Star Wars: The Forces of Destiny Initiative Revisited
In 2017, Lucasfilm launched this multimedia initiative with the right idea for, perhaps, the wrong reason — and gave up on it too soon.
While The High Republic is one of the most extensive multimedia campaigns that Lucasfilm has done to usher in a new era in Star Wars, it was not the first one.
Let us travel back to the holiday season 2015 when a new Star Wars film was coming to theaters soon, the first since 2007. And the main female character, Rey, was a rare find on toy shelves. Hasbro and Disney heard about the failure to spotlight their heroine in merchandise from the media and fans. A Target-exclusive 6-figure pack that included Kylo Ren, Finn, Poe Dameron, Chewbacca, First Order Trooper, and First Order Tie Pilot, excluding Rey, was a particular head-scratcher. Hasbro issued a statement when Rey was not featured in the Star Wars Monopoly game, mentioning that her inclusion would reveal a “key plot line.”
There was no reasonable excuse to exclude Rey initially, but once the movie was released and it was revealed that Rey was the Jedi, not Finn (which presented a separate issue), more Hasbro merchandise included Rey. But the criticism stuck, and as The Force Awakens and Rogue One made over 1B USD at the box with female leads, money still seemed to be left on the table.
Meanwhile, DC Entertainment was also entering the doll market in a big way. The president of DC Entertainment and Waner Bros. Interactive Entertainment made clear the studio’s ambitious plans for DC Super Hero Girls, stating that it “can be bigger than a $1 billion brand.” The studio launched the DC Super Hero Girls Action dolls to coincide with DC’s Super Hero Girls media franchise, which began in Q3 of 2015 as a web series (later rebooted in 2019 on Cartoon Network).
The web series saw the DC superhero girls in high school, with each webisode focusing on the social lives of the main characters and how they handle their powers around school.
The original doll line launched in 2016 with Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Poison Ivy, Bumblebee, Batgirl, Harley Quinn, a Comic-Con exclusive Katana, and Starfire. Later, the group would have different versions with different outfits and playsets. LEGO also launched some DC Super Hero Girl sets. The line would continue to evolve like the series, which rebooted with a new showrunner (Lauren Faust), animation style, and new team lineup and landed on Cartoon Network.
Removing the mixture of traditional heroes and villains, the main six were all heroes (Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Bumblebee, Batgirl, Green Lantern, and Zatanna). The franchise continued to evolve until the last episode in October 2021. Aside from the plethora of dolls and toys, the DC Super Hero Girls franchise ended with two series, five movies, and ten graphic novels.
There is little information on the financial success of the merchandise, but the early hype and initial sales of dolls were enough to spur Lucasfilm to create their own version with Hasbro.
As part of the plan to bring young girls into the Star Wars fandom and expand the franchise’s audience, Lucasfilm created Forces of Destiny. This multimedia campaign included a micro-series, books, comics, and a doll line. The central figures of these stories were Princess Leia, Padme Amidala, Rey, Jyn Erso, Sabine Wren, Ahsoka Tano, and Hera Syndulla. Since the Forces of Destiny was active between 2017 and 2018, everything occurred before The Last Jedi in the timeline.
All episodes were penned by Jennifer Muro (DC’s Justice League Action) and directed by Brad Rau ( Star Wars Rebels). Dave Filoni was also involved in some of the storylines created (likely those to do with Ahsoka).
Most actresses returned to voice their characters except Carrie Fisher (who had sadly passed) and Natalie Portman, who has not been active in the franchise since the Prequels. Even Lupita Nyong’o reprised her role as Maz Kanata to narrate. The episodes were around 3 minutes, similar to micro-learning, and contained a lesson within the short story.
Lucasfilm’s Paul Southern (SVP, Licensing) stated that the “way kids are consuming content today, they’re still watching linear telecision, but increasingly they’re consuming content, digitally… We’ve created a story format that reflects that. It’s a combination of digital and linear.” Per Vice President of Lucasfilm Story and Animation Carrie Beck because these series could be new access points for kids, the shorts were not “reliant on knowing everything else that happened in Star Wars history.”
Like everything post-Disney acquisition (excluding Star Wars Visions), these shorts were canonical, and some used storylines from deleted/cut scenes. “Beast of Echo Base,” which finds Leia, Chewie, R2-D2, and C-3PO trying to prevent a Wampa incursion, was part of a deleted scene from The Empire Strikes Back. Another short, “Tracker,” accompanies a scene from The Force Awakens novelization where Rey, Finn (voiced by John Boyega), and BB-8 try to find a homing device installed on the Millennium Falcon after they leave Jakku.
As for the animation, Beck said Lucasfilm wanted Forces of Destiny to stand apart and “something that felt graphic, something that felt totally in line with Star Wars and an expression and stylization you haven’t seen previously.”
Forces of Destiny premiered on July 3, 2017, on Lucasfilm’s YouTube channel, releasing an episode daily. The episodes then began airing between shows on the Disney Channel on July 9. More episodes were released in 2017, including two TV specials that included new episodes. The series concluded with season two, which also had 16 episodes and two TV specials.
The episodes are still available across Disney’s YouTube channels (Disney, Disney Channel UK), so they and other micro series Galaxy of Adventures are the closest to getting free Star Wars canon stories. The most viewed episodes are “A Disarming Lesson” with Ahsoka and Ezra Bridger and “Porg Problems” with, well, porgs, which indicates that the toy line should have had a few more male characters and a lot more porgs (we’ll get to the toys).
The Forces of Destiny young readers’ books were divided into three volumes and are essentially adaptations of the shorts with a little more context. Still, they are a good companion for a 6-year-old reading along with the micro-series working their way to a 7–8-year-old reading level.
The comic mini-series from IDW Comics offered more to the main characters’ adventures. Each issue focused on specific characters (Leia, Rey, Hera, Ahsoka and Padme, and Rose and Paige), and some, particularly Hera and Rose & Paige’s issues, provided new stories. In contrast, the others were a mix of in-between stories from the series and adaptations.
Most of the dolls retailed for 19.99 USD, but some came with additional accessories (Endor Leia came with a second outfit and Wicket the Ewok) and retailed for 29.99 USD. They even released a Luke Skywalker with Yoda and Chewbacca. In addition to traditional doll characteristics like soft goods and rooted hair, Hasbro made these dolls more in line with action figures, with most having at least ten points of articulation. There were also role-play toys like Rey’s staff.
The doll line was successful for some characters, namely Ahsoka and Sabine, because they are the two that look different. Even though Rose, Hera and Ketsu Onya were also included in the series, none of them had a doll. The second-hand market for Ahsoka especially will have original buyers happy with their doll’s increased value. But the line only lasted a year before production was halted. Rumors floated through collector circles in January 2018 that the line was canceled, but Hasbro announced at Toy Fair that February that the line had new dolls coming later that year. However, some of the announced dolls at Toy Fair never made it to retail: the Chewbacca and Porg 2018 Comic Con exclusive was the last of the toy line released.
There are a couple of theories of why the toy line was not as successful as Lucasfilm had hoped, including that most of the dolls, like the characters, were brunette, and there was not enough differentiation outside of clothing. Then, there is the archaic retail setup of separating toys based on gender. Whether this was a decision by retailers or Hasbro, the Forces of Destiny line was placed in the main Star Wars section, which was in the “boy” aisle, making it more difficult for girls to discover naturally. By comparison, the DC Super Hero Girls dolls had a section in the “girl” aisles of retail stores, separate from the DC female action figures in the “boys” section.
Even though Forces of Destiny did not last as long as DC Super Hero Girls, it at least brought in more interest from girls, mainly from the web series. There are also more female action figures from Hasbro’s signature Star Wars lines, Black Series, and Vintage Collection. But that also reflects more female characters in the films and television series. However, the decision not to continue a doll line when there is now more variety of female characters is a missed opportunity to keep existing fans engaged while bringing in more demographics (Imagine a Bo Katan with Grogu doll?). As for the series, using some of the episodes to show previously deleted or cut scenes would have been an excellent lure for all fans to continue to watch and would have enriched storylines from characters like Bo Katan, Reva, Omega, and Shin Hati.
Instead, the doll lines that have been released since the end of Forces of Destiny was (1. the high-end collector Barbie x Star Wars series from Mattel, which had reimagined Barbies of Rey, Leia, Darth Vader, R2-D2, C-3P0, Chewbacca, and a Stormtrooper. Basically, the same characters we always get, just in Barbie form. But that was for a completely different audience, including Barbie collectors who are not typically Star Wars collectors. The Limited Edition price point (an MSRP of 100–150 USD) makes these Barbies unfit for play. And (2. the recent Limited Edition dolls that include Bo-Katan and Hera Syndulla (currently released). But those price points are still on the pricey side at 49.99 USD. The dolls are part of a larger campaign called Women of the Galaxy that started earlier this year and includes other high-end merchandise like Loungefly bags and spirit jerseys, clearly aimed at adult collectors.
With the success of Young Jedi Adventures, hopefully, Lucasfilm can revisit Forces of Destiny and a playline doll set now that there are more stories and characters and a new Star Wars timeline to reference. With the final phase of The High Republic underway, lining up another multimedia initiative would not be the worst idea to keep expanding the Star Wars universe.
Originally published at http://creditsandcanon.com on November 30, 2023.
