The Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter: August 29, 2025
Starfighter is closer to takeoff! And cat pictures.
Hello there
Welcome back once again to the Death Star Human Resources Department Newsletter. This week has got a little bit of everything. Starfighter has started production and dropped a big casting announcement. The next season of Visions gets a release date and a little bit of a teaser. Also we learned that Bo-Katan wasn’t fun, and everything will turn into Andor. Plus there’s a good picture of my cat. Don’t worry, it’s Star Wars related.
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
I’m not really a lofi beats type of person, but a lot of times when I’m writing Death Star HR, I’ll turn on a lofi YouTube channel for background news. There are a handful of Star Wars ones out there, both official and unofficial. It’s familiar music, it’s chill, and unlike playing records, I don’t have to get out of my seat every 20 minutes to flip the record so my writing flow doesn’t get interrupted. This one is probably my go to.
So a couple weeks ago I was sitting at my desk, typing away with some Darth Jar Jar #HOTTAKES, lofi version of the Force Theme going, when I look over and see this.
I’ve seen plenty of cat videos of cats who like to watch TV. Taco has never been one of those type of kitties. Not when she was a kitten and not now that she’s an old lady. There’s movement on the screen, but not a lot. Hera swipes at her tablet, you see ships go by out the window, the Loth-cat movies it’s ears and tail. But it’s all pretty minimal. I really do think she was interested in the Loth-cat though. And it’s just a good excuse for a cat pic.
Starfighter is Taking Off
This wasn’t going to be the above the fold story, so to speak, but sometimes the Force works in mysterious ways. Star Wars: Starfighter, the Shawn Levy directed movie started production today in London. Levy sounds hyped, so we should all get hyped.
“I feel a profound sense of excitement and honor as we begin production on Star Wars: Starfighter,” says filmmaker Shawn Levy. “From the day Kathy Kennedy called me up, inviting me to develop an original adventure in this incredible Star Wars galaxy, this experience has been a dream come true, creatively and personally. Star Wars shaped my sense of what story can do, how characters and cinematic moments can live with us forever. To join this storytelling galaxy with such brilliant collaborators onscreen and off, is the thrill of a lifetime.”
Along with some additional casting announcements, the mothership had a photo for us.
That is Ryan Gosling and the newly announced Flynn Gray on set. Previously, the only known cast members were Gosling, Mia Goth, and Matt Smith. Today, along with Gray, it was announced that Aaron Pierre, Simon Bird, Jamael Westman, Daniel Ings, and Amy Adams are all part of the movie.
I will be perfectly honest, I have no idea who any of the new people are other than Amy Adams. I don’t say this because I am someone who thinks they are too cool for mainstream Hollywood and watches movies films cinema by obscure Eastern European directors from counties that ceased to exist after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Instead I say it because I am in my mid-40’s and recognize that new media for the young. I have accepted that I like what I like. New bands? New shows? No, thank you. I’d rather just watch Classic Simpsons for the 20th time. Homer knows what I’m talking about.
Starfighter will be released in theaters May 28, 2027. There’s a decent chance it will be the only new movie I see in theaters that year. Well, that and whatever Star Wars movie ends up being the December 2027 release.
Pretty Soon Everything Will Be Andor
Andor was a breath of fresh air for Disney/Lucasfilm. Not exactly a controversial statement. Between seasons 1 and 2 of Andor, you had Ahsoka, The Acolyte, and Skeleton Crew released on Disney+ and no movies. All three series were met with mixed reviews and unfortunately for The Acolyte, it got sucked into the never-ending and all consuming culture war. And while for the most part, the reviews of all three shows were more positive than negative, none of them were the smash hit that Disney wanted. There was the overwhelmingly positive response to The Mandalorian when it came out. Everyone loved it and Baby Yoda became a phenomenon, and Disney has been chasing that high ever since. Season 2 of Andor was Disney finally catching the dragon. The show was a smash hit, highly acclaimed by both critics and fans. The show received 14 Emmy nominations, including a nomination for Outstanding Drama Series.
The lesson that everyone is going to take away from this? Compare everything to Andor. Recently Simon Kinberg, tasked with writing the next Star Wars trilogy which may or may not be episodes X, XI, and XII of the Skywalker Saga, has been hitting some of the Nerd News sites and talking about what could be coming soon.
Simon, skip talking to ScreenRant and come on to Death Star HR. They won’t ask you about Darth Jar Jar, but I will.
“There’s a ton of wildly talented folks that want to do great work,” Kinberg said. “I was super inspired and just sort of awestruck by what Tony Gilroy did with Andor. I thought that was about as good of science fiction storytelling as you can do in any franchise.”
This isn’t to pick on Kinberg or even Star Wars. It’s just the nature of making movies and TV shows. Pulp Fiction was a hit and sudden studios were throwing money at every videostore clerk with a screen play with smooth criminals who make pop culture references. The Blair Witch Project turned an insane profit, next thing you know you found footage horror films are everywhere. One of my favorite TV shows of all time is The X-Files. You know happened after The X-Files became a success? Baywatch Nights. Where David Hasselhoff’s Baywatch lifeguard character was a paranormal investigator. I am not making this up. So for now gritty, realistic (for a series about space wizards with laser swords), and ripped from the headlines are what’s happening in the galaxy far, far away.
I wonder if we’ll see the gritty Andor influence spread to other Star Wars movies and shows. Young Jedi Adventures, but make it like Andor. Suddenly it’s less about Kai, Lys, and Nubs having wacky adventures and learning a lesson at the end; and more about how the Jedi are an order of religious zealots who rip kids from their parents and use them as child soldiers to maintain their monopoly on the Force.
The Mandalorian Castle is a Dark Place
The character of Bo-Katan Kryze and actress Katee Sackhoff are inseparable. Unlike say, Ahsoka Tano who was voiced by Ashley Eckstein in animated form but played by Rosario Dawson, Sackhoff voiced Bo-Katan in The Clone Wars and Rebels and put on the Mandalorian armor for The Mandalorian seasons 2 and 3. I am pretty sure that Sackhoff is the only person who’s ever played Bo-Katan. Something that can’t be said for almost every other Star Wars character of any renown. Sackhoff has been Bo-Katan off and on since 2012. I’d argue her most famous scene was Casual Bo in season 3 of The Mandalorian.
Also, according to Sackhoff on a recent episode of her podcast, playing live-action Bo-Katan broke her.
“I lost all of my confidence after Mandalorian — all of it,” Sackhoff said on her YouTube channel (below). “My style of acting has always just been [that] your first instinct is the right instinct. Do that. Play the reality of the situation. And I’ve never really played a character. I’ve always played two steps removed from myself, in a sense. [My characters] always felt grounded in some part of my belly of who I was. Bo-Katan is nowhere near who I am as a human being. Her life, what she wants — like, I didn’t understand her. As much as I understood her, I never felt her in my stomach. I never identified with her. I didn’t know how to find her.
Sackhoff goes on to say how basically after The Mandalorian, presumably she means after season 3 finished, she didn’t work for three years. A quick peruse of her IMDB page more or less confirms this. She was in an episode of Law & Order and the movie Fight or Flight, which I’ve never seen but she’s listed #3 in the top cast. I’m not sure when the movie was filmed but it seems likely she at least signed on to be in the movie before The Mandalorian broke her. Otherwise she just did some voice work here and there.
We’re in an age where parasocial relationships with celebrities seem to be more common and easier than ever. Fandom has always been a thing. My local alt-weekly had an article last year about the one time The Beatles played Dallas and the lengths some fans went to try to meet them. But in our age of Stan armies and celebrities recognizing they can…”take advantage” might not be the right words…but recognizing that an online army of fans can be beneficial. Sackhoff certainly doesn’t occupy the same space as say Taylor Swift or BTS, but she has her podcast which seems to average between 5,000 up to 100,000 views on YouTube, seemingly depending on who her guest is. That’s not nothing. She’s pretty active on other social media and on the convention circuit. I mentioned a couple weeks ago about seeing her at Rebel Scum Con and she had the longest line.
And her honestly here is a good reminder that we never know what’s really going on in someone’s life. They may be putting on a smile and taking pictures with the fans. But inside they’re not feeling so great. Even celebrities who make it a point to seem accessible to fans are still putting on a show, so to speak. It’s not necessarily malicious, it’s just trying to put on a face that the fans expect while dealing with some internal struggles. Thankfully for Katee, she seems to be doing better. But even watching the clip, you can see how experience still seems to affect her.
You can watch the whole clip here:
Star Wars: Visions Gets a Release Date
There’s some welcome Star Wars animation news, season 3 of Visions has a release date. Just in time for Halloween, the third season of the animation anthology drops on October 29th, streaming on Disney+.
If you haven’t seen Visions before, the first two seasons are currently streaming on Disney+. They’re fun, you can watch a season in a few hours. The idea was Lucasfilm basically told various animation studios to come up with a Star Wars short story. The The first season was primarily Japanese studios. The second season was more international, with studios from Spain, Chile (Cervaza Cristal!!!), and Ireland among others. If you’re going to check out season 3, you should watch the first two seasons. This season is going to have some sequels to earlier entries. Disney even graced us with a couple new shots from “BLACK” which is one of the shorts. “BLACK is described as “[an] experimental short presents a psychedelic battle between past and present, light and dark, and life and death in the haunted psyche of an Imperial stormtrooper on the cusp of defeat.” Oh yeah, I am absolutely here for that.
The stories aren’t canon, so it’s really a way for the writers and animators to let their freak flag fly, in a safe, Disney approved way of course. In a strange way, I think of Visions and the LEGO movies as cousins of each other. Since neither series is canon, they can be free. A short can be made without worrying that you’re screwing up the lore from The High Republic. Or that story is already scheduled to be told in season 2 of Ahsoka. Or anything like that. Just get weird with it. Like I said above, Star Wars needs to embrace the weirdness.
Also, I’m not sure what he’s up to these days but I would love to see Aaron McGruder do a short for Visions. McGruder, best known as the creator of The Boondocks, is a well known Star Wars fan and his style would fit in well with the rest of the series.
Come on, Lucasfilm! I want to see Huey and Riley as Jedi!
This Day in Star Wars History
Pretty good list of things for today, the 29th day of August.
Author Michael P. Kube-McDowell was born in 1954. K-Mac, as he allegedly calls himself, wrote The Black Fleet Trilogy, a series of Expanded Universe novels. I have them sitting on my shelf and thought I had read them, but when I was reading the summaries it’s clear I was confusing the Black Fleet Trilogy with the The Corellian Trilogy. So I don’t get to make the joke that in The Corellian Trilogy, you know Thrackan Sal-Solo simply because he has a mustache.
Netflix was founded 1997. Prior to the Disney+ launching in 2019 (has it really been six years?), Netflix was home for Disney’s Star Wars content, including the previously unreleased sixth season of The Clone Wars. Also, remember how great it was when there weren’t 27 different streaming services?
Shelagh Fraser passed away in 2000. Fraser played Aunt Beru in A New Hope. Per his casting notes, Uncle George wrote "A little British, but okay" in reference to Fraser. Appearing in Star Wars was at the end of her long career. Fraser appeared again in the classic Rebels episode “Twin Suns”, where archived audio was used to bring Aunt Beru back to life.
Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opened in 2019 at Disney World in Florida, a few months after the Disney Land park opened in California. The park took six years from announcement to opening and I have still yet to visit. Hopefully soon.
Long time actor Ed Asner passed away in 2021. Asner was probably best known for his role in The Mary Tyler Moore show. Among his many roles, he won an Emmy for playing Captain Davies in Roots and, since I mentioned the show already this week, he voiced Ed Wuncler on The Boondocks. Asner was a bit of a late-comer to Star Wars. He voiced Jabba the Hutt in the 1996 radio adaption of Return of the Jedi. Despite never having seen Star Wars, Asner insisted on doing his dialog in Huttese without any digital effects or help. He also voiced Jedi Master Vrook Lamar in the first Knights of the Old Republic video game. Who somehow was the only the second grumpiest Jedi in the game, behind Jolee Bindo.
From the Depths of Wookieepedia
Every once in a while, the Wookieepedia randomizer serves up a hit on the very first click. This week we’ve got “vacuum”. No, we’re not talking about the Star Wars version of Roombas, which is what I was hoping. Instead, we’re talking about the vacuum of space. Somehow, “vacuum” has entries for both Canon and Legends. I am not able to tell if there are any differences in the vacuum in space between Canon and Legends. Although the Legends entry does address a common complaint by the Comic Book Guy/WELL ACTUALLY crowd.
While sound can be heard from spaceships in many Star Wars works, in reality, sound waves cannot travel through a vacuum. Nor can seismic waves, though they are shown doing so in Attack of the Clones. Conflicting sources exist as to whether the characters themselves can hear the sounds, or if they can be considered part of the soundtrack and are not diegetic.
I would honestly like to see a debate between people who think sound waves can travel through space in the Star Wars universe because the laws of physics don’t apply and people who think it’s just part of the soundtrack.
News From the HoloNet
Lucasfilm’s CCO Addresses the Future of Animated Star Wars Projects
Cowboy Dave says 20 more years of projects. I’m here for it.
Andor's Original Plan Would Have Brought Back A Major Star Wars Villain For A Cameo
I get WHY Gilroy didn’t show Palpatine or Vader, or even a CGI Tarkin. But I do think you could have had an appearance by Vader without losing the “grounded” setting of Andor.
Jar Jar Binks gets George Lucas’s seal of approval: “Of Course He’s My Favorite”
Come clean about Darth Jar Jar, George!
Star Wars Fans Are Convinced Carrie Fisher's Daughter Just Teased A Leia Return
If Star Wars wants to play in the space between Episodes VI and VII, you’re going to have to recast the main characters.
Ewan McGregor Calls for Andor Season 3 & Obi-Wan’s Return to Star Wars
I really do admire McGregor’s persistence in trying to get a second season of Obi-Wan.
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.
It figures that the creator of The Boondocks would be a big Star Wars fan. I used to read the comic strip as a teen and I remember one in which Jar Jar becomes a kind of Black Power guy. I think I cut it out and kept it.
(I am not intentionally trying to be the person who always brings up obscure stuff; I guess your posts just bring it out in me. 🙂)
I really enjoyed this. It is always a joy to read something so nerdy, thoughtful, and gloriously offbeat. I’ll never look at Baywatch Nights the same again :) Thank you.