If you had to explain Star Wars on the most basic level possible, it might go something like this: “Jedi good, Sith bad.” The tension and duality between the Light and Dark sides of the Force, between good and evil, has been the core of the Skywalker Saga since A New Hope. But over the years, that once-clear boundary has started to blur.
George Lucas himself poked the first hole in the Light/Dark binary with the prequel trilogy, revealing that the Jedi were once too self-assured to see their downfall coming. Decades later, showrunner Leslye Headland pushed that concept even further in The Acolyte: Her short-lived Disney Plus series, set 100 years before The Phantom Menace, paints the Jedi as fallible space cops. Now, in Star Wars: Visions season 3, director Takanobu Mizuno is pulling that same thread to further unravel the myth at the heart of the franchise.
[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for Star Wars: Visions season 3 episode 1, “The Duel: Payback.”]
“The Duel: Payback” is technically a sequel to an earlier entry in the Star Wars animated anthology, season 1’s “The Duel.” That episode aired four years ago, and there’s a good chance you don’t remember it. Thankfully, this won’t be an issue. All you need to know is that the protagonist is an ex-Sith who now hunts other Sith and defends the helpless.
The original episode was also directed by Mizuno and produced by Japanese anime studio Kamikaze Douga, one of seven animation houses invited to riff on Star Wars in Visions’ first season. This time around, that same team reassembles, with an assist from ANIMA, and the results are breathtaking.
Where “The Duel” feels intentionally small and grounded — the story of two warriors fighting on a far-flung planet nobody important cares about — “Payback” is significantly bigger both in its storytelling scope and in its physical scale. It takes place on a seemingly much more important planet full of cities, soldiers, and citizens, where Ronin has tracked down another Sith. They fight on floating panels in the sky, held aloft by a giant AT-AT-esque vehicle. But just as our anti-hero is about to deliver the final blow, their fight is interrupted by a Jedi.
This is no ordinary Jedi. While he wields the requisite blue lightsaber, he’s fueled by vengeance and powered by retro-futuristic technology. His legs and face are made up of cybernetic enhancements, giving the character a Darth Vader vibe as he fiddles with his mechanical jaw between battles. The Jedi claims to fight for good, and he has the force of the Republic behind him, but it’s clear he was corrupted by anger long ago.
After a brief initial encounter, Ronin manages to escape and forms a temporary truce with the Sith he was originally hunting. Together, they team up with some locals (including a gang of Ewoks) to take down the Jedi and his Republic reinforcements. Ultimately, their plan works. Against the backdrop of an ancient temple, the evil Jedi is defeated, and the less-evil (?) Sith lives to fight another day.
The fact that Mizuno manages to make the Sith’s victory feel like a happy ending is particularly impressive. (Having the Ewoks team up with your protagonists is a bit of a cheat code to winning over the audience, but still.) Compare that to The Acolyte, where the protagonist’s shift over the course of season 1 from believing in the Jedi to allying with a Sith felt cautiously optimistic at best.
Disney unceremoniously canceled The Acolyte after its first season, citing poor ratings and high production costs. (The vicious hate campaign against the show’s Black, non-binary star, Amandla Stenberg, probably didn’t help either.) It’s possible that Headland would have pushed even further in season 2, revealing not only the flaws of the Jedi, but the positive traits of the Sith. (That tease of Darth Plagueis still haunts me with dreams of what could have been.)
We’ll probably never get more of The Acolyte, but it’s nice to know the Jedi/Sith binary is still ripe for exploration, even as Disney’s ambitions for the franchise seem to be dwindling. Then again, if any show was going to provide a home for that sort of storytelling, it was probably Star Wars: Visions, which exists outside the main canon and allows animation studios to run wild with Lucas’ original vision. I just hope we don’t have to wait four more years to get another taste of what Star Wars looks like when the Jedi are the evil ones, and the Sith have no choice but to fight back.
Star Wars: Visions season 3 is now streaming on Disney Plus.
