Star Wars Celebration’s Lucasfilm Studio Showcase Was a Love Letter to Star Wars Fans

It’s wild when the stories that you loved as a kid become the content you cover for work as a professional with a career who does things professionally. And it’s a curious balance you have to strike when you’re a fan and a reporter/journalist/critic/etc. at the same time. For me, a Senior Reporter/Producer for Decider, covering Star Wars Celebration was a job — an assignment. Of course I haven’t covered a convention in over two years — so I forgot about the magic of [gestures emphatically] all of this.

And the Lucasfilm Studio Showcase — the absolute driest name you can give a fandom-affirming tour de force spectacle — made me remember why I love Star Wars. I went into the experience way more concerned with getting the convention center Wi-Fi to work, and I left an emotional wreck with tear stains on my face mask. Such is the power of Star Wars, and I was a fool to forget that.

I should have known it was gonna be special considering that this “studio showcase” essentially opened with a smoke-covered stage and a literal choir, bathed in red light, belting out “Duel of the Fates” as Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen took the stage. I don’t know why I expected less from this panel, because you know Star Wars is going to pull stunts from the jump — and this moment, the on-stage reunion of Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, was but the first in a string of fan-frenzy moments.

There were plenty of announcements, like a release date and teaser trailer for Andor, as well as footage from the upcoming Willow series as well as a sizzle reel for The Mandalorian Season 3. You can read all about that here, and you can find breakdowns of the footage that was screened over on Twitter. Those are the bare bones facts, details every bit as blunt as the name of this panel. What none of that captures, however, is the vibe in the room — the feeling of hundreds… maybe thousands? The Celebration Stage is literally an arena, after all — of people from all over the world and a thousand walks of life all coming together to lose their ever-lovin’ mind over a space saga. Trust me: you have not lived until you’ve seen a bunch of Star Wars fans swing lightsabers to the beat of LMFAO.

But maybe I should talk about the footage because, as an at times jaded pop culture critic, it really restored my faith in what’s up next in the Star Wars TV-verse. The diversity of projects coming up is reassuring and delightful. Andor in particular stands out against the rest as the kind of grisly looking thriller that you’d expect from Tony Gilroy, the guy behind the Bourne franchise. What really struck me, though, was the title sequence — a booming, ominous score set against footage of the logo slowly appearing, piece by piece. It felt incredibly similar to Alien’s stark opening titles, and the rest of Andor’s footage kept that tone. It’s a tone we haven’t really seen in Star Wars. It’s like Rogue One, but dialed up. It’s Rogue One-ier.

And the Mandalorian Season 3 footage? It just hammered home how invested I am in these no-longer-new characters. The promise of seeing Mandalore in live action, of an increased role for Katee Sackhoff’s Bo-Katan, of increased stakes and maybe — maybe! — serialized storytelling… it has me angry that the show isn’t coming out until 2023. Oh — and Spider-Man director Jon Watts doing an adventure series about a group of kids lost in the galaxy and trying to get home? We only saw a piece of promo art, but if Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is the franchise’s Stranger Things, then I will be beyond happy. Please let “kids on speeder bikes” be a new subgenre!

But the real moments, the “I can’t believe I’m here for this” moments, that’s what makes Star Wars Celebration special (or at least that’s what I assume, as this is my first one). When Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy took the stage to reveal that John Williams had scored a new piece of music, a theme for Obi-Wan Kenobi (the character and series), I felt that in my heart. When he appeared on stage, when we all — collectively, everyone in the arena — realized we were going to hear new music from John Williams performed live and conducted by John Williams? It’s a magical feeling. A stadium full of fans immediately go quiet, rapt with attention and fully aware that they are witnessing something that they will likely never witness again.

Hearing all of this music, seeing John Williams conduct it… Music is a pathway to memory. It’s a shortcut to emotion. Hearing all of it, the Obi-Wan theme (which feels like an overture to Star Wars as a franchise, as if we just discovered the piece of music from which Williams pulled to create the entire score we know) and the Imperial March… it took me back to being a lonely first grader, watching Empire Strikes Back on VHS on repeat every single weekend. From that moment to this, to being in the room where this magic was happening? Sometimes life is good.

And then Harrison Ford showed up and I — along with everyone else — lost my damn mind.

But this is the magic of Star Wars, and it’s a magic that I try to preserve despite this being literally my job. It’s a testament to how special this saga is, even after becoming a defining cultural force, and how it inspires such intimate, personal reactions from the billions of people who love it. I don’t know where that magic comes from, or why that magic exists, but it’s like the Force. It surrounds us and binds us, inexplicably, and this corporate presentation made all of that feel incredibly real to me. I’m glad it did.

So let that be a lesson: never let a panel’s title fool you into thinking it can’t completely transform you into a kid again.