The Darkest Chapter In The Star Wars Saga Was The Animated Show Ewoks

Not everything in the past was better. When it comes to science fiction franchises from the 1970s and 1980s, we often have a tendency to romanticize the so-called purity of the way things used to be. Surely, in 1985, just two years after Return of the Jedi was in theaters, the overall vibe of the Star Wars franchise would be refreshingly cool and creatively rich, right? Wrong. On September 7, 1985, Lucasfilm debuted a cash-grab animated TV series called Ewoks, a non-canonical part of the Star Wars mythos that should be regarded as a very bad dream. The thing is, unlike the embarrassment of the infamous 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, the horror of the Ewoks lasted for a year and a half, spanning two seasons.

But what was Ewoks? Why was Ewoks? And is there anything redeeming about this strange, hazy part of the Star Wars universe?

Mild spoilers from 1985 ahead.

Ewoks was a children’s animated series produced by Nelvana Limited and Lucasfilm. Taking place almost exclusively on the forest moon of Endor, Ewoks focused on the quirky adventures of the titular alien teddy bear creatures first introduced in 1983’s Return of the Jedi. However, instead of speaking in the cutesy Ewok language (Yub nub!), the Ewoks in Ewoks all speak English, but punctuate their sentences with little flourishes of Ewokese, which comes across in the dialogue as though the Ewoks are throwing in made-up profanity. “Eh-chee. I thought it was hot outside,” one Ewok says frustratedly, while clam-baking inside a hut, making some hot soup in the very first episode.

The overall feeling of the show is like an insipid, moronic ‘80s cartoon like Care Bears, fused with a vague Tolkien-esque fantasy setting. The Ewoks face threats from various forest monsters, a sorceress named Morag, and, in the second season, one mad scientist from the Galactic Empire. Like the live-action Ewok movies — Caravan of Courage and The Battle for Endor — the connection to the larger Star Wars universe is slight at best, and very little of what transpires in the series can be considered inspirational to anything that’s come since. While The Battle for Endor was a bizarre, dark family film that also gave us the first Star Wars take on a Witch, Ewoks the series is both bland and strangely disturbing. It’s bland because the storylines seem like a kind of fantasy Mad-libs, with plotlines about ancient temples, captured forest sprites, and other fantasy clichés. But it’s disturbing, because the Ewoks themselves are disturbing; characters that are neither cute nor likable, who only pass as kid-friendly because of the weird pitch of their voices.

Part of the appeal of the Ewoks (or the Wookiees or R2-D2) in Star Wars is that they didn’t speak in a conventional sense. But simply the act of giving the Ewoks dialogue is inherently creepy, because the things they talk about are deeply weird. In the first episode, one Ewok wants everyone to play a “forbidden” game of “Drop the sack.” Why does it feel like an initiation at a frat house?

What should be a cute village of lovable bears, instead feels like bored, stoned writers throwing darts at random syllables to create a show that is aimed at children who have no other option but to watch. The thing is, even in the 1980s, kids did have other options for cartoons, even within the Star Wars franchise. The vastly superior series, Droids, aired around the exact same time and remains much more watchable and compelling today. Ewoks, in contrast, contains the worst kind of “Glup Shitto” Star Wars characters insofar as you’ll want to forget these characters almost as soon as they're introduced.

The greatest crime of Ewoks is probably the overbearing character of Aunt Bozzie, a mean paternal figure who scolds Wicket, Princess Kneesaa, and the other, younger Ewoks. Aunt Bozzie is massive and towers over the other Ewoks, even though she is, in theory, also an Ewok.

Come on. Why is there a big Ewok in Ewoks? Isn’t the whole point of the basic concept of the Ewoks is that they’re very small? This one single feature of Ewoks fully represents why the show was so strange, and why it’s easily the worst and embarrassing part of the Star Wars franchise: If you’re going to make a show about the silliest creatures in all of Star Wars, at least make those creatures as cute, or at the very least, the same size as they were in Return of the Jedi. Instead, Ewoks is a lumbering, bizarre mess that would be laughable if it weren’t so embarrassingly misguided. You might think the dark times of Star Wars saturation are upon us in the 2020s, but nothing in The Rise of Skywalker holds a candle to the madness of the Ewoks.

Ewoks streams on Disney+.