Lucasfilm’s Annie Award-nominated series turns the entire empire inside out and upside down in fun, playful ‘What If…?’ fashion, complete with Darth Jar Jar, good guy / bad guy role reversals, and lots of insider jokes; now streaming on Disney+.
For fans wishing the Star Wars franchise had explored alternative narratives and characters, Lucasfilm and Disney+ offer a playful “What If…?” solution with LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy. This limited series, which earned a 2025 Annie Awards nomination for Best Limited Series Animated Television/Media Production, spans four 20-minute episodes, and currently streams on Disney+. The brainchild of writing duo Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit, alongside veteran LEGO animator Chris Buckley, the show follows two nerf-herding brothers who accidentally remove the Cornerstone of the Galaxy from a Jedi Temple, triggering a chain reaction that changes everything—including themselves.
The writing process started with a holistic approach. “As a writer, thematically and philosophically, I ask myself, ‘If we are synthesizing LEGO animation and Star Wars, what can we do within the context of LEGO that we couldn’t do in a live-action Star Wars context?’” says Hernandez, writer, showrunner, and executive producer. “And that’s where the genesis of this idea of rebuilding the galaxy as if you were dumping out a bin of LEGO, recombining them, and playing the way that a kid plays, became our North Star as a story and thematic point. It enabled us to tell a story that is thoroughly Star Wars but also thoroughly LEGO. That’s why a lot of the language in the special is about breaking and construction. What does it mean to create? What is the responsibility of creation? What if something breaks? Can you fix it? Maybe not. Maybe that’s okay. Maybe that spurs further creation and invention.”
Certain gags were planned early, while others emerged during development. “There are certain things that we knew early on,” notes Samit, writer, showrunner, and executive producer. “For instance, Darth Jar Jar has been a fun fan theory on those Star Wars corners of the Internet for decades. Before we even had an outline, we had this moment of realization where it’s like, ‘This might be the only situation where we could make Darth Jar Jar a reality, so let’s try and make that work.’ Dan has, for years, playfully thought about what a squad of Ewok bounty hunters would be like. But then lots of stuff came up as we were writing, getting animation in, and seeing what Chris was up to. Everyone was having so much fun in this sort of mashup universe that there were times when Chris would say, ‘Hey, one of our animators had a fun idea; what do you guys think of this?’ We’re all about collaboration, and it all started as us trying to recreate the feeling of playing with your LEGO as a kid.”
Check out the trailer:
A funny joke comes when protagonist Sig Greebling confuses Wookiees and Ewoks, referencing how the former was downsized to become the latter in Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. “We did that intentionally, knowing the history of the Ewoks and the Wookiees; that was our overture toward the exact story that you just mentioned,” states Hernandez. “We can play with these things that especially people deep in the fandom are aware of and have made jokes about. Even things as simple as line deliveries. Palpatine has a lot of his classic lines in this but subverted into a more positive version. Or the Ewok bounty hunters. I thought it would be funny to have a Jedi who wasn’t an ethereal spiritual guy but crankier and had been through it a little bit more.”
The series also introduces the cranky, cynical, and weathered Bobarian “Jedi Bob Afol.” “Speaking of Jedi Bob, we weren’t just doing those subversions and references to deep cuts from the Star Wars world,” observes Samit. “Jedi Bob is this sort of cult character in the LEGO fandom community going way back, and he’s never been in any content before. Most people had never heard of him, but being a massive LEGO nerd, early on I was like, ‘Jedi Bob is going to be in this, and we can finally make him a reality.’ A lot of people were like, ‘Who’s Jedi Bob? What are you talking about?’” The inclusion of Jedi Bob added layers to the storytelling. “We had to explain the discrepancies between his galaxy and this new version,” Hernandez adds. “It really opened up creative vistas that wouldn’t have occurred to us had Benji not known about this deep cut Minifigure from a random set from 2002.”
Subversion drives the narrative. “The fun of it was constantly keeping the viewer on their toes because starting off, we’ve switched the galaxy,” explains Buckley. “Admiral Ackbar is now a bad guy and cloned. From that moment on is where the fun begins. We can start as fans of LEGO and Star Wars, flipping the script. My favorite introduction was C-3PO. I don’t think fans were ready for an evil bounty hunter.”
Physical limitations of LEGO Minifigures drove the character animation. “There’s a layer of authenticity to the movement, which leans into how you played with the LEGO Minifigures as a child, or even as an adult” says Buckley. “I always find giving more restrictions to animators is actually a good thing. If you look at Luxo Jr., the lamp in Pixar’s short film, it’s so limited but has so much life. We blocked the controls so animators couldn’t cheat, which means there’s zero cheating in that respect.”
Given that the main theme is about construction and deconstruction, transformations are a critical aspect of the visual language and storytelling. “Transformations were something I learned from working on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, where you show something slowly and then the more times you it recurs, the quicker you can get,” states Buckley. “The first time they do a transformation, it’s like a two-minute sequence. As you go on, you can speed it up. Managing the first few transformations from one ship to another, we took our time to make it a spectacle because it’s an amazing thing to see. We made sure it felt LEGO-accurate but also like the Force. We would go frame by frame and say, ‘No, that piece should be floating up and over here. This piece should go there.’”
Classic Star Wars ships, like X-wings and TIE fighters, were creatively mashed up. “If you were to give the average kid a bin full of Star Wars LEGO, you’d be hard-pressed to find one who builds chronologically or builds proper characters and ships,” observes Samit. “Kids start taking them apart, putting pieces from different sets together, and building crazy ships. Good guys are bad guys and bad guys are good. That was the feel we wanted—dumping out the toy box and having fun. But it still needed to feel like Star Wars.” Samit even contributed spaceship designs for the opening chase sequence. “When we were writing the first draft I said to Dan, ‘Let me do something,’” he recalls. “I went into my LEGO room at home, took a bunch of Star Wars sets, and built everything you see that ship turn into in that action scene. All of those pieces fit together. I made a little slideshow that I sent to Dan and Chris. I said, ‘This is what we're thinking here.’”
Effects received a LEGO building block twist. “For the effects side, we tried to find a happy medium between traditional effects and adding LEGO spice,” says Buckley. “LEGO bricks appear in explosions, and studs fly through water splashes during the pod racer event. Glass shattering and exploding was done so beautifully. The lighting and effects teams nailed that stuff. It’s about stylizing it to fit our version of Star Wars.”
Buckley continues, “The advantage of a stop-motion look is that I can have a character move across the screen in a short amount of time and no one bats an eyelash. If you do that with a traditional biped character, it starts to look a little bit weird. It was all about antics and pauses. If I want your eye to look here, I'll hold it there for a second, and then have a character show up there. I'm going around the screen and saying, ‘Hey, check out over here. This might be something here. Maybe there's a glint from a console. That's where they're going to show up.’ It's all about clarity and motion.”
Luke Skywalker delivers a humorous 90-second summary of the Star Wars saga, which at its heart chronicles the trials and tribulations of the highly dysfunctional Skywalker family. “There was a temptation to steer away from a sibling relationship, because it’s so central to the original Star Wars” remarks Hernandez. “But by making them siblings, we tapped into the franchise’s legacy of exploring family and siblings, redemption, brotherhood, and sisterhood.”
The cast, featuring original Star Wars actors Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels, Billy Dee Williams, Kelly Marie Tran, and Ahmed Best added authenticity. “It was a dream come true to do the voice record with Mark Hamill!” enthuses Buckley. “Dan and I were almost on the verge of tears at one point because his performance. At any moment, he’d stop and share stories from 1977 or 1983 on Return of the Jedi. It wasn’t forced; it raised the bar for everyone involved.”
“In addition, some of our newer cast members who hadn't worked on Star Wars, such as Gaten Matarazzo, are massive Star Wars fans,” Buckley adds. “I didn't realize that until Gaten started talking and in the first voice recording, he said, ‘… when that happened in this comic book.’ I've seen the shows 50 million times now and at every point I forget that I'm watching a LEGO show and I'm watching a Star Wars show; that's a testament to the guys’ writing. It's so pitch perfect for what this needed to be.”