October 8th, 2019 
W.R. Miller 
Good news, bad news. The good news: Star Wars Resistance continues with a second season. The bad news: It is the last season. But it’s not leaving without a fight! Our heroes aboard the fueling depot Colossus—now travelling through space and hyperspace—must contend with a band of pirates, bounty hunters, a Hutt, an Aeosian Queen, and First Order operatives Tierny, Commander Pyre, General Hux and Supreme Leader Kylo Ren. The show promises to end with a bang as it leads into Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker.
On September 25, Disney and Lucasfilm held a press gathering that included the three executive producers, Brandon Auman, Justin Ridge, and Athena Cortillo, discussing the synergy between the Lucasfilm animation division and Industrial Light & Magic, and the challenge of reconciling their animated show with the live-action movies.
Justin Ridge: We do have to figure this stuff out quite a long ways ahead of time. So we knew that the second season needed to end before The Rise of Skywalker. We had this timetable to play with and organically figure out stories.
Brandon Auman: That’s right. We wanted to introduce new villains, new locations, new creatures.
Chris Haynes, Gamespot: [Star Wars Resistance is] happening alongside this movie franchise. It’s unrolling at the same time. How closely do you have to work with the film side? Do you just make sure they’re not covering something you’re covering, and you’re not covering something they’re covering?
Justin Ridge: Yeah. It’s very tricky, you know, but we have Pablo Hidalgo as part of the story group.
Athena Cortillo: The Lucasfilm story group is always involved in our writers’ conferences from the very beginning, and so when we’re listing out the roadmap of what these stories would be, and the character development, we always make sure we’re within continuity. We make sure that we’re not compromising what J.J. [Abrams]’s vision is, what [Dave] Filoni’s vision is, the vision of what games and other live-action series they’re talking about. We always make sure that we’re on point with that. Sometimes we have to wait for a script. Sometimes we have to wait for an animated sequence to refer to before we can finish out our episode.
So we would be in “pause mode.” As you know, we’re working on several episodes at different phases. So if we’re waiting on something in animation, it’s like, all right, we’ll put that aside and we’ll just get started on this while we wait to hear how they plan to end the saga and how do we want to incorporate that.
Star Wars Resistance executive producers, left to right, Justin Ridge, Athena Cortillo and Brandon Auman, posing with BB-8.
Brandon Auman: It’s hard and it’s kind of unprecedented. There’s not a lot of shows— especially animated shows— that tie into a series of movies that are going on at the same time.
That was one of the hardest parts. Originally it was a different director, then they brought J.J. [Abrams] back and then everything was rewritten. So as we’re working on this show, we’re like, “Okay,” so we had to focus (obviously) on our characters, which is the most important aspect for us. Also, this was an experiment. There’s not usually a new trilogy of movies while there’s an animated series, and it ties into it at the same time, so it was hard for us.
Athena Cortillo: Also, changes happen in live-action production. For example, we had already designed Saw [Gerrera] for Rebels. Everything was designed and animated. And then the director changed his mind on what Forest [Whitaker] would be wearing. So then, we had to ask ILM art department to send us the reference for that costume and then redo everything to fit appropriately.
Justin Ridge: Yeah. Which is very easy in animation. (Reporters laugh)
Brandon Auman: And Saw changed, from the first time you see him in Rebels to the next time you see him in Rebels. So it’s hard. It’s not easy to try and produce something with a series of movies.
Chris Haynes: For you guys, when you’re seeing that the films are actually being influenced by the stuff you’re creating for these shows, what is that experience like?
Justin Ridge: I mean, having connectivity, is all one thing, you know? It’s awesome. I like that we’re—
Brandon Auman: —That we’re able to influence and play off of these things.
Athena Cortillo: Yes. And also that we’re able to influence the creators inside ILM like Bill George. He created those ships for us, the models. And then there’s other Art Department staff that have been part of ILM from the beginning that have been like, “Can I design something for you?” Or like Paul Giacoppo. He wrote the “Bibo” episode and he’s been part of ILM forever as a modeler. That means so much to us that they would want to be a part of this universe.
Justin Ridge: We’re fans of each other, you know what I mean?
Brandon Auman: So it’s really cool. I don’t think a lot of people know this, but Bill George actually built the entire top part of the Colossus, and he also designed a physical model of the Fireball, so it didn’t exist only as a CG.
ILM modelmaker Bill George, who built a model of the Fireball racer and the Colossus for the crew to use as reference
Justin Ridge: Just a master model maker.
Brandon Auman: And he built the entire top part that was floating on the ocean of Castilon. During a writers’ meeting, we would put it in the center of the table and that would be an influence. That’s like mind blowing! This guy’s been building the models since [Return of the Jedi].
Athena Cortillo: Yeah. We do a special thanks for Bill George in the credits.
Brandon Auman: I didn’t work on Clone Wars or Rebels. These guys did, but that’s always obviously easier because the movies already came out. Now we’re working while the movies are happening simultaneously, and—
Justin Ridge: It keeps us on our toes.
Brandon Auman: It definitely keeps us on our toes. It’s very daunting. But the great thing is, because we’re so focused on this group of characters that we can follow them along, if you can organically have the other aspects of the movies work their way in, we’re all for it. If we can make it feel natural, not just, “Oh, let’s just do it for the sake of fandom.”
Justin Ridge: We had certain arcs we wanted to tell about these characters, but then it also made sense to hit these certain posts that Last Jedi did, leading up to the new movie.
Athena Cortillo: Certain episodes are like a Part One and a Part Two in Season Two because we couldn’t tell the whole story in just 22 minutes.
Justin Ridge: Yeah. Again, we look at the season as a whole and go, “Okay, we have these posts that we want to hit.” And you know, once we start coming up with the stories, they’re like, “Oh, it feels right that this would happen.” You know? Or that, yeah, we do focus on this one character for this one. It’s kind of an organic process.
Bob Miller: Why does the series have to end?
Justin Ridge: That’s a good question.
Bob Miller: Is it ratings? Is it a lack of buying at the toy counter? What is it?
Athena Cortillo: It’s The Rise of Skywalker. We had to finish it out alongside the live-action.
Brandon Auman: Yeah. We wanted to feel like it was just a complete thing, so that we have a beginning and end. It’s really going into Rise of Skywalker. We thought if it went another season, it just felt like, “Oh, the last movie just ended.” And now it just sort of ends, the saga’s ended. Going one more year felt weird to us. Clones and Rebels was obviously created years after those movies, and for us it was like, “Well, this just feels like a natural organic, let’s just do this and we’ll go right into it.”
Bob Miller: But was it planned from the beginning that way? Or were you using the movies as a guideline?
Brandon Auman: It was both.
Athena Cortillo: Yes.
Brandon Auman: We were using the movies as a guideline and we were like, “This is just a great [place to end].” We felt that Season One is, it all takes place on a planet, then Season Two, it now takes place in space and now it’s going to lead, boom, right into the last movie.
Justin Ridge: Yeah. It, it made more sense as we were developing like, “Okay, what’s the overall plan?”
Brandon Auman: It felt strangely anticlimactic to go another season after the last movie in the new trilogy, especially because we’re producing it while the movies are going. It felt strangely like, “Oh, well, the last movie ended. It’s wrapping up everything and then we’re still going” felt really weird to us. Maybe it would have been different if, say, we were telling the story years after this trilogy, like the way Rebels and Clone Wars were, but for us, producing simultaneously felt like, “Well, this is great. We’re filling out the time between these last two movies,” and it just felt like a natural place to end.
I used to work on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012), and we planned to wrap it up at Season Four. Then they [Nickelodeon] were like, “No, no, you’re getting to Season Five.” And we’re like, “Well, no, it’s all over at Season Four.”
So we had to do these Tales of the TMNT, which were any kind of story that fit in anywhere. And we were like, “I hope we don’t have to keep going like this because it’s really nice to have the opportunity to say, ‘This is the story we’re going to tell.’ And a lot of times I feel like when I’m watching a show and they keep going season after season, I’m just like, “Oh my God, just wrap this up! Take that, just tell the story that you need to tell.”
Justin Ridge: It’s existing for the sake of existing.
Bob Miller: Do these characters have a destiny beyond Rise of Skywalker?
Athena Cortillo: It’s a good question. I always see opportunity for having backstories told on each of these characters, whether it’s in the parks, the games, and the publications.
Brandon Auman: The decision was to wrap it up by the time we have Rise of Skywalker. So it was like this complete thing. But we’re always open to—like Athena’s saying—prequels or, or if they, Lucasfilm ever wanted to do these characters in the future. We’re open to anything. We love these characters.
Star Wars Resistance stars Christopher Sean (Days of Our Lives) as Kazuda Xiono; Suzie McGrath (East Enders) as Tam Ryvora; Scott Lawrence (Legion) as Jarek Yeager; Myrna Velasco (Elena of Avalor) as Torra Doza; Josh Brener (Silicon Valley) as Neeku Vozo; Donald Faison (Scrubs) as Hype Fazon; Elijah Wood (The Lord of The Rings) as Rucklin; Jim Rash (Community) and Bobby Moynihan (Saturday Night Live, DuckTales) as Flix and Orka, respectively; Liam McIntyre (Spartacus) as Commander Pyre; Jason Hightower (Victor & Valentino) as Captain Doza; and Sumalee Montano (Kung Fu Panda: The Paws of Destiny) as Agent Tierny.
Guest stars for Season Two are Joe Manganiello (Magic Mike) as Ax Tagrin, Daveed Diggs (Hamilton) as Norath Kev, Matthew Wood (The Clone Wars) as Kylo Ren, and Lucy Lawless (Xena: Warrior Princess) as the Aeosian Queen.
Star Wars Resistance, Season Two with 19 half-hour episodes, premiered Sunday, October 6th (10:00-10:30 p.m. EDT/PDT), on Disney Channel and DisneyNOW, with subsequent airings on Disney XD.
Special thanks to Sheena Jafari and Pete Vilmur.
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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