Ahsoka Season 2's upcoming release is confirmed to break a seven-year Star Wars TV rule. Despite the long wait, the hype for Ahsoka Season 2 is still high, mainly because it is expected to resolve the Season 1 cliffhanger of Ahsoka and Sabine Wren being stuck on Peridea. Ahsoka's sophomore run is still slated to premiere in 2026 on Disney+, but the extended wait has already broken a major record that could be frustrating for fans. 

Whenever its release date will be, Ahsoka Season 2 will officially have the longest gap between the series and a prior MandoVerse project. As of writing, it has been 473 days since Star Wars: Skeleton Crew premiered on December 2, 2024, and it will only grow bigger when Season 2 drops later this year. 

UPDATE: The Walt Disney Studios' CinemaCon panel has concluded. Read the article below with the biggest updates from the panel!

CinemaCon 2026 will close out with a massive presentation from Walt Disney Studios, which has some of the biggest movies of the year in store. CinemaCon is the world's largest gathering of movie theater chains and studio representatives, taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada. Following an extensive round of panels from the biggest studios in the world, the last of these presentations may yet be the biggest of them all.

Day 4 of CinemaCon is coming to an end with a presentation from Walt Disney Studios. This panel will run from 2:30 - 4:30 p.m. PT/5:30 - 7:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, April 16, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The Mandalorian & Grogu debuted its entire opening at CinemaCon. Disney came to play at this year's CinemaCon in a big way, putting the spotlight on Lucasfilm's next Star Wars flick, The Mandalorian & Grogu, which hits theaters in just over a month's time on May 23. The lucky attendees were shown an exclusive sneak peek at the first 18 minutes of the movie, which, of course, wasn't released for online viewing, but The Direct was present and has the full scoop.

Warning - This article contains spoilers for The Mandalorian & Grogu.

The Mandalorian & Grogu opens in a meeting room of the surviving Imperial remnants' leaders, who declare, "Long live the Empire." One of the Empire's loyalists declares that he is raising their tributes as they are operating at a loss.

Star Wars is returning to theaters for the first time in seven years, and with this comeback comes a question every major franchise film has to answer before it debuts: how far does it push the content? For The Mandalorian & Grogu, a film that needs to serve both the franchise’s youngest fans and the adults who grew up watching Din Djarin on Disney+, it must provide a compelling answer. 

The official MPA/CARA Film Ratings Bulletin, dated April 15, confirmed the PG-13 rating for The Mandalorian & Grogu for sci-fi violence and action. It is the same classification the franchise has carried on every live-action theatrical release since 2005, and it places the film squarely in line with what fans were expecting.

There is a compelling reason why Maul: Shadow Lord acts as the perfect sequel to Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. Star Wars' brand-new animated series on Disney+ is set after the events of Clone Wars and Revenge of the Sith, roughly one year later, after the game-changing events of Order 66. Instead of solely focusing on Darth Vader and the Galactic Empire, Maul: Shadow Lord dives deep into the gritty underbelly of the planet Janix (which is Star Wars' answer to Gotham City) as the titular former Sith Lord rebuilds his criminal empire to seek revenge against Emperor Palpatine. 

Maul: Shadow Lord is the perfect follow-up to Revenge of the Sith because it continues the dark tone and sinister vibe of the post-Republic era established in the prequel trilogy's final entry, carrying forward the terrifying shadow that the film left hanging over the galaxy. 

Disney and Lucasfilm tested out a new strategy for Star Wars storytelling seven years ago, and now a streak that came from that experiment is officially coming to an end in 2026. Star Wars is one of the most successful and beloved franchises of all time, so the core fanbase will consume media no matter how it is presented. However, some release methods work better than others, especially when certain characters or storylines are involved, and it seems as though Disney and Lucasfilm have come to the conclusion that their current strategy for Star Wars needs to change.

On May 22, 2026, Lucasfilm will officially release The Mandalorian & Grogu in theaters. Notably, this will be the first Star Wars feature film to come out since 2019's The Rise of Skywalker, but it will also mark the end of the franchise's seven-year streak, during which it only released content on Disney+.

Because The Mandalorian & Grogu was not originally planned to be a film and The Mandalorian was going to continue on Disney+, Star Wars essentially admitted that its Disney+ strategy was not working for the franchise, and that movies needed to come back in the galaxy far, far away. 

After years of anticipation, fans are finally getting a new glimpse at the place Grogu and his adoptive father call home in the upcoming The Mandalorian & Grogu. The film marks Star Wars' long-awaited return to the big screen on May 22, 2026, its first theatrical release since 2019. It arrives riding the wave of Disney+'s most beloved Star Wars series, which made "Baby Yoda" into one of pop culture's most iconic characters in recent memory.

A newly revealed image from the upcoming Star Wars The Mandalorian Visual Guide offers fans their most detailed look yet at the place Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and Grogu now call home, a humble cabin on the outskirts of Nevarro's capital city. 

The companion book, set to release on May 26, 2026, just days after the film hits theaters, covers all three seasons of the Disney+ series alongside the upcoming movie, with over 600 images and behind-the-scenes details.

CinemaCon 2026 is here, with multiple studios expected to break the internet with announcements at this massive convention. Taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada, from Monday, April 13 to Thursday, April 16, CinemaCon is the world's largest gathering for the theater industry, held at Caesar's Palace. Here, theater owners and studios unite to showcase movies coming to theaters, bringing the biggest studios in the game together for breaking news.

At least six movie studios are expected to deliver presentations across the rest of the week. Dozens of the most anticipated movies of the year will take center stage at this convention, as studios bring executives, directors, actors, and more on stage to promote their work and tease what fans should expect.

Below is the full schedule for CinemaCon, along with the movies and announcements to expect from each major Hollywood studio: 

Reality may be sinking in at Lucasfilm after The Mandalorian & Grogu's latest box-office projects point toward a letdown. Star Wars is only one month away from returning to theaters with The Mandalorian & Grogu, a big-screen sequel to the Pedro Pascal-led streaming series. The sci-fi saga has been relegated to Disney+ since The Rise of Skywalker and the COVID-19 pandemic, with Lucasfilm trying and failing to get many new movies off the ground. Concern has been building for The Mandalorian & Grogu's box office performance, as interest appears low and Lucasfilm's marketing campaign has left much to be desired. 

According to a report from Box Office Theory, The Mandalorian & Grogu is tracking to gross just $71 million in its three-day opening weekend (May 22-24). The projection would hit a new low for the galaxy far, far away under Disney, coming in $13 million below the previous unfortunate record holder, Solo: A Star Wars Story, and $106 million lower than the franchise's last movie, The Rise of Skywalker:

To compare to other recent Disney blockbusters with a similar target audience, that figure is lower than all of the MCU's 2025 releases, including Captain America: Brave New World ($88.5 million), The Fantastic Four: First Steps ($118 million), and, the most comparable of the trio, Thunderbolts* ($76 million).

Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord did not waste any time getting right into the crux of the action. The new animated series, which premiered on Disney+ on April 6, used its opening episodes to set up one of the franchise's favorite storytelling devices, a prison break. After engineering a gang war between rival crime lords Nico Deemis and Looti Vario on the planet Janix, Maul watches his plan succeed when Vario kills Deemis. Maul instructs his crew to go after Vario next, only for him to be rescued and arrested by Detective Brander Lawson in the middle of their hunt. 

Rather than let the man have peace in his prison cell, Maul and his crew storm the police station and seize Vario. While doing so, he senses the presence of Devon Izara, a Twi'lek Padawan in the opposite cell, and takes her captive too, seeing in her a potential apprentice. 

Star Wars has introduced dozens of unique weapons throughout the years with different ranges of power. Of course, the most iconic is undoubtedly the lightsaber, as it has transcended the galaxy far, far away and is known by people who have never even pressed play on a Star Wars project. However, there are other energy-based weapons, laser blasters, cannons, and plenty of other modes of destruction that can be used by nearly everyone.

Of course, if every technical weapon were to be factored in, massive structures like the Death Star, Starkiller Base, ion cannons, and Star Destroyers would be at the top of the list. Also, no one can dispute the power of the Force as the galaxy's greatest weapon. However, it is unfair to compare handheld weapons to super weapons like the ones mentioned above, so, for the sake of a fair playing field, here are the 10 most powerful handheld weapons in the Star Wars universe, ranked from least powerful to most powerful.

The Strongest Weapons in the Star Wars Universe

Solo: A Star Wars Movie was a divisive entry in the franchise. It earned 69% on Rotten Tomatoes, bombed at the box office, and often sits in the middle of ranked Star Wars lists. Solo is considered fine by many, but it could have been so much better.

Solo: A Star Wars Story was commissioned with a script by Lawrence and Jonathan Kasdan, and a cast that included Alden Ehrenreich playing Han Solo, Donald Glover portraying Lando Calrissian, and Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke as a new character, Qi'ra. Anticipation was high for a film about the origins of Star Wars' most devilish rogue with a story from the writer of The Empire Strikes Back. Right from the start, it had so much potential.

Adding to that potential was the directing duo attached: Phil Lord and Chris Miller. The pair were known for hit comedies like 21 Jump Street and The LEGO Movie. They hadn't tackled a live-action sci-fi franchise film like Star Wars before, but they'd come off production of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (an eventual Oscar winner), which proved they could handle franchise fare. 

Darth Maul is one of the most frequently appearing characters in Star Wars, but his new Disney+ series has earned him a distinction that somehow eluded him since his debut. Maul – Shadow Lord, which premiered on April 6, slots directly ahead of Solo: A Star Wars Story on the official Star Wars timeline. That makes it the first time Maul has ever appeared in two consecutive projects on the timeline. For a character who has shown up across five different Star Wars productions, that’s a surprisingly long time coming.

The official Disney+ Star Wars Timeline Order section confirms the placement, slotting Shadow Lord between The Bad Batch and Solo in chronological order. Since Maul features prominently in Shadow Lord and cameos in Solo, those two projects now sit back-to-back on the timeline with him in both. 

Pedro Pascal has had an interesting couple of years in blockbuster cinema, featuring in numerous intriguing projects like The Mandalorian and The Last of Us. Most recently, he played Reed Richards in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, a movie that arrived with serious ambitions and a 1960s retro-futurist aesthetic that critics largely admired. The film was unsurprisingly serious, as it served as the official introduction of Marvel’s First Family. 

It was an important movie, especially following the mixed reception of Phases 4 and 5. Marvel needed a major win, so they opted for a more serious tone compared to other MCU entries. It wasn't a bad choice, and it certainly wasn't a disaster; the only issue is that it didn’t have the irreverent fun that often makes action flicks exciting. 

Another Star Wars series has been put on ice, marking the fourth shelved Disney+ show in the franchise's streaming era. Since Disney+ launched in 2019, Star Wars has become a dominant force in streaming, releasing 10 seasons of live-action television across seven different series. However, as of 2026, that momentum has hit a notable wall, with a growing number of projects being quietly set aside before reaching audiences.

Lucasfilm confirmed, via a recent Empire cover story, that The Mandalorian Season 4 is the latest Star Wars Disney+ project to never see the light of day on the streamer, with series creator Jon Favreau revealing that a fully written fourth season was shelved in the wake of Hollywood's 2023 strikes. Favreau, who penned an entire season's worth of scripts that still sit unused, shifted his focus to the upcoming theatrical film The Mandalorian & Grogu, which blasts into theaters on May 22 instead.

For most of its history, Star Wars was a movie franchise at its core, with animated series like The Clone Wars and Rebels sprinkled in to expand the universe and earn devoted fanbases of their own. 

Star Wars: Starfighter will be the franchise's first truly original movie, arguably since 1977's A New Hope, and it could define the saga's future. Since Disney took over the Star Wars franchise, the theatrical focus has been on sequels and prequels to the stories that fans know and love. Despite the sequel trilogy spotlighting new faces, such as Daisy Ridley's Rey and Adam Driver's Kylo Ren, it did so on the shoulders of familiar Star Wars OGs. Even the studio's spin-off ventures, Rogue One and Solo, had significant ties to past stories and characters.

While the franchise's next theatrical release, The Mandalorian & Grogu, will be another sequel, this time to the three-season Disney+ series, moviegoers will finally enjoy a completely original Disney-distributed Star Wars movie with Starfighter. The May 2027 release will bring Ryan Gosling into the galaxy for an epic blockbuster, directed by Deadpool & Wolverine filmmaker Shawn Levy.

Star Wars: Starfighter will finally break Lucasfilm's 12-year streak that began with 2015's The Force Awakens of releasing no truly original movies. Director Shawn Levy confirmed his movie's "all-new non-sequel, non-prequel" nature in an interview with Collider during Starfighter's filming last year:

Din Djarin and his Force-sensitive little partner will return to screens on May 22, following their 3-season arc in The Mandalorian. Instead of a fourth season, the continuation of their story will be a theatrical release, marking the first Star Wars film in seven years. 

This long hiatus is not the only record The Mandalorian & Grogu is breaking. Lucasfilm officially confirmed that Embo, the Kyuzo bounty hunter introduced in The Clone Wars in 2010, will serve as the main villain of the film, breaking a franchise record, spanning several decades.

The first trailer for The Mandalorian & Grogu delivered the reveal. Embo appears in the rain, approaching a hut on Nevarro that looks like Din Djarin’s. According to reports, Embo's arc will involve two Hutts contracting him to kill Rotta the Hutt, Jabba’s adult son, played by Jeremy Allen White. 

Ubisoft recently announced that a brand new Star Wars Monopoly video game will be released soon, but the developers left out a few important characters from the game’s roster of villains. Since there have been so many Star Wars projects since the franchise began in 1977, dozens of villains have been featured on-screen, in books, and in video games. Some have made a greater impact than others, and a few deserved to be included in the new Monopoly: Star Wars Heroes vs. Villains.

For reference, the upcoming game (which will be released on the PlayStation 5, the Nintendo Switch, and the Nintendo Switch 2) will feature 28 playable characters, with an even 14 heroes and 14 villains.

Essentially, the game is making its own all-time list of Star Wars heroes and villains, and is saying that the 14 biggest and greatest villains in the franchise are the names included. For example, obvious choices like Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine are there, but there are also some more obscure characters like Aurra Sing, who could be replaced with a more notable villain.

When The Mandalorian Season 2 ended with Grogu leaving with Luke Skywalker, it felt like the beginning of something huge. A powerful Force-sensitive being guided by one of the galaxy's greatest Jedi meant the possibilities were endless. Then The Book of Boba Fett arrived, and it all quickly unraveled.

In "Chapter 6" of The Book of Boba Fett, titled "From the Desert Comes a Stranger," Luke gives Grogu a difficult choice to pick between Yoda's iconic lightsaber and continue Jedi training or the beskar chainmail armor Din Djarin had forged for him and return to the Mandalorian. In the season finale, we see Grogu arrive at Peli Motto's hangar wearing the armor, and that was that. The lightsaber stayed behind.

As emotionally satisfying as that was, it was also one of the most debated decisions in recent Star Wars storytelling. Fans saw this as Grogu being forced to take one particular path. The Jedi don’t allow external attachments and are loyal to the Jedi way. Grogu couldn’t choose that side because it basically meant he'd have to abandon Din, which wasn’t an option given how much they love each other. Now, with The Mandalorian & Grogu hitting theaters on May 22, Lucasfilm has the opportunity to revisit that choice and give Grogu the chance to embrace both worlds equally.

Star Wars fans will get to see something that has been a cornerstone of the Star Wars universe since 1977's A New Hope in Ahsoka Season 2, and the crazy thing is that it wasn't featured in Season 1. Star Wars is a franchise that has been around for almost 50 years. Since its inception, certain elements have become synonymous with the franchise. For example, everyone associates lightsabers, the Millennium Falcon, and even characters like Darth Vader and Yoda with Star Wars. Even people who aren't fans know what those are. 

Ahsoka actor Eman Esfandi (who will be portraying Ezra Bridger in the upcoming installment) recently shared a video via Instagram that revealed one of those synonymous elements that were missing from Season 1 will finally make their way into Season 2.

Specifically, the video Esfandi shared showcased two extras on the set of Ahsoka Season 2 in classic stormtrooper costumes. They weren't wearing helmets, but the white armor and the details of the armor clearly represented original stormtroopers that were featured in the original trilogy.