Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy is an upcoming four-part miniseries on Disney+ in which a pair of nerf herders accidentally cause an apocalyptic reformation of the Star Wars universe. Using the same Lego bricks, the series’ planets, vehicles, and technology are dramatically reshaped into kit-bashed mash-ups of preexisting designs and concepts. Notably, this pole shift extends to the series’ familiar cast of characters, showcasing reimagined takes on villains-as-heroes and heroes-as-villains. We sat down with writers Dan Hernadenz and Benji Samit (Pokémon Detective Pikachu) to discuss this brave new world with such people in it.
Gordon Jackson, io9: So, did Lucasfilm ever approach you and say “you absolutely cannot depict this character in this light” at any point?
Benji Samit: We were prepared for that to happen and it really never did. Full credit to everyone at Lucasfilm and Lego for, from the jump, understanding what we wanted to do with this special. It’s just a playful celebration of all things Lego Star Wars. And that sort of involved having fun with any and all characters that we could.
Dan Hernandez: I also think that they knew that any of the things that we wanted to change, any of the mash-ups we wanted to do, without exception, Benji and I tried to have an in-galaxy reason that the history of this galaxy played out differently for each character, for each planet, for each ship. And the reason we did that is so that it didn’t feel arbitrary, it didn’t feel sort of tossed off that everything had intention behind it. Even if you don’t know exactly what that intention is or what that history is, it should feel as though there was consideration put behind it because there was. And I think that that was really important to us. And so I think because of that, when we’d have these conversations about saying, hey, we wanna change, you know, Ray into Darth Ray. And those were easy conversations to have because they knew that we were approaching it from a place of story and character.
io9: Darth Rey and Darth Tico, I loved them both. Did you feel like that was missed opportunity in the movies, that they teased that story—at least in Rey’s case—and never went there?
Hernandez: I felt like it was something that I was really excited to see explored to whatever extent that they did explore in the sequel trilogies, but it still felt—and just sort of taking a anecdotal poll of people online and people in Reddit and whatever—that there was an appetite to know more about Darth Rey, what that could have looked like. And as for Rose, I love that character and I love, love, love Kelly Marie Tran and she is just the most incredible performer. And I wanted to see more. I wanted to see more nuance. You know, I thought to myself, her sister dies in The Last Jedi, right? Right at the beginning. And she takes the path of compassion and empathy. But not everybody does. And there was no guarantee that that’s how she would have ended up. And so that was a really interesting place to begin to say: what does a dark version of this character who has had a lot of suffering occur, what path does that set her on? And so again, it was really exciting for us to get to pick some of these characters that we wanted to spend more time with and then really kind of explore these other iterations.
io9: I thought one of the most striking mashups was the Sandcrawler with the AT-AT legs. You came up with a reason that would actually exist?
Samit: I mean, that was one of our favorite ones to create; that image came into our minds of, like, an iconic mashup. And, you know, whether it was, Jawas in this galaxy or some other scavenging creature who had to build something like that, but it needed legs because the treads weren’t cutting it.
Hernandez: I also think that in that particular case, it seemed to speak to… it’s kind of janky, it kind of doesn’t work amazingly well. And it seemed to speak to the place that our version of the Jedi are inhabiting in this galaxy, which is that they’re not the Knights in a sort of a revered position. They’re kind of in a lower, fallen-on-hard-times place. And so it felt like they needed a home base that felt born out of necessity. Something that like didn’t quite work, right? And that’s where the genesis of that idea came, which is like, we should do a mash-up that like is kind of awkward because they’re kind of awkward in this version of the galaxy.
io9: You said you were prepared for pushback. Did you have any remixed characters in mind you thought Disney wouldn’t allow you to depict?
Samit: I mean, look at Darth Jar Jar. It was one of the first things we wanted to do. And we were like, “Are they going to let us do this?” This has been such a discussed thing in the fan community. Are they just going to be like, “it’s been too heavily worn”? Like, “let’s not even touch it”? But instead they were like, “No, like we get it. If there’s ever been a moment to be able to do it, it’s this.” It was amazing.
io9: Who did he apprentice under, do you think?
Hernandez: I think Darth Jar Jar and our good version of Sheev Palpatine have a long and storied history together. I think it started back on Naboo. And I think that probably he was Sheev’s Padawan at a certain point and broke bad. I’ve never said this aloud before, but I’m pretty sure that’s correct. And that’s sort of how I viewed the schism that would occur between those two characters. That’s canon now.
io9: This is a Lego movie, but it also raises questions about the morality of playing God. How did you come upon that idea, and decide that story should remaking the universe, but not putting it back together?
Hernandez: That’s a great question. And no one has asked us that, so I appreciate it. So the idea was, we knew we wanted to rebuild the galaxy into a different form, but we also felt like it would be not truthful or satisfying to sort of hit the reset button like a Nintendo game and have everything go back normal, because I don’t really think that’s how life functions. I think that life throws you curveballs all the time. As I’ve gotten older you find that to be more and more true, where you find yourself in a circumstance or a situation where you’re, “Well, nothing really prepared me for this but I have two options, which is either to move forward or to be completely in paralysis about this thing.”
We thought that that was a really interesting message for kids, but for everyone really, and so that’s why we felt that in that moment where it’s revealed that Jedi Bob has actually come from an even older version of this galaxy, which I think also spoke to sort of the history of the Lego Star Wars relationship, it was important for him to say, “It’s over, it’s done. And now we all have to travel together and figure out what this rebuilt version of the galaxy is, and we can either sink or swim in it, but this is what we’ve got. We’ve got each other. and we can choose to be heroes or villains within this new context. And all your expertise is kind of out the window because we’re in an unprecedented situation.” And so that, to us, felt like kind of a powerful message to everyone to say, “You don’t always have control, but you do have some control over the way that you yourself react to what life throws at you.”
io9: What was the inspiration for Surfer Luke? Corvette Summer?
Hernandez: I think it was similar. It was sort of a related answer, which is… we all have moments in our lives in which we can choose to step up and be heroic and act in a way that’s sort of in keeping with whatever ethical sensibility that we all possess. And moments where we don’t live up to those things and we sort of let things go and choose an easier path. And so we said to ourselves, well, “What if Luke never found out about his history and his family? How would his life unfold?”
Samit: Right, you know, in the original movie, you know, Luke hates this boring desert planet he’s on, but what if in this new version of the galaxy, this planet was not a boring desert, but was actually a beautiful oasis beach planet and where he was very comfortable and he suddenly wasn’t dreaming of going off somewhere else? He was just comfy on his living life on the beach and he never got that call to action. Like, what would his life look like? But then you see over the course of the series that even though he’s gone down this different path, the same Luke is still in there—the hero, who once he does get that call to action, it ignites something inside him. And yeah, so that was really exciting for us.
io9: So are there plans for more after this?
Samit: I mean, we would…
Hernandez: That’s our hope.
Samit: Love to do it…
Hernandez: That’s our hope. We have a lot of ideas for how the story would continue. And yes, you can imagine not all of the things that we wanted to get into it could fit into four episodes. So it would be awesome.
Samit: There’s a lot more characters that obviously don’t show up in this that we love. And it would be amazing to be able to keep doing this.
Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy arrives September 13 on Disney+.
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