Matthew Shepherd with ten Star Wars characters who deserve their own Disney+ series…
The best thing Disney has done with Star Wars is get it away from the Skywalker saga. The Mandalorian proved the universe works as a Western. Andor proved it works as a political thriller. The template is now established — find the right character, find the right genre, and the galaxy far, far away has room for almost anything. The problem is that some of the most interesting characters in the entire franchise are still waiting for their moment. Here are ten who deserve one in their own Disney+ show…
Qi’ra
First introduced in Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) and played by Emilia Clarke, Qi’ra ends her only film running the criminal syndicate Crimson Dawn under Maul and then disappears from live-action entirely. That ending is a series pitch in itself. A crime thriller bridging Solo and the original trilogy — Qi’ra navigating cartel politics, dealing with the Hutts, and building herself into a genuine power broker — is exactly the kind of grounded, character-driven storytelling that made Andor work. Clarke has never been given material this good. She should be.
Asajj Ventress
Introduced in Genndy Tartakovsky’s 2003 micro-series and fully developed across Dave Filoni’s The Clone Wars, Ventress has one of the most compelling arcs in the entire franchise — Sith assassin to Nightsister survivor to reluctant bounty hunter. Her moral evolution is more interesting than most of the main cast’s. A live-action series set during her mercenary years, exploring her complicated relationship with the Force after being abandoned by Dooku, would be a noir-inflected character study the franchise hasn’t attempted yet.
Doctor Aphra
Created by Kieron Gillen in Marvel’s Darth Vader #3 (2015), Aphra is Indiana Jones without the conscience, working for Darth Vader and accompanied by two homicidal droids. She hunts ancient Sith artifacts, operates entirely outside any moral framework, and is genuinely funny in a way most Star Wars characters aren’t. An Aphra series would bring something the Disney+ slate currently lacks entirely: a supernatural adventure comedy with a protagonist who has no interest in saving anyone. That gap in the line-up is obvious. Fill it.
Captain Rex (CT-7567)
Voiced by Dee Bradley Baker across multiple animated series, Rex survived the Clone Wars, resisted Order 66, and fought with the early Rebellion. Nobody in the franchise has witnessed more of galactic history from a more ground-level perspective. A live-action series with Temuera Morrison would work best set immediately after the Empire’s rise — a clone soldier dealing with rapid aging, survivor’s guilt, and the dawning realisation that his entire existence was engineered for a war that destroyed the Republic he believed he was defending. That is a serious dramatic premise, and it deserves serious treatment.
Plo Koon
The Kel Dor Jedi Master has appeared across the Prequel Trilogy and The Clone Wars, but his pre-Phantom Menace history remains almost entirely unexplored. His relationship with Ahsoka and his genuine respect for his clone soldiers made him one of the most humane figures in the Order. An anthology-style prequel series set during the High Republic era — peacekeeping missions, early investigations, a functioning Jedi Temple before everything deteriorated — would give Lucasfilm a platform to show what the Order actually stood for before it fell. The contrast with everything audiences already know would do the dramatic work for them.
Quinlan Vos
Created by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema in the Star Wars: Republic comics and later brought into canon through The Clone Wars, Vos is a Jedi who goes so deep undercover he repeatedly loses himself in the process. His psychometric ability — reading the memories stored in objects — is one of the more genuinely interesting Force powers in the extended lore. A series built around him would be a psychological espionage thriller about a man whose job requires him to think like the people he’s hunting, and what that costs him. The dark side pull in his story is earned rather than manufactured, which is rarer than it should be.
Hondo Ohnaka
The Weequay pirate captain introduced in The Clone Wars (2009) is one of the franchise’s most purely entertaining supporting characters precisely because he has no ideology. He is an opportunist operating in a galaxy of true believers, switching sides based entirely on profit margins. A Hondo series set during the Imperial era — an independent pirate slowly squeezed out by an Empire that doesn’t tolerate competition — would work as a comedy with genuine stakes underneath it. The best episodes of The Clone Wars featuring Hondo already proved the format works. Extend it.
The Grand Inquisitor
The Rebels antagonist received a live-action debut courtesy of Rupert Friend in Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022) that divided audiences, but the character’s backstory — a Jedi Temple Guard who fell to the dark side and became the Empire’s primary Jedi hunter — remains almost entirely unexplored on screen. A horror-inflected series covering his defection and the early days of the Inquisitorius program would be unlike anything in the current Disney+ line-up. Villain-centric narratives work when the villain has a coherent internal logic. His does. The story of how someone becomes the thing they were trained to destroy is worth telling.
Sabine Wren
Natasha Liu Bordizzo’s live-action Sabine in Ahsoka (2023) arrived with a backstory most casual viewers weren’t equipped to follow. Her time as an Imperial Academy cadet, her creation of weapons later used against her own people, and her estrangement from her clan are the most dramatically interesting things about her — and none of it has been shown in live action. A prequel series covering her teenage years alongside Ketsu Onyo, before she became the character Rebels introduced, would fix that. It would also give the franchise an aesthetic it hasn’t explored: a younger, more chaotic story with a distinctly different visual register to everything around it.
Baylan Skoll
Ray Stevenson’s performance in Ahsoka (2023) was one of the best things in any Star Wars project in years — a former Jedi who rejected both the Order and the Sith and spent his later life trying to break the cycle of destruction both sides perpetuated. He was genuinely philosophical in a franchise that rarely earns that word. Stevenson passed away before Ahsoka concluded, with Rory McCann taking on the role for the upcoming second season. Handled through animation or recast with a younger actor, a series tracing his survival through the Dark Times is the most intellectually ambitious thing the franchise could currently attempt. It should attempt it.
The common thread across all ten is that the most interesting Star Wars stories are rarely about chosen ones. They’re about the people operating in the margins of someone else’s prophecy — the soldiers, the criminals, the disillusioned survivors. Disney+ has proven it can tell those stories well. It just needs to keep choosing the right characters.
Which Star Wars characters would you like to see starring in their own Disney+ show? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
Matthew Shepherd
Originally published August 27, 2026. Updated August 28, 2026.
