Even with a new Star Wars movie opening in theaters this week, the future of the franchise is very much up in the air. Three years after announcing three different films at Star Wars Celebration in 2023, none of them have seen any significant public movement. Odder yet, the two movies that have progressed are completely unrelated. So what’s the deal? Someone who was there, on the inside, has an idea, and it may be why he’s no longer on the inside. Damon Lindelof, one of the writers behind Lost, Watchmen, the upcoming Lanterns, and more, was recently on House of R to talk about this week’s The Mandalorian and Grogu as well as Star Wars as a whole. Eventually, Lindelof felt the need to address “the bantha in the room,” which was the fact that he was fired from a Star Wars movie. That movie, which would’ve been directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, was believed to be an early iteration of a Rey-centric New Jedi Order story set after the events of The Rise of Skywalker. “They asked me, ‘What do you think a Star Wars movie should be?’ And I said, ‘Here’s what it should be.’ And they said, ‘Great, you’re hired.’ And then two years later, I was fired. And so I was wrong. At least through that prism,” Lindelof said. “What we were attempting to do, my partner Justin Britt-Gibson and Rayna McClendon and I, was to have this conversation [that he was currently having on the podcast] in the movie, which is to say there is a force of nostalgia and there is a force of revision and and they are at odds with one another and let’s do the Protestant Reformation inside Star Wars and and it didn’t work. […] The conversation that the fandom is having without winking and looking at the audience… that didn’t feel necessarily that risky.”