January 31st, 2025 
W.R. Miller 
Yes, it’s true. Mark Hamill is back as Luke Skywalker. And Luke is alive after The Last Jedi. Except … this Luke lives in the LEGO Star Wars galaxy, as are many of the thought-to-be-dead characters in the nine-episode Star Wars saga. Just don’t expect Luke and the others to behave as you remember.
The new playground is LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy, a four-part miniseries created, written and executive-produced by Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit, comedy writers whose credits compass Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019), The Addams Family 2 (2021), and Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023). For them to snag Mark Hamill for their project would be the wildest stroke of luck, especially since Hamill had declined to voice Luke for the Star Wars: Return of the Jedi Radio Drama.
“We wrote him a letter really expressing our love for everything that he does,” Benji Samit recalls. “Not just for Luke Skywalker, but I mean, he’s one of the greatest voice actors of all time. He hasn’t done other LEGO Star Wars or Star Wars animated content, but we explained to him that this one’s going to be a little different. And he responded to the letter. He read the script and he really enjoyed it.
“He gave us probably the great compliment of our career which is, ‘I haven’t been able to do these other LEGO Star Wars projects for whatever various reasons but the reason I want to do yours is because I think you guys really understand Star Wars.” It’s on dark days when you’re like, ‘Am I a good writer? Am I any good at what I’m doing?’ You know what? Luke Skywalker thought that we wrote a good Star Wars, so I guess that’s pretty good. It’s how in the movie Signs they’re leaving the water all over and you don’t really know the reason that they’re leaving the water around and then it sort of comes to fruition. It saves the day. I felt like I can’t ride a bike; I can’t ice skate; I can’t do any of those things. But I studied my Star Wars encyclopedia growing up for the day that would come that we had to write something so good in Star Wars that Mark Hamill said, ‘I want to be a part of this.’ That just meant everything to us,” Hernandez says.
Credit-watchers will note that Hamill is also listed as “Consulting Producer.”
Benji Samit says, “We went through the scripts for every episode with him in detail and he was pitching lots of ideas.
“Most of which ended up in the show,” Hernandez says.
“And including lines,” Samit says. “He had funny jokes. I think he was enjoying the fact that we were lovingly teasing Star Wars as well and he wanted to get in on the fun of that.”
One such tease was LEGO Luke’s line, expressed with incredulity, “Let me see if I have this right. In your galaxy, my dad is mostly evil until he turns good for like five minutes and then dies, my own nephew betrays me and kills most of my best friends, and I spend decades alone until I use the Force so hard that it kills me?”
Hernandez says, “Yeah, we had a long, long meeting with him where we were just all making fun of Star Wars together in a loving way. But also he was telling us so many amazing stories from the making of the first Star Wars movie and George Lucas stories and this and that and it was just incredible.”
While Star Wars fans in the general public should delight in Hamill’s involvement, imagine how the show’s creative teams felt.
“It doesn’t seem like it would have this trickle-down effect, but it did,” Hernandez says. “When Mark signed on, being able to tell the crew and the rest of the cast and every single person involved in the project, it really put some pep in everyone’s step because it just felt like we had been sort of blessed and anointed by, short of George Lucas, the ultimate person to say, ‘What you’re doing is good.’ So everyone got super excited. Not like we were going to give our all anyway but for me it felt like, ‘Okay we got to really make this good because we’ve got Mark Hamill; he’s coming to record his lines. We’re going to make sure that this is the best recording session ever.”
“Everyone stepped up,” director Chris Buckley adds. “Even when you told some of our actors we’ve worked with before Mark signed on, they’re ‘Whoa,’ and they rose up and really brought their A-game. You can feel it in the show and all the artists when we were telling them, ‘It’s gonna be great. We’ve got Mark Hamill,’ and everyone’s like, ‘Excuse me? Not MARK Hamill?’ “No, yeah, no, we have Mark Hamill, Ahmed Best, we go through the rolodex of people signed on the show and everyone was just like, ‘No, no way.’”
‘No, this is a real deal.’
Ahmed Best? The voice of Jar Jar Binks? He’s in the show, too? Yes, along with Anthony Daniels voicing C-3PO. Several actors from the Skywalker Saga reprise their roles: Sam Witwer as Maul, Matthew Wood as General Grievous, Kelly Marie Tan as Rose Tico, Naomi Ackie as Jannah, Phil LaMarr as Kit Fisto, and Billy Dee Williams as … the Landolorian.
Hernandez elaborates: “I had always admired Ahmed as a performer but you can’t understand the brilliance of his performance as Jar Jar until you see him physicalize it and really do it in person with your own eyes. And the second that I saw that I said, ‘Oh my goodness. No wonder George Lucas fell in love with this performer.’
“Same thing with Anthony Daniels doing C-3PO. He was in England, but to be on Zoom and to watch him physicalize it and to be C-3PO as he was delivering his lines and to fall into those mannerisms that he’s been doing now for decades. It was magical. Or Billy Dee. We were actually in the studio with Billy Dee that day and he was as cool and—”
“Smooth. Yeah,” Buckley says.
“Awesome and kind and smart and everything you wanted him to be. He was just the best,” Hernandez says.
“Yeah.” Buckley says. “The Anthony Daniels [session] was so cool because we recorded all of them for the animators. To be able to give that to animators and have them be able to do that. No one knows that character better than he does. No one. And he was always, ‘Can I try this? Can I try that?’ He was excited about the project as well. So he actually brought a lot more to it. I thought he was just going to do the lines, but he was excited about it and he really wanted to lean into an evil C-3PO.”
Samit recalls, “Anthony Daniels was like, “I’ve been doing the identical C-3PO for 40 plus years and I get to do this fun different version of him where he’s a little more sinister. He got a kick out of it. He really liked it. Yeah, he was having so much fun.”
“All the legacy actors were really excited to ‘try on like a different outfit.’ So to speak,” Hernandez says.
“Just every down the line as those people would sign on it just became like a real family affair in a way that I don’t think that any of us necessarily anticipated at the beginning of this process,” Hernandez says. “Not to mention people like Sam Witwer and other people that had become a part of Star Wars animation and have their own set of fans. It helps when you have unbelievable professionals like Shelby Young (Princess Leia, Sulky Kid). Dee Bradley Baker—legend (Darth Nubs, Wicket W. Warrick, Sgt. ‘Salty’ Sharp, Sullustan X-Wing Pilot). And Kevin Michael Richardson (Farmer Scala, Jedi Jabba the Hutt). You look at their list of credits and it’s hundreds of projects long because they’re so good.
“We were able to record some people as part of an ensemble,” Hernandez says. “Sometimes we were able to record where someone might be in New York and someone might be in LA.”
Samit adds, “A lot of it was during COVID but we did some Zoom ensemble recordings, which was interesting. You make do. A Zoom ensemble recording might not be as good as a regular real life ensemble recording, but it’s better than no ensemble recording.”
The showrunners created new characters, the leads, specifically for this project: Gaten Matarazzo voices Sig Greebling, the callow farmboy tasked with using a mystical Force icon, the cornerstone, to rebuild the galaxy; Tony Revolori is Dev Greebling, Sig’s older brother who, in the show’s mirror universe, has become the malevolent Darth Devastator; Marsai Martin is Yei Scala, a cocky pilot and Dev’s friend who stays good in the mirror universe; Michael Cusack is the clumsy Gonk Droid, Servo; and Saturday Night Live alum Bobby Moynihan, veteran voicecaster of several Star Wars spinoffs, performs Jedi Bob.
“One of the things that I didn’t necessarily expect we would get to do was to create original characters within the Star Wars galaxy,” Dan Hernanadez says. “It’s one of the things I’m the most proud of. We created five original dynamic characters really fit into the Star Wars tonality and we cast it as an ensemble. Gaten Matarazzo being just such a brilliant young performer. I really can’t say enough good things about him.
“Bobby Moynihan, the heart and soul of the project, a legitimate Star Wars fan. He knows as much about Star Wars as any of us. And he had his own Jedi Bob figure. We didn’t have to explain. He knew who Jedi Bob was. He brought his Jedi Bob minifig to each recording as a good luck charm, as a little rabbit’s foot. Michael Cusack is one of our close friends, and I think one of the most brilliant comedic vocal performers. It’s not a coincidence that Smiling Friends is such an unbelievable hit because of him and what Zach are doing. Tony Revolori, who I saw on Willow giving such a brilliant performance, has been in tons of amazing things like Grant Budapest.
“Their passion for Star Wars came through and so I’m really proud of the work that they did as an ensemble. It’s really hard sometimes when you’re introducing new characters to a galaxy like this. But based on the fan response and based on the way that the LEGO sets have done it seems like people have really embraced these characters and it makes me really happy.”
Chris Buckley points out, “If you watch the last six minutes of Part Three, when it’s a big confrontation between Bob, Sig, Dev, and Servo there in the Temple, just the voice acting alone is absolutely insane. To speak to that from an animation standpoint, we actually took three of our best animators and gave them that entire sequence. Each of them did one character. So if you had a Jedi Bob in your shot and you were the Dev guy, someone else animated them. We made sure that there was a consistency in the acting and the performance within that sequence because we knew it was so important. We knew that we had to dig in.
“Bobby is known for his comedic acting, but his heart and his voice performance is so moving. It’s amazing. He’s so good,” Buckley says.
“There’s a reason that great people want to work with Bobby,” Hernandez says. “It’s not a coincidence that he keeps popping up in things because, first of all he’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met … but second of all he’s one of the most talented people I’ve ever met. It’s just unbelievable.
“Marsai Martin as well. We knew if we were going to do a real Star Wars story we needed a cocky pilot of some kind and to find a new angle on that character. I heard her in the PAW Patrol movie (2021). I know all about the PAW Patrol because my kids are exactly the PAW Patrol age. I am deep in it. But I watched the movie and took note of her performance. When we had the opportunity for this, I said, ‘Guys, I just saw her in PAW Patrol. She’s perfect.’ And that proved to be exactly the case.”
LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy is a major disruption to the Star Wars universe. That is, by removing the cornerstone, Sig has wiped out the live action Star Wars as we know it. Or has he?
“I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily the live action,” Samit says. “We’re playing a little fast and loose in the LEGO world. Was it the LEGO version of classic Star Wars that got wiped out? I think we’re a bit in our own little sandbox with this one, but within the context of the show itself, yes, Sig has wiped out the classic Star Wars galaxy as we know it.”
But will the story continue?
“We’re hoping so. We’re definitely fingers crossed about that,” Hernandez says. “Lots of ideas, lots of characters that we didn’t get to play with or, characters that were in versions of the script that had to get cut because, we realized we didn’t make our first draft was twice as long as it should be because there’s just so much to play with. There was a lot in the Star Wars galaxy. Our hope would be to keep going.
“To get nominated for that Annie for Best Limited Series really meant a lot to us. I’m not like a selfless egoless person but my feeling when that nomination came in was really not about me so much as I was like, I’m so happy for this team. I’m so happy that there’s a tangible thing that we can point to and say, “Look, we as a group, hundreds of people and not just the artists, people on the executive side of things, on the PR side, of the marketing side of things, the LEGO team, here’s the tangible evidence that we did something really good.
“We are nominated against some absolutely amazing shows, so I wouldn’t feel sad to lose to any of them. However, we accomplished something of a scope and a scale of a movie. If you really look at just the quality of the animation and the overall product, these four episodes each one is a little movie in miniature. The scale of what we accomplished on the [limited] budget and on the time frame is near miraculous, honestly, and I’m not really even congratulating myself. I’m congratulating like the animators, everyone involved in the actual construction of this show went truly above and beyond,” Hernandez says.
“It was just such a passion project for literally everyone top to bottom of production and I think that passion from all these amazing artists comes through when you watch it and I hope the voters can see that,” Samit says.
Chris Buckley chimes in: “Our hearts are 100% of the work on the screen. I’ve worked on a lot of shows and that’s usually not the case. There’s a lot of wasted time. I think everyone just focused their passion and it showed up and I think everyone we’ve showed it to are always a little bit surprised of how much heart, how much peril, how much adventure there is in it.”
(L-R) Benji Samit and Dan Hernandez pose at San Diego Comic-Con 2024 on The IMDb Yacht, July 25, 2024 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for IMDb)
Says Dan Hernandez, “Because it’s these two massive IPs and companies that maybe there’s a bit of skepticism about how good this could be. I would say to anyone who’s a voter that hasn’t seen the show, give it a chance and watch it with an open mind and let go of any expectations of what you think a LEGO Star Wars miniseries might be and let it experience it as a fresh thing and then see how you’re feeling about it at the end in comparison to what maybe you thought you would feel like going in.”
Currently Chris Buckley is involved in projects at Atomic Cartoons that he can’t disclose. Likewise, Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit can’t talk about their upcoming work other than writing Spaceballs 2.
“We are hopeful that that will keep chugging along the path to actually being made sometime in the not-too-distant future,” Hernandez says. “It’s been an unbelievable experience working with Mel Brooks and Mel’s team and Josh Gad—who we co-wrote the movie with—and Josh Greenbaum, the director who just did the movie Will and Harper for Netflix (2024) and who directed Barb and Star (2021) and Strays (2023). But, as with everything in the movie space, sometimes it’s hard to know what’s going to happen.”
One more question. As knowledgeable as they are with Star Wars lore, is there a chance these creatives might get involved with a live action Star Wars production?
“We would love that,” Dan Hernandez says. “It’s something that we have discussed with our friends at Lucasfilm and I think that everyone there is super eager to find ways for us to continue to work within this galaxy. Let me put it this way: whatever else that we’re doing in our careers, if we also had some sort of Star Wars project going on simultaneously, I wouldn’t be sad about that. So, I hope that through the process of doing this, I feel like we’ve become in the family at Lucasfilm a little bit. My hope is to keep pushing both in animation and live action. I would really love to continue to find avenues to explore be they on TV, theatrical, live action or animation. We’re game. And I know Chris feels the same way.”
“Yeah. 100%,” Buckley says. “I’m such a Star Wars fanatic and a LEGO fanatic. If someone gave me the golden ticket and said, ‘You’re going to be working on Star Wars stuff till it’s over.’ I would be so happy with that. Yeah. Let’s do it.”
Other executive producers listed for LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy: Jason Cosler, Jacqui Lopez, Keith Malone, Josh Rimes, James Waugh and Jill Wilfert. Daniel Cavey was senior producer for Lucasfilm Ltd., Steven L. Grover was supervising producer for Atomic Cartoons, and Jason D. Stein was co-producer.
LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy was released September 13, 2024 on Disney+, and December 5, 2024 on the Star Wars Kids YouTube Channel, just in time for the Christmas season.
ASIFA-Hollywood has nominated LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy for the 2025 Annie Awards, as Best Limited Series Animated Television/Media Production, for Part Three.
The Motion Picture Sound Editors, USA has nominated Jeff King (supervising sound editor), Frank Rinella (supervising foley editor), Shaun Farley (foley editor) and Margie O’Malley for the 2025 Golden Reel Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing—Broadcast Animation for Part Two.
Special thanks to Lillian Noble, Lucasfilm Publicity.
Interview conducted January 22, 2025.
He has just completed Batman: The Animated Interviews, a five-volume work featuring the executives, producers, directors, writers, actors, designers, storyboard artists and composers involved with the making of Batman: The Animated Series and its spinoffs. BearManor Media is the publisher.
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