The Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter: October 20, 2025
This is now the Death Star Art Department Newsletter
Hello there
Yes, it’s a new Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter on a Monday. I am really trying to get back on the Friday schedule. But look at this way, if you live that Garfield lifestyle and hate Mondays, this should make it a little better. There’s quite a bit this week. The second episode of the Death Star HR podcast is out, link below. Ahsoka season 2 has wrapped up, Uncle George was in the Wall Street Journal, and a famous illustrator has passed, Plus all the usual assorted nonsense you’ve come to exact at Death Star HR.
As always, thanks for reading Death Star HR. If you’re reading this and you’re not a subscriber, I’d love it if you entered your email below and smashed that subscribe button. There’s also an official Death Star HR Instagram and an official Death Star HR YouTube page as well and I’d love it if you subscribed there as well.
This Is Where The Fun Begins
This meme has been out there for a while, don’t think I’ve ever shared it.
Anything that combines Star Wars and The Simpsons, my two pop culture loves, is ok in my book.
Death Star HR Podcast EP 2 - the First Step Into a Larger World
I mentioned last week that friend of Death Star HR
had come up with a 15 month viewing plan to watch almost all the available Star Wars tv shows and movies. In what should be the first of many podcasts over the course of the 15 month plan, JB and I sat down and talked Star Wars, where his plan came from, Solo, and more. So check it out.As I’ve mentioned before, I am trying to branch out a little more with both the official Death Star HR Instagram and YouTube channels. So if you’re some kind of Star Wars or Star Wars adjecent content creator (I kinda hate that term TBH) and want to talk about Star Wars, let me know. And make sure you’re following along with JB’s plan.
Ahsoka Season 2: That’s a Wrap
As the only confirmed (at this time) live-action Star Wars streaming show, there’s a decent amount of pressure on the second season of Ahsoka. Especially if Dave Filoni wants to get this Filoni-verse movie made. To be clear, unless season 2 of Ahsoka has horrible streaming numbers AND The Mandalorian and Grogu is a box office bomb, I don’t see any way Cowboy Dave’s movie wrapping up The Mandalorian and Ahsoka doesn’t happen. And if the above scenario comes true, Star Wars has bigger problems on its hands than figuring out where to release said movie.
I meant to touch on this last week. All that to say, season 2 of Ahsoka has finished up shooting. Both Ivanna Sakhno and Natasha Liu Bordizzo confirmed it on their Instagram pages.
There’s no official release date, but Bryce Dallas Howard was recently at the New York Comic Con and dropped some knowledge.
Disney does not have a Star Wars movie scheduled for winter 2026. The Mandalorian and Grogu comes out next May (really not that far off!) and then Starfighter doesn’t drop until May 2027. Late 2026 would be the perfect time for Ahsoka to get released.
Just as an aside, I’d like to see Disney do a summer Star Wars release. Part of this is nostalgia, which is the unrefined Coaxium of Star Wars and Disney as a whole. Who doesn’t have fond memories of summer time going to the movies. And partly I’d like to see if it has any effect on Star Wars costumes at Halloween. I write about this each year and will in a couple weeks. My neighborhood gets lots of trick or treaters and I use Halloween as a measuring stick to see where Star Wars is in the zeitgeist. The last couple years it hasn’t been good.
George Lucas Would Rather You Focus on the Art
It seems pretty likely that The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art will be open in plenty of time for Celebration 2027. The museum is really Uncle George’s second gift to the world. The first obviously being Star Wars. Feel like I didn’t like to explain that. The museum has been something Lucas has been working towards for years, and it’s getting closer. As I wrote about back in August, Lucas appeared at this year’s Comic Con with Queen Latifah, Doug Chiang, and Guillermo del Toro to discuss narrative art and the upcoming museum.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal had a piece on the impending on the upcoming museum opening and how it was tougher for both George and his wife/co-found Mellody Hobson to get this museum open than it is to do a Jedi Mind Trick on a Toydarian. Some of it was information I knew, that Lucas originally planed to have the museum first in San Francisco and then in Chicago. And in both cases he was defeated by the Sith Lords of municipal government, the NIMBYs. In the end, some property was found in Exposition Park area of Los Angeles, right be the University of Southern California which happens to be George’s alma mater.
If you’re hoping, like I was, that this was going to be a Star Wars or even a Lucasfilm museum, you’re out of luck. I would love if the museum was basically getting to walk around the Lucasfilm/ILM archives and look at everything, but George has a grander plan.
In tribute to visual storytellers like these, Lucas, 81, built what he calls a temple. The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, due to open next year in South Los Angeles, will showcase a sprawling lineage of artists that the filmmaker feels deep kinship with, from stone-age cave painters to masters of futuristic fantasy. At the core of the museum’s holdings is a collection Lucas started 60 years ago with the comic art he could afford in college. Among the 40,000-plus pieces are 160 works by Norman Rockwell, whose vignettes of American life are the epitome of narrative art for Lucas. He’s organizing galleries around themes like family, love, work and play, with artworks that explore the myths and stories that bind society, he says.
Bringing the museum to life has been a 15-year crusade beset by all kinds of challenges, from cities rejecting his proposal, to upheavals over who would curate the museum, to criticism that he was making a shrine to himself.
Lucas scoffs at that. “I’m making a museum for what I call the orphaned arts,” he says, citing the snobbery that has excluded the illustrators, cartoonists and other commercial artists he’s championing from institutions of fine art. His museum is about “the art people respond to in the real world.”
Of course, Lucas is a man that knows merchandising. And also he, or his wife, probably both, were smart enough to know you can’t have a museum with Lucas’ name on it and not have at least a little bit of Star Wars in it.
One inaugural exhibit will feature the designs of Star Wars vehicles. “It’s one gallery out of 33. And I did it grudgingly,” Lucas says with a chuckle. “I didn’t want people to come to the museum and say, ‘Where’s the Star Wars?’”
I mentioned this in August, but I have always wondered if George isn’t a little embarrassed by Star Wars and its success. Lucas was part of the New Hollywood movement with guys like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppala, and Brian de Palma. People who are considered Serious Filmmakers, capital letters are intentional there. George is the guy who had a movie homage to Flash Gordon that somehow made billions of dollars on the backs of kids and grown men with Peter Pan syndrome. No resemblance to that remark at all.
Of course, you can’t interview George without asking him how he feels about Disney’s handling of Star Wars:
Thirteen years after he sold that universe, has Lucas let go of his instinct to manage it? “Disney took it over and they gave it their vision. That’s what happens,” he says. “Of course I’ve moved past it. I mean, I’ve got a life. I’m building a museum. A museum is harder than making movies.”
I would assume that there’s some kind of non-disparagement clause. Even if Lucas hated say, The Acolyte, I would guess he is forbidden to say so. It wouldn’t be good business if Lucas was out there spouting off every time Disney did something he wouldn’t do.
Anyway, the museum sounds pretty interesting. I am going to make a pilgrimage when I am out that way for Celebration 2027. Although surely Death Star HR can get a media invite for the opening next year, right? Does anyone know a guy?
Drew Struzan is One With the Force
Artist Drew Struzan passed away last week, the 13th, at age 78 after dealing with Alzheimer’s Disease for several years. Even if you aren’t familiar with Struzan’s name (I wasn’t) you are absolutely familiar with his work. Especially if you’re a Star Wars fan. And you probably are if you're reading this. Struzan started as an illustrator for album covers, include Alice Cooper’s “Welcome to my Nightmare” and Black Sabbath’s “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.”
Then in 1977, another artist, Charles White III asked Struzen to help him out on a movie poster for the 1978 re-release of a little movie called Star Wars. The White/Struzen poster is known as the “Circus” poster. The style makes it look like it was hung up somewhere.
Once he got in the family, so to speak, Struzan worked on quite a few Star Wars projects. He designed the posters for all the 1997 Special Editions, the Prequels, and The Force Awakens. Say whatever you want about The Phantom Menace, but it had some great posters. The teaser of Anakin with the Death Vader shadow is still absolutely perfect. Struzan did the main movie poster, that shows all main characters and then Darth Maul’s eyes at the top, as if he’s watching over the rest of the characters. Maybe you thought he was the phantom menace? Nope. I mentioned this when I saw Episode I in the theaters last year, Maul’s “importance in the movie to importance in the poster” ratio is way off. And that’s true for both the original Episode I poster and the new one that was printed last year.
Struzan was pretty prolific in the Expanded Universe books as well, doing covers for both novels and Dark Horse comics. Just checking out the Death Star HR library, there’s plenty of Struzan’s covers on the shelf.
Rest in peace and know your art and your legacy in the galaxy far, far away will live on.
This Day in Star Wars History
Four births we’re going to mention on October 20th in the galaxy far, far away.
English actor Patrick Jordan was born in 1923. Jordan was part of the Old Vic acting company, when he passed in 2020 he was the last surviving member. He also played an Imperial office on the Death Star in A New Hope. Jordan was friends with Alex Guinness, who helped Jordan get this roll.
Lev Mailer was born in 1933. Mailer’s one role in the Star Wars universe was playing an Imperial guard in The Star Wars Holiday Special. That’s a flex, in its own strange way.
Voice actor Sunil Malhotra was born 1975. Mahortra voiced the Jedi Padawan Jinx in the finale for season 3 of The Clone Wars and voiced Ahsoka’s dad in Tales of the Jedi. He also voiced Kung Lao in some of the more recent Mortal Kombat games.
Starkiller/Darth Maul voice actor Sam Witwer was born in 1977. Witwer started in the Star Wars galaxy voicing Starkiller for The Force Unleashed videogames, then moved onto the animated series. First voicing The Son in The Clone Wars (will we again in Ahsoka season 2?) and Darth Maul. Roles he reprised in Rebels. At Rebel Scum Con a few months ago, Witwer probably had the second longest line for autographs behind Katee Sackhoff. There’s a large generation of Star Wars fans who think of Witwer as their Darth Maul. Also, he can do a pretty good impressive of George Lucas.
From the Depths of Wookieepedia
I’m not sure what the rules are between being credited in a movie and having an uncredited role, either has an actor or as part of the crew. So today we’re going feature some rando uncredited guy since the Wookeepedia randomizer gave us Keith Gillihan.
Keith Gillihan 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 can only assume that Gillihan and his crew were doing their job, moving some plants around, maybe for Endor, when some wise guy said “hey, get a load of the fern brothers over here.” It has to be just as simple as that.
News From the HoloNet
Blue, Yoda originally was, archival Star Wars sources reveal
Sent to me by the proprietor of Ord Mantell’s only Irish pub. I’ve seen the art before of Yoda looking more like an elf, but never knew about the blue.
THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU Star Jeremy Allen White Reveals A Surprising Rotta The Hutt Spoiler
The article does not address why Rotta appears to be a gym bro.
‘Star Wars: Eclipse’ Studio Confirms Game Still in Development and Are “Eager To Share More”
I had completely forgotten about Eclipse. Also, no new Star Wars games until we get the KOTOR remake!
Last Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser Sign Removed From Walt Disney World
They’re erasing the history of the galaxy. This is what the Empire would do!
That’s it for this week. If you like what I’m doing, please subscribe. I’ll catch you next week, and may the Force be with you.
A little bit about the Halloween costumes: the company that bought out Simplicity, the official supplier of Star Wars costume patterns (among many, many others) declared Chapter 7, and costumers were understandably worried that Simplicity’s printers, some of the only remaining printers that can print on pattern-grade tissue paper, would be sold for scrap. Apparently a buyer who wants to keep the company going stepped in, now that various issues with the bankruptcy of JoAnn Fabrics are being resolved, so you’ll probably see new patterns for the Mando movie right about the time the movie comes out. That MIGHT give costumers time to get their outfits done by Halloween: I know just enough about costume design to be dangerous, and I’m always floored by costumers who can get some of those elaborate outfits done in days instead of months.
“Also,no new Star Wars games until we get the KOTOR remake!”
Absolutely! Unless, it’s Battlefront 3.