Will Donahue ’24

Thing Sayer

Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures (unfortunately) premiered in 2023
Image courtesy of IMDb

Is there any group on Earth who has it worse than Star Wars fans? I honestly don’t think so. Disney has put us through the wringer this past decade. We got that garbage sequel trilogy, a couple of mid spinoffs, and a bunch of boring Disney Plus shows (seriously, I couldn’t even make it through Andor without falling asleep). And while the shills have been eating it up, true Star Wars fans are being silenced. No one cares what we think anymore. If you open YouTube, I bet you won’t find a single critical review of The Last Jedi. And just when I thought things couldn’t get darker, Disney dropped what is possibly the worst thing to ever happen to this franchise: Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures.

For those not in the know, Young Jedi Adventures is a new show on Disney Junior. I’m a firm believer that animation is cinema, so I’ve made it my duty to watch Disney Junior’s entire catalog. Most of the shows have been pretty hit-or-miss, but none are as egregiously awful as Young Jedi Adventures. This series has all the trademarks of Disney Star Wars: terrible writing, lazy lightsaber choreography, and scientific inaccuracies as far as the eye can see. For example, the main kid is named Kai Brightstar. Yes, you read that correctly. “Brightstar,” meaning that dark stars probably exist too for some reason. And that’s just blatant disregard for science. How did they manage to screw up something so simple?

It also goes without saying that this show completely ignores all established Star Wars lore. Oh boy, where do I even begin with this one? The lore inaccuracies in Young Jedi Adventures make The Last Jedi look like Citizen Freaking Kane. Yoda is an old green thing here for some reason, even though this show takes place hundreds of years before The Mandalorian. That show clearly establishes that Yoda is a baby, so why is he old in this show? Reverse aging was never a thing in the original trilogy. Did these writers even watch the movies?

And that’s all without getting into the wokeness of it all. Of course, we all knew this was coming. Star Wars has been woke ever since Disney stole the franchise from George Lucas. But they’ve really hit a new low in “Young Jedi Woke-ventures.” As if Mary Sue protagonists and historically inaccurate diversity weren’t bad enough, this show also has way too many pronouns. At one point, I literally heard one of the padawans say – and I’m not even joking – “them.” They’re not even trying to hide the agenda anymore. I’m seriously worried for the little kids watching this; they won’t even know they’re being groomed.

So, to all the Star Wars fans out there: don’t waste your time with Young Jedi Adventures. The disrespect to the fans is just too much to handle. On top of all that, they had to go and give everyone pronouns. It’s a woke disaster, even by Disney standards. And before you accuse me of sexism or whatever, just know that I have a female mom. I’m not sexist. I’m just sick of politics ruining Star Wars. Seriously, whatever happened to those good old-fashioned stories about rebellions toppling empires? When did it all get so political?

Copy Edited by Caroline Kramer ’26