The puppeteer behind Star Wars droid BB-8 has said Disney's divisive sequel trilogy will eventually become as beloved as the saga's prequels — in around a decade's time.
In an interview with Gamereactor, BB-8 operator Brian Herring compared the current mood around Disney's Star Wars sequels to the initial response for George Lucas' prequels — which were widely despised by veteran fans back in 2000s.
Over time, fan opinion towards the prequels has softened somewhat, as the young fans who grew up with Darth Maul and Jar-Jar now look back on The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith with some nostalgia (and the benefit of other Star Wars projects set around the same time period being released, which have helped to better flesh out the films' characters and story).
This is a process that Herring now believes will happen with Disney's sequels, which he said had their own "huge fan base" of younger viewers who likely will, in a decade's time, drive a similar nostalgia for the adventures of Rey, Finn, and Poe.
"I think the sequels are no more polarizing than the prequels were when they came out," Herring said. "All the people who are upset about the sequels are too young to remember how upset the people when the [prequels] came out were, except they now have the internet.
"If the internet had been around to the extent it's around [now] when the prequels came out, you'd have seen exactly the same stuff play out. And I think in 10 years' time, you're going to see [the same] with the sequels, because the sequels have a huge fan base and I meet them all the time, but they're all much younger than the people complaining on the internet…
"It's perfectly fine," Herring concluded, "if you don't like them, you don't like them. Everything's not for everyone. And I just think that these things are all generational and I think Battlestar Galactica said it best, 'this has all happened before, it will all happen again.'"
Somewhat incredibly, it is now already over a decade since the launch of 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the first in Disney's sequel trilogy. In a few years' time, it will then be a decade on from the arrival of 2019's Rise of Skywalker — our last glimpse at Rey (and BB-8) to date. Of course, Disney already has nebulous plans to continue their stories, though when exactly this will happen is still unclear. Perhaps the company is happy to wait until fan sentiment towards the sequel trilogy overall has improved somewhat. Earlier this week Finn actor John Boyega said he had talked to new Lucasfilm president Dave Filoni about a potential return, suggesting the wheels are in motion.
Exactly when the sequel trilogy characters will return remains unclear, particularly after former Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy failed to mention the previously-announced standalone movie set to feature Rey Skywalker in her exit interview earlier this year. The project, revealed by Kennedy with fanfare at Star Wars Celebration 2023, was planned to feature the return of Daisy Ridley, and reveal how her character had started a new era of the Jedi Order.
Lucasfilm is also incubating a new trilogy of movies from Simon Kinberg, the director behind the widely-panned X-Men movie Dark Phoenix and 2022 spy action flop The 355. These films, which are also set to feature Rey, currently sound the more likely to actually happen. "[Kinberg] wrote something that we read in August, and it was very good, but not there," Kennedy told Deadline back in January. "We've pretty much upended the story, and then spent a great deal of time on the treatment, which he finished literally about four weeks ago. And it's a very detailed treatment, like 70 pages. And so he is expected to give us something in March."
Before all of that, Disney will tempt Star Wars fans back to theaters this year with The Mandalorian And Grogu, due out on May 22. Ryan Gosling's Star Wars: Starfighter then arrives next year, on May 28, 2027.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
