• Star Wars has grossed over $10 billion at the box office but faced mounting criticism in recent years.
• Nielsen data shows none of Disney’s sequel trilogy films made the top 10 most-streamed Star Wars titles on May the Fourth 2024.
• Luke Skywalker’s arc in The Last Jedi remains one of the most debated creative decisions in franchise history.
• John Boyega publicly criticized Disney’s handling of Finn, saying the character’s potential was squandered.
• Star Wars comics have quietly been doing the repair work — rehabilitating characters like Qi’ra and even bringing back Jaxxon.

Few franchises in entertainment history have inspired the kind of passionate, decades-long devotion that Star Wars commands — and few have also managed to frustrate that same fanbase quite so consistently. Since George Lucas introduced audiences to a galaxy far, far away in 1977, the series has grown into a $10 billion-plus box office juggernaut spanning a dozen films, multiple live-action and animated series, and an entire expanded universe of books, comics, and games. The scale of it is genuinely staggering.

But scale doesn’t equal perfection. And the bigger Star Wars has gotten, the harder some of its stumbles have landed.

The Sequel Trilogy’s Streaming Problem Is Worse Than You Think

Here’s a number that should give Disney pause: not one of the three sequel trilogy films — The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, or The Rise of Skywalker — cracked the top 10 most-streamed Star Wars titles on May the Fourth last year, according to Nielsen data. Not one. The list was dominated by the original trilogy, the prequels, and a couple of Disney’s own TV entries, most notably Andor.

Fans have been vocal about their disappointment with the new trilogy for years, but this is something different. It’s not just criticism — it’s indifference. People aren’t rewatching these films. They’re not revisiting them for comfort or nostalgia. They’re simply moving on.

The reasons are well-documented at this point. The writing felt rushed and at times contradictory, particularly between The Last Jedi — directed by Rian Johnson — and The Rise of Skywalker, where J.J. Abrams returned to course-correct in ways that created their own continuity headaches. The result was a trilogy that felt less like a planned story and more like three different directors arguing with each other across three films, with audiences caught in the middle.

What Happened to Luke Skywalker

Of all the creative decisions made in the Disney era, none has been more polarizing than what The Last Jedi did with Luke Skywalker. Mark Hamill himself has spoken about his initial disagreements with Rian Johnson’s vision for the character — a broken, reclusive hermit who had turned his back on the Force and on hope itself. For many fans who grew up watching Luke as the beating heart of the original trilogy, seeing him reduced to that felt like a betrayal.

Hamill came back. He played the role. But the version of Luke presented in that film — world-weary, self-exiled, almost contemptuous of his own legend — hit differently than anything the franchise had done before. Whether that was bold storytelling or a fundamental misreading of what audiences needed from that character is a debate that hasn’t cooled down years later.

Finn’s Arc and a Wasted Opportunity

John Boyega, who played Finn across all three sequel films, didn’t hold back when he went public with his frustrations about how Disney handled his character. Boyega argued that Finn — introduced with real promise in The Force Awakens as a stormtrooper who breaks free and finds his conscience — was steadily sidelined in the final two installments.

He wasn’t wrong. Finn’s arc across the trilogy is one of the more glaring examples of a character with genuine potential being written into increasingly marginal territory. By The Rise of Skywalker, a character who had been set up as a central hero was essentially running around reacting to other people’s storylines. Whatever the reasons — and Boyega framed it largely around race, which sparked its own conversation — the end result was a compelling character who never got to fulfill what the first film promised.

The Comics Have Been Quietly Doing the Repair Work

While the films have struggled, something interesting has been happening on the page. Disney’s Star Wars comics — published under the Marvel banner, and through licensing deals with Dark Horse and IDW — have become an increasingly bold creative space, and some of the most important character rehabilitation in the franchise’s recent history has happened there.

Take Qi’ra. Emilia Clarke’s character in Solo: A Star Wars Story was one of the more intriguing figures introduced in the Disney era — a survivor, a manipulator, a woman who chose power over loyalty and paid a complicated price for it. When Solo underperformed at the box office, it looked like Qi’ra might simply disappear. Instead, she was reintroduced in War of the Bounty Hunters, a crossover comic event built around the scramble to claim a carbonite-frozen Han Solo. Qi’ra wasn’t a footnote in that story — she was a genuine power player, and the comic gave her the menace and complexity the film had only hinted at.

That led directly into Crimson Reign, a story centered on Qi’ra’s Crimson Dawn syndicate taking on both the Empire and the Sith. By the time those comics were done, the character had been transformed from a one-film love interest into one of the more compelling figures in current Star Wars canon. She’s since appeared in Star Wars Outlaws. If she ever returns on screen, there’s an entire architecture of story waiting for her.

Then there’s Jaxxon — and yes, that name will mean something to a very specific kind of Star Wars fan. First appearing in Star Wars #8 back in 1977, the rabbit-like smuggler created by Roy Thomas and Howard Chaykin was essentially the franchise’s attempt at comic relief, a kind of Bugs Bunny in space. He faded from view for decades. Disney brought him back in the Star Wars Adventures Annual in 2018, published through IDW, and the response was warm enough that Jaxxon has been popping up in comics ever since. The Clone Wars even snuck in a skeleton of his species as a background detail. A full screen appearance feels less like a question of if and more of when.

It’s a reminder that the comics have always been where Star Wars takes its risks — lower stakes, smaller audiences, more room to experiment. When those experiments work, they quietly reshape what the larger franchise can do. When the films misfire, the comics are often the ones quietly cleaning up.

Star Wars at its best has always been about hope — which makes it fitting that even after some of its biggest creative stumbles, the franchise keeps finding ways to course-correct. The question is whether the films can catch up to what the rest of the universe is already doing.

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• Mark Hamill posted an AI-generated image of Trump lying in a grave on Bluesky, then deleted it
• The White House called Hamill “one sick individual” and linked the post to three assassination attempts on Trump
• Hamill, 74, apologized — sort of — saying he was “wishing him the opposite of dead”
• James Woods, Rob Schneider, and a sitting U.S. senator all piled on the Star Wars actor
• The post surfaced days after a man was arrested for allegedly trying to assassinate Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Mark Hamill is in the middle of a full-blown political firestorm after the Star Wars icon shared — and then quickly deleted — an AI-generated image on Bluesky depicting President Donald Trump lying in a shallow grave, surrounded by daisies, with a headstone inscribed “Donald J. Trump 1946-2024.” The caption? Two words: “If Only.”

The White House did not hold back.

“.@MarkHamill is one sick individual,” the administration’s Rapid Response 47 account posted on X Thursday. “These Radical Left lunatics just can’t help themselves. This kind of rhetoric is exactly what has inspired three assassination attempts in two years against our President.”

Hamill, 74 and best known for playing Luke Skywalker across the Star Wars saga since 1977, posted the image Wednesday alongside a lengthy caption that went well beyond the grave visual. “He should live long enough to witness his inevitable devastating loss in the midterms, be held accountable for his unprecedented corruption, impeached, convicted & humiliated for his countless crimes,” the actor wrote. “Long enough to realize he’ll be disgraced in the history books, forevermore. #don_TheCON.”

By Thursday afternoon, the post was gone from his profile.

The Apology That Wasn’t Quite an Apology

Hamill returned to Bluesky with what he framed as a clarification. “Actually, I was wishing him the opposite of dead, but apologize if you found the image inappropriate,” he wrote. He offered what he called an “Accurate Edit for Clarity” — essentially stripping the post down to the line about Trump living long enough to face accountability for his alleged crimes.

A representative for Hamill pointed NBC News to that statement rather than offering any additional comment.

Trump himself has not directly addressed the post.

Hollywood and Capitol Hill Weigh In

The backlash spread fast — and it wasn’t just coming from the White House.

Actor James Woods, 79, reposted Hamill’s message on X with a pointed five-word verdict: “When they tell you who they are, believe them.”

Saturday Night Live alum and outspoken Trump ally Rob Schneider, 62, was blunter. “Mark Hamill is a sick demented” person “and a disgrace to decent Americans,” Schneider wrote.

Montana Sen. Tim Sheehy took a different angle — going after Hamill’s Hollywood legacy. “He had one role that made him a legend because he had Han Solo, Darth Vader, and Obi Wan carrying his baggage,” the 40-year-old senator wrote, accusing Hamill of suffering from an “extreme case” of what Trump allies call “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

Oklahoma congressional candidate Jackson Lahmeyer went further still, calling for Hamill to be “investigated and held accountable,” arguing that posts like his “create a culture where assassination attempts become inevitable.”

The Timing Made Everything Worse

The post landed at an especially charged moment. Just weeks ago, suspect Cole Tomas Allen, 31 — a teacher and engineer from California — was arrested after allegedly breaching a security checkpoint near the White House Correspondents’ Dinner while armed with multiple weapons. He’s been charged with attempting to assassinate the president and is expected back in court Monday for a preliminary hearing.

It’s the third alleged attempt on Trump’s life in two years. He was shot in the ear at a Pennsylvania rally in 2024 — the shooter was killed by the Secret Service — and a second suspect was convicted of attempted assassination in February after being found hiding in bushes near where Trump was golfing.

The moment also arrives as the Trump administration is already investigating former FBI Director James Comey over a separate social media post — a nearly year-old image of seashells spelling out “86 47” that Trump allies interpreted as a veiled call for violence against the 47th president.

Hamill’s Long History With Trump

None of this is new territory for Hamill, who has been one of Trump’s most reliably outspoken celebrity critics for years. After Trump’s 2024 re-election, he told The Times of London that he’d asked his wife to pick between moving to the UK or Ireland. She talked him out of it — but not with a direct argument. “She’s very clever. She didn’t respond right away, but a week later she said, ‘I’m surprised you would allow him to force you out of your own country,'” Hamill recalled. His response: “That son of a bitch, I thought. I’m not leaving.”

The White House trolled him for that too, joking that at least he wouldn’t have to share Ireland with Rosie O’Donnell.

About Trump’s second term, Hamill has been grimly candid. “The bullying, the incompetence, the people in place… The only way I can deal with it without going crazy and wanting to open my veins in a warm tub is to look at it like a thick, sprawling political novel,” he told The Times. “It’s entertaining in a way because this could actually be the end. Our status in the world has been crippled and that will reverberate for decades.”

The post also came just days after Hamill appeared alongside former President Barack Obama in Chicago to mark Star Wars Day on May 4, previewing Obama’s Presidential Center — a pairing that some Trump allies used to further amplify their outrage online.

Hamill has been here before, and he’ll likely be here again. But a deleted post and a half-apology probably won’t be the last word on this one.

The post White House Calls Mark Hamill ‘Sick’ Over Trump Grave Post appeared first on Cream.