No canon? No problem.
What does Star Wars even mean anymore? If we just glance at the last few high-profile Star Wars projects, from Andor to The Mandalorian and Grogu, to Maul: Shadow Lordto even The Acolyte, contemporary Star Wars tends to be about anti-heroes, reluctant heroes, villain origin stories, or straight-up villains. All of these projects have merits, and all are very different from each other. But none of those recent projects featured heroic Jedi swinging their lightsabers to save the day. In other words, even the most traditional of newer Star Wars (like Ahsoka) has tended, post-Last Jedi, to be a kind of Star Wars deconstruction; Star Wars commenting on itself for better (Andor) or for worse (The Rise of Skywalker).
Luckily, with the debut of the new anime series, Star Wars: The Ninth Jedi, the self-referential navel-gazing is kept to an absolute minimum. Like the two short episodes that birthed the series, The Ninth Jedi is great because it simply is Star Wars, without trying too hard to figure out what that means. Refreshingly, The Ninth Jedi treats the tone and concepts of Star Wars as given, but weaves a new story with all-new characters and new planets, with a wonderful sense of mythology come to life. Is The Ninth Jedi derivative of various Star Wars ideas we’ve seen over the years? Yes, but not in a slavish, fan-service-y way. If The Ninth Jedi was a child’s first introduction to lightsabers and the Force, it would be an awesome one, and the series, overall, represents the freshest and most invigorating take on Star Wars since the 1990s explosion of novels and comic books.
The Ninth Jedi is the follow-up of the one-off short of the same name which aired in 2021 as part of the anime anthology series Star Wars: Visions. Directed and written by Kenji Kamiyama ( Blade Runner: Black Lotus, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim), the first Ninth Jedishort told the story of Lah Kara, a young girl whose father was a lightsaber maker, working in secret to give new lightsabers to a burgeoning group of hopeful Jedi. Featuring a few great twists, the 2021 short also introduced Jedi-hopeful Ethan, as well as the mysterious master, Margave Juro. And, because that episode ended in a cliffhanger — with Kara hopeful about finding her kidnapped sabersmith father, Lah Zhima — the stage was set for an ongoing series.
Now, following one other story, 2025’s “Child of Hope,” The Ninth Jedi series broadens the scope of what was already a very, very ambitious concept into a full-blown epic that feels like a marriage between anime fantasy films, Lord of the Rings, and, of course, Star Wars itself. One of the fixations of the original short was the idea that in this far-future version of the Star Wars galaxy, lightsaber colors reflect the user’s true heart, meaning a lightsaber’s color fluctuating, or changing, has deeper meaning to the story. (Though The Ninth Jedi’ssabers aren’t bogged down in status quo canon about “lightsaber bleeding,” which, is a fairly recent retcon anyway.)
In short, as much as the characters are wonderful, compelling, and extremely watchable in The Ninth Jedi, the story is also about lightsabers, and — more than perhaps any Star Wars thing ever — treats lightsabers in a most mysterious and sacred way possible. Fans of 1990s Star Wars Expanded Universe stories like the Dark Empire comics or theJedi Academy Trilogyor the earliest Tales of Jedistories will be reminded of the sense of high fantasy that pervaded those stories. In The Ninth Jedi, a sort of fellowship of new Jedi is gathered, which results in the introduction of several new characters, and not all of those characters have to be super-good at using the Force to wield a laser sword. The ethos of The Ninth Jedi is egalitarian when it comes to who gets to be a Jedi, a refreshing idea which is handled with less clunkiness than Ahsoka attempted with similar concepts.
But The Ninth Jedi’sgreatest asset is that, despite it familiarity with several concepts, there are no canon or callbacks or Easter eggs to think about. Not a single planet, starship, or character from the existing Star Wars canon is referenced, nor does the ghost of Anakin Skywalker or something haunt Kara’s dreams. We’re meant to think this is a point in a distant future for the Star Wars galaxy, but if you squint, it could just as easily be the distant past, or an alternate universe in which history played out totally differently.
Haters who watch The Ninth Jedi with only one eye open will likely note that the show’s central conflict between the ambitious General Nawaam and Lah Kara is simply an anime redo of Kylo Ren and Rey from the sequel trilogy. And superficially, Nawaam’s schemes and philosophies do seem very Kylo Ren-esque, including one specific superweapon. That said, The Ninth Jedi treats some of these tropes as mere armature. If you accept that Star Wars stories very often have young Dark Side-curious baddies (after all, Kylo Ren was preceded by Anakin Skywalker, Kyp Durron, and Jacen Solo) and that you generally have some kind of superweapon in a Star Wars story, then everything about The Ninth Jedi will suddenly click.
Kara, Nawaam, and the Margrave aren’t just redos of Luke, Vader, and Obi-Wan. (Or of Rey, Kylo, and Luke). Instead, The Ninth Jedi approaches the power of Star Wars with the same wonder and intelligence George Lucas deployed. The various tropes of young heroes, fallen knights, and wise masters are tropes because these things work. What The Ninth Jedi does is prove you can take all of those old concepts and make it all feel brand new, warm, and familiar, all at the same time. The Force is very much with The Ninth Jedi, and the magic of Star Wars hasn’t shone as brightly in a very, very long time.
All episodes of The Ninth Jedi are streaming now on Disney+.
- Star Wars
- TV Shows
- Science Fiction
