LucasFilms has been making LEGO Star Wars cartoons for several years now, and they are consistently hilarious, the perfect balance of action and humor to entertain the kids and inside jokes (giving lighthearted voice to many of our criticisms of the prequel trilogy and even original trilogy) to please the adults. From Padawan Menace to Yoda Chronicles to Droid Tales, these animated efforts have evolved from direct-to-video affairs to a limited series on DisneyXD, and they’ve all taken place at some point during the original six films. The next logical steps are to make a full-fledged Lego Star Wars TV series instead of glorified specials, and to start tackling the new Force Awakens era. That’s exactly what’s happening, just not exactly in the way you might have expected.
Last week, Disney announced Lego Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures, a brand new series set for a summer debut. It will introduce completely original heroes and villains who will just happen to brush up against some familiar Star Wars characters, not dissimilar to Star Wars Rebels. However, Freemaker will take place between Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi. That’s great and everything, but they couldn’t have set it in-between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens?
They are doing something exactly like that, but unlike Freemaker Adventures it won’t be a full-length series. Instead, DisneyXD is set to run several short-length episodes of Lego Star Wars: The Resistance Rises, covering the events before the First Order’s attack on Jakku. The first episode, “Poe to the Rescue,” features Kylo Ren, BB-8, Captain Phasma and Poe Dameron. It debuts tonight, and it’s only 6 minutes long. I’m assuming all of the future episodes, which will introduce more Force Awakens characters, will similarly be limited to 6 minute running times.
We’ll take what we can get, though, because 6 minutes is plenty of time for Lego to pack in the jokes. Here’s a clip from “Poe to the Rescue”:
Freemaker Adventures has yet to specify an exact debut date. Resistance Rises ,premieres today, Monday, Feb. 15 at 8 p.m. ET on DisneyXD.
