Writer Jennifer Muro shares tales from highlighting the “everyday heroism” of the women of a galaxy far, far away.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is still months away from release, but that doesn’t mean that Daisy Ridley hasn’t returned to Rey since 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Similarly, Felicity Jones’ Jyn Erso has shown up after last year’s Rogue One, although some fans might have missed it.
Both have been part of Star Wars: Forces of Destiny, the multimedia initiative that spans merchandise, print and animation and focuses on the female leads of the franchise. Launched earlier this year, the initiative has already concluded its first run of animated shorts, which were released on YouTube and aired on Disney XD. Eight more episodes are set to air as a special in October. Heat Vision spoke with Jennifer Muro, the writer of the animated series, about her connection to Star Wars in general, and Forces of Destiny in particular.
How did you get involved with Forces of Destiny? Was this something that Lucasfilm approached you with fully formed, or was it an idea that you were part of creating from scratch?
Last year, I had some meetings with the Lucasfilm Story Group down in L.A. They told me what they wanted to do with this initiative, and we kind of came up with this thing together — what we wanted it to be, to create stories of everyday heroism for the women of Star Wars. It all came together organically. We worked through different incarnations of what that would be, and it ended up turning out pretty great!
What has the feedback been like from fandom for the series?
It is being really well received! We always wanted to inspire fans of all ages, as long as it was through authentic Star Wars storytelling, I think that was our biggest goal. I think fans can sense that and, even if they’re not thrilled, they understand, “Oh, I know who this is for.” Honestly, the feedback has been mostly super-positive.
You mentioned “everyday heroism” earlier, and that’s something that’s obvious from the shorts so far — we’re used to watching these characters save the galaxy and take part in these epic adventures, but Forces of Destiny works on a much smaller, more intimate scale, without sacrificing who these characters are.
That’s exactly what we were going for, so I’m glad that’s coming through. As Lupita Nyong’o says in the introduction to each episode, it’s the moments both big and small that shape who these characters are. It’s something we don’t get a chance to explore very often in these stories, and something we don’t get a chance to focus on. It’s a great opportunity to do that.
While you’re focusing on small moments in one sense, you’re also creating big moments by crossing over characters from different parts of the larger Star Wars mythology — Leia and Sabine meet, Padme and Ahsoka. It makes the overall Star Wars franchise feel more integrated. Was that a suggestion from the Story Group, or something you wanted to do?
There was stuff they absolutely wanted, and it was stuff that I absolutely wanted. I think a great moment like that was Leia and Sabine together in “Bounty of Trouble.” It was an organic moment, they met in Star Wars: Rebels, which was wonderful — we never wanted to have any kind of false construct in there, any kind of [forced meeting]. We wanted to have these important moments that meant something as often as we possibly could.
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