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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 17, 2025

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I don't think this is true, actually. My experience of fandom debate was that TLJ certainly had a lot of people talking about Star Wars, and it didn't end it all. On the contrary, some of the post-TLJ material was well-received. If anything, I think the biggest ST-era breakout was The Mandalorian, which was post-TLJ. I've seen in the wild people with Mandalorian bumper stickers on their cars, or graffiti murals of Baby Yoda. The ST itself didn't make much impact, but The Mandalorian did. (Some years after that, Andor went on to have widespread critical success, but I rate that a bit lower because I don't see as much genuinely popular reaction to Andor. There's no Andor equivalent of Baby Yoda.)

My recollection of the time was that TFA brought with it a lot of hype and optimism, TLJ was extremely divisive and split the fanbase, and 2019 brings us both RoS, which was universally panned, and The Mandalorian, which was successful and widely enjoyed, even by people who disliked the ST itself. Rogue One was also genuinely popular on release, with maybe hopes that the franchise might be rallying after the disaster of RoS, but everything since then has been a steady drip of mediocrity - nobody cared about Solo, and nobody cares about The Book of Boba Fett, or Ahsoka, or Obi Wan, and then The Acolyte was the nadir of the TV progression thus far. Official Star Wars material has slid into mediocrity and garbage and nobody cares any more. Andor is the one bright spot in terms of fan reaction, but Andor is noticeably a much more niche product.

I agree that Star Wars is functionally dead, as a franchise, and that Disney is mostly to blame, but I see doom setting in with the very premise of the Sequel Trilogy. TFA was well-received at the time but it set the films on a course towards irrelevance.