the story is solid.

Why won’t Andor ever be repeated? One simple reason, it cost a lot of Republic credits.

Gilroy dropped something of a bombshell during the panel, when he openly discussed Andor's $650 million budget. "I mean, [for] Disney this is $650 million," he reflected, and then proudly added that he only ever had one note requesting a change for season 1. "In Season 2, they said, ‘Streaming is dead, we don’t have the money we had before,’ so we fought hard about money, but they never cleaned anything up." His thrust, of course, was the remarkable creative freedom he's been given; but that apparently throwaway comment, "streaming is dead," stands out.

It should be noted that $650 million dollars is a lot of money. Even for a conglomerate the size of Disney, spending that much money on two seasons is a lot. To a certain extent some of it makes sense. Disney wanted to be a player in the streaming wars with Disney+. They were initially pretty successful. This about just how huge The Mandalorian was back in the pre-covid times. If you can remember that far back.

Disney+ was a hit in terms of subscriber numbers, dramatically exceeding Disney's wildest dreams. In spite of that, though, it's been a loss-making venture for the House of Mouse; according to Forbes, the Direct To Consumer (DTC) division reported operating losses of $11.4 billion between the platform's launch and April last year. Stringent cost controls, the launch of a new ad tier, a crackdown on password sharing, and other measures improved matters by the first quarter of 2025.

I’m old enough to remember that streaming was basically Netflix for movies and older TV shows and Hulu for current shows. Then every company saw what Netflix had in terms of eyeballs, media press, and data about their customers and wanted in. Now? There’s too many streamers. Other than Netflix, they’re either losing money or just now finally showing a profit. There’s only so much time to watch TV and only so much disposable income to go around.

In an interview, Michael Nathanson, Senior Managing Director at MoffettNathanson, noted, “For streaming, the average number of services per household has been stuck at four for a while. One of those four is Netflix, the second is Amazon—it comes with Prime—and third is some combination of Disney’s offerings. Fourth place is up for grabs. That’s what all the rest are fighting over.”

If you’re not making money for the C-Suite, your budgets are going to get cut. That’s just how the world works. Between stagnate growth and the worry that streaming releases will cannibalize the box office receipts, it’s not exactly surprising Disney wouldn’t want to spend the equivalent of the combined Mets and Dodgers’ payrolls on a streaming show. I would like to see Disney use their streaming platform for more animated shows. I am not sure what it costs to make an episode of say The Bad Batch. I did a little searching and most of what I turned up was just speculation on Reddit of $1 million per episode. Which is a hell of a lot cheaper than the $27 million per episode that Andor cost. More animated shows would be a great way to get new streaming shows on Disney+ to keep people engaged and keep telling new Star Wars stories. Like maybe season 2 of The Acolyte or The Wacky Adventures of Darth Jar Jar. Dave and Kathy, call me on that last one. I’ve got 12 episodes ready to go.

The Death Star Human Resources Department Book Club

It’s been quite a while since we’ve had a Death Star HR Book Club entry that wasn’t part of the New Jedi Order series. Like I said last week, there’s four more entries for the year, one Legends and three canon, and then I’m going to get to the non-Star Wars books in my to-read pile. Now that it’s wrapped up, I think starting next year I am going to take the High Republic books. I’m also nervous to do that, since there’s 27 books. Plus comics. Oof. And that would mean ignoring a lot of the Legends books currently on my shelf.

But for now, the Legends book has been checked off for the year.

Title: Rogue Planet
Series: Stand alone. But tangentially related to the New Jedi Order
Author: Greg Bear
Date published: May 2, 2000
Pages: 330
Status: Legends
Summary in less than 20 words: Do you like a lot talk about how Zonama Sekot builds spaceships? I hope so. Because that’s what you’re getting.

Finally a cover where I know who the characters are.

I’m out of the loop on canon books, but back in the day, Star Wars was cranking out books like Marvel was cranking to MCU movies back when they were good. I read somewhere that there was some disagreement in the Star Wars world about how many books to release. There were some, starting with the Thrawn Trilogy, who thought there should be a limited number of books and they should be treated more like serious literature, or as serious as books about space wizards with laser swords can be. Then there was the other side so said publish as many as we can. You can guess which side won out.

There are some Star Wars books that are action and adventure oriented. And there are some that are more philosophical (for Star Wars) and focus on the nature of the Force. Rogue Planet really isn’t either of those. It’s almost a tale of two books. The first half starts with a bang. The second half of the book feels like Anakin and Obi-Wan just doing fetch quests in a video game.

The book takes place between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. Also worth noting, it was written between the two movies. I’ll come back to this. The Jedi Council has tasked Obi-Wan and 12 year old Anakin to head to the mysterious planet of Zonama Sekot to A) try to locate the Jedi Vergere who has disappeared and B) purchase one of the organic Sekot spaceships. In another old friend alert, Commander (not yet governor) Tarkin cajoles and threatens shipbuilder Raith Sienar to take a Trade Federation force out to Zonama Sekot to conquer the planet. The reason for the both the Jedi and what is still the Republic wanting isn’t clear, or if it was spelled out I missed it. I just figured it was because the Sekot spaceships were supposed to be the fastest in the galaxy and that would appeal to everyone. Whom amongst does not have a need for speed?

Obi-Wan and Anakin make it to Zonama Sekot, they do their fetch questions. Anakin bonds with the seeds that are needed to grow the ships. There’s references to the Far Outsiders (the Yuuzhan Vong) and some other characters that will later appear in the NJO books are introduced. Vergere, Jabitha, and the Magister all make their first appearances in Rogue Planet. Eventually the bad guys show up and we get some conflict. Tarkin tries to have Anakin killed (twice) for no reason other than that Tarkin is just an all around bad guy and Anakin gets his first taste of the Dark Side when he kills Tarkin’s assassin.

Of course Obi-Wan and Anakin escape because they were never in any real danger. One more thing I’ll say for New Jedi Order. Obviously they weren’t going to kill Luke, but it did really feel like the main characters were in more danger. Anakin gets his living Sekot spaceship and bonds with it, but unfortunately it doesn’t survive. The two Jedi report back to the Council that Zonama Sekot has left the galaxy and the location of Vergere is still unknown. Something I just thought of. When Anakin is introduced in Episode I, he’s something of a wiz kid at fixing droids and machinery. Is this foreshadowing him because more machine than man? It should be noted I am generally not good at picking things like this up, so maybe people already called it years ago.

The Good:

Greg Bear, who only has this book in the Star Wars canon, really captures the tone and the personalities of Anakin and Obi-Wan. Especially with Anakin, a child-prodigy and maybe the Chosen One who no doubt has PTSD from his childhood. Like if the Jedi believed in therapy, maybe Anakin wouldn’t have fallen to the Dark Side.
I really do like the idea of Zonama Sekot, it’s almost surprising Star Wars hadn’t done a living planet previously.

The Bad:

After the epic-ness of the New Jedi Order books, this just felt like a let down. It was mostly Anakin and Obi-Wan mosey around Zonama Sekot. They talk to some people. They go from point A to point B. There’s a couple of action sequences at the beginning and end of the book, but they felt convoluted and too long.
It’s written like a James Patterson book where chapters are 3 pages or less. Personal preference but that’s never been a style I’ve liked.

Wild Card:

This isn’t the author’s fault, but there’s quite a bit in the book that gets directly contradicted by the rest of the Prequels and the New Jedi Order books. Remember when the Trade Federation stopped using all their battle droids and rejoined the Republic? Or that Tarkin and Sienar designed the Death Star? Yeah, me neither. Again, not Bear’s fault but it made for some interesting moments.
I like look at the reviews for the book once I’m done, just to see what other people think. I found this one which I’m 99% sure was written by hallucinating AI. To be clear, absolutely none of the following happened in the book:

The convergence of these two groups on Ryloth sets the stage for a thrilling confrontation. As the Imperial forces attempt to assert control, they uncover a terrifying secret: Ryloth is not merely desolate; it's infected by a sentient, parasitic life form. This alien entity, known as the "Krayt Dragon," poses a catastrophic threat to both the Twi'leks and the Empire.

This was quite the review:

This Day in Star Wars History

Two births and a book in the galaxy far, far away on June 6.

The Grand Inquisitor himself, Jason Isaacs was born in 1963. Isaacs voiced the character in Rebels and again in Tales of the Empire. Isaacs did win a Behind the Voice Actors Award for Best Male Vocal Performance for his, uh, performance. It is too bad he didn’t get to play the character in the live action Obi-Wan Kenobi series.
Baby Boba Fett was cloned…err…born. Daniel Logan, who played Boba Fett in Attack of the Clones was born in 1987. Logan reprised his roll to voice Boba Fett in The Clone Wars and The Bad Batch along with being shown in archival footage in The Book of Boba Fett. Logan was in Star Wars news earlier this year when it was revealed Boba was supposed to kill Mace Windu in Revenge of the Sith, but Samuel L. Jackson talked Uncle George out of it, saying that Mace shouldn’t get killed by a “punk kid.” Makes sense that change happened, Sam can be quite persuasive.

Star Wars: New Jedi Order: Dark Tide II: Ruin (the rare triple colon title) was published in 2000. The third book in the NJO series, it feels like ages ago that I read it. This one is best noted for the fall of Ithor and Jedi Coran Horn going into exile. I think it starts the plotline of the galaxy somewhat turning against the Jedi during the Yuuzhan Vong war.

From the Depths of Wookieepedia

Today we’re going from the galaxy far, far away to the real world and focusing on one of the many people who make Star Wars possible, but who’s name you don’t know. This week the Wookieepedia randomizer gives us Ben Wigley, Jr..

Ben Wigley, Jr. worked uncredited as a greensman in a crew nicknamed the "Fern Brothers" on the 1983 original trilogy film Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi.

I am going to assume a greensman is someone on set who arranges plants or shrubberies or maybe sets up scenes if they’re shooting in the woods or something like that. Like maybe you have a forest moon of Endor. Might want a greensman.

Or he was just the weed dealer for everyone on set. Both are possible.