Put the Star Wars Holiday Special and the Ewoks Movies on Disney+, You Cowards!

There is a whole lot to get excited about when it comes to Disney+, whether you’re a fan of classic animated films, the Disney Channel originals of your youth, or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’s definitely a lot to get excited about if you’re a Star Wars fan since not only will Disney+ be the very first streaming home for the original trilogy, it will also feature new content like The Mandalorian. Finally, after over 40 years of feature films and cartoons, Star Wars is getting its very own live-action TV series–and it looks RAD. Between having The Mandalorian, a new season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the untitled Rogue One prequel series, and the feature films, Disney+ is going to be the destination for Star Wars fans. But will the streaming service really, truly have everything Star Wars fans of all ages want?

There’s actually a huge chunk of the Star Wars franchise that is constantly overlooked–and I’m calling for justice! Not only does Disney+ need to have the feature films and original series in its library, it needs to finally turn a spotlight on the darkest corner of the franchise. I’m talking about all of the ridiculous, bonkers, and at times genius Star Wars projects that aired on TV from 1978 all the way to 2003. Disney+’s Star Wars collection will not be complete until it has everything–and I mean everything.

I’m talking about 1978’s notorious Star Wars Holiday Special, the two made-for-TV Ewok movies, the two short-lived animated Star Wars cartoons from the ’80s, and the actually brilliant (but no longer canon) Star Wars: Clone Wars 2D animated series from 2003. Honestly, if I can’t jump right from streaming the Battle of Yavin to streaming Bea Arthur kicking a bunch of drunk aliens out of her cantina, then Disney+ has failed.

Granted, yeah, there’s a reason why all of these forgotten Star Wars projects were forgotten, or outright denied to exist for decades like the Holiday Special. The Holiday Special is not good bad, it’s bad bad, and not even the involvement of Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher could save it. The Ewok movies (1984’s Caravan of Courage and 1985’s The Battle for Endor) were low-budget movies for kids that capitalized on the almost overwhelming adorableness of those divisive warrior teddy bears. They even added more cuteness to the mix with 5-year-old lead Aubree Miller as Cindel Towani.

The ’80s animated series are better remembered, and Droids even included appearances from Boba Fett and IG-88. And the 2003 Clone Wars series from animator auteur Genndy Tartakovsky is downright acclaimed.

The problem is, all of these TV movies and series have been continually ignored over the past 10 years as Star Wars hit new, higher-than-ever levels of popularity. It makes sense. During the Star Wars dark ages (1984-1995), fans had to latch onto whatever they could get–and that meant rewatching some Saturday morning cartoons and a couple of cute kids movies. But with new Star Wars movies in theaters and kick-ass shows like the current Clone Wars series and Star Wars Rebels, there hasn’t been a need to track down Droids or even the original Clone Wars outside of nostalgia.

All that’s going to change because of Disney+ and The Mandalorian–because The Mandalorian is the first officially official and totally canon and current Star Wars thing that’s actually all praise-hands-emoji about all of these seemingly inessential Star Wars properties!

During The Mandalorian’s panel at Star Wars Celebration, executive producers Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni name-checked both The Holiday Special and Caravan of Courage–and they weren’t joking! The first photo from The Mandalorian features the titular gunslinger carrying a rifle that is pulled directly from Boba Fett’s debut in an animated sequence from 1978’s Holiday Special.

On top of that, footage screened during the panel (and isn’t available online, boo) included a shot of a lizardlike creature that attendees quickly clocked as a blurrg from Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. Favreau and Filoni aren’t kidding around. They love Star Wars, all of Star Wars, and they’re filling The Mandalorian with as much Star Wars as possible–and that includes all the things Lucasfilm maybe wanted you to ignore, once upon a time.

This is why Disney+ needs to embrace The Mandalorian’s frankly radical approach to Star Wars’ canon. It needs to stop being ashamed of objective failures like The Holiday Special and just embrace it. Maybe a special where an elderly Wookiee salivates over a sexy lady hologram is worth gaslighting a generation into thinking doesn’t exist when it’s one of four Star Wars things in existence. But now? Kids can turn on The Holiday Special, get bored by the ten solid minutes of nonstop Wookiee grunts, and then switch over to a new Clone Wars episode and not lose an ounce of respect for their beloved space saga.

This would also play into Disney’s brand as purveyors of content for a hardcore, detail-oriented, Easter egg hunting, hyper-die-hard fandom. Trust me, find the Disney person in your life and ask them about all of the special clubs and in-jokes and secret messages placed throughout the Disney Parks. Disney knows how to keep the kids entertained, and they know how to keep adults obsessing over the minute changes made to the Haunted Mansion year after year. Imagine if Disney applied that mindset to Star Wars! Imagine them turning the previously shunned Holiday Special and side-eye-inducing Ewok movies into a selling point to the hundreds of thousands of Star Wars completists out there! I mean, I admit this is a deeply weird exclusive, but Disney+ could be the first anything to actually release the Star Wars Holiday Special in an official capacity since it aired on CBS in 1978.

This seems like a no-brainer, and the only thing that should keep all of these Star Wars obscurities from landing on Disney+ should be rights issues. Disney’s acquisition of Fox probably clears up a lot of that, but then again, who knows what rights remain with Nelvana, Cartoon Network, and the estates of Art Carney and Harvey Korman. Still, it’s worth Disney+ sorting all this out! Filoni and Favreau love this stuff. The Mandalorian is using this stuff. Judging by the reaction of that Star Wars Celebration crowd, the fans clearly have a sincere or ironic love for this stuff (is there really any difference between the two in 2019?). Fans have never had all of Star Wars in one place in one time, and Disney+ could change that. Help us, Disney+, you’re our only hope.

Watch Ewoks: The Battle for Endor on Prime Video