'Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire' Could Finally Take TV to a Galaxy Far, Far Away

With more networks and streaming services getting into original programming everyday, the demand for televised content is greater than ever. In Adapt This! we spotlight a piece of previously unadapted material we’d love to see become a TV series and even suggest a potential network and creative team.  

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

Source Material: Before the prequels, The Clone Wars and The Force Awakens, there was this multi-pronged 1996 attempt to reignite interest in the Star Wars universe, that encompassed a novel, a comic book and, most successfully, a video game for the then-new Nintendo 64 console, all of which unfold between the events of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

Thumbnail Synopsis: In the wake of successfully striking back against the Rebel Alliance, Darth Vader fends off a new threat, Prince Xizor, who longs to be Emperor Palpatine’s right-hand man. Meanwhile, with Han Solo currently encased in carbonite, Luke turns to another hot-shot smuggler, Dash Rendar, to lend a hand in the ongoing struggle between good and evil. The video game even inserted Dash into several key Star Wars events, like the Battle of Hoth, and had him take on formidable opponents like Boba Fett.

Dash Rendar

Why It Would Make Great TV: For years now, Lucasfilm has teased the idea of doing a live action Star Wars TV series, but those plans have never come to fruition. (Cartoons are a different story — the franchise has had many, many animated incarnations over the decades.) Part of the problem, of course, is finding the right period to set a potential series. After all, nobody wants to see a pre-Phantom Menace “Young Anakin Skywalker Chronicles” or a post-Jedi “Real Ewoks of Endor.” The Shadows of the Empire masterminds had the right idea in their choice of storytelling ground, picking a period that was still in the thick of the action and, at the time, hadn’t been extensively explored. And what continuity they did establish has since been wiped clean by the edict that all Expanded Universe content (that means everything besides the first six movies and two TV animated series The Clone Wars and Rebels) is no longer part of the current Star Wars galaxy.

That corporate bit of Control-Alt-Delete may anger fans who read the book or fought their way through the N64 game back in ’96. But it also gives a fresh creative team free reign when heading back into that gap between Episode V and Episode VI. It’s not unlike what the film franchise is doing with the so-called “Anthology Series” like Star Wars: Rogue One, which will take place in a parallel narrative to the events of the original film. (There’s also an ongoing comic book series from Marvel that takes place between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back.) Those features have only two hours to flesh out the larger Star Wars universe. A Shadows of the Empire series could devote at least two or three seasons to setting the stage for the final battle in Return of the Jedi.

Right off the top, the show’s masterminds probably would (and definitely should) relegate core cast members like Luke and Leia to the margins. (Han is already a popsicle, so no worries there.) That way, they don’t have to worry about re-casting roles that will forever be identified with Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher — who are obviously well beyond the ages of their characters at this point in time — and can also focus on populating the canvas with new personalities or new takes on characters introduced in the original Shadows cycle. That’s my way of saying… bring on Dash Rendar. Yes, he may just have been a placeholder for the Kessel Run record-holder (12 parsecs, y’all!), but Dash has the potential to be a hero in his own right. I know that I enjoyed navigating Rendar through all four parts of the N64 game, and didn’t blame him at all when the 3D camera got wonky. (Sorry you kept running into those ice walls on Hoth, Dash.)

On the other hand, Prince Xizor is a villain who is probably best left languishing outside of continuity. His big move in the video game is to have Jabba the Hutt put a hit out on Luke long before their Jedi face-off. When that inevitably fails, he next sets his sights on Leia, capturing her and — in the book, at least — using his female-conquering pheromones to take their relationship beyond captor and prisoner. (That particular plot point is understandably omitted from the video game, where Dash is simply tasked with rescuing Leia alongside Luke and Lando.) There’s got to be a better villain lurking around the cosmos… one that isn’t named Darth Vader, whose appearances should also be kept to a minimum. It’s a big galaxy, folks. Time to populate it with more characters.  

Creative Dream Team: Fifteen years ago, Nathan Fillion would have been the ideal Dash, but he seems to have sworn off sci-fi since Serenity for more Earthbound pursuits. And one year ago, Chris Pratt would have been perfect, but then he became a Guardian of the Galaxy. Our suggestion? John Krasinski. He hasn’t been snapped up by a feature film franchise yet, and he’s got the sense of humor (and the height) to be a space swashbuckler. And to direct the pilot — and hopefully a bunch of episodes thereafter — who better than TV maestro Michelle MacLaren, whose expertise in choreographing small-screen action temporarily landed her the gig of helming a Wonder Woman feature. The Amazonian’s loss is Star Wars’s gain.

Ideal Network: Since Disney shelled out $4 billion for the Star Wars rights, don’t expect Shadows of the Empire to air on any other network besides ABC. Which would be just fine, especially if they spend a lavish amount of money on a 12 or 13-episode summer series. After all, who needs to go the multiplex for a summer blockbuster when you’ve got one at home?

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire can be found in game or book form on Amazon.