Next week in celebration of Star Wars Day (May the 4th Be with You), fans will be getting a new animated series targeted at younger viewers, entitled Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures, via Disney+.
But in the lead-up to Young Jedi Adventures being released, Lucasfilm has been putting out shorts that introduce the show’s characters via the Star Wars Kids YouTube channel. And now those six shorts have been collected for convenient, higher-quality viewing on Disney+.
This morning I watched all six of these shorts back-to-back and I can say that they certainly seem as though they will appeal to kids. They feature hyperkinetic action, plenty of comic relief, and snarky characters that will likely connect with viewers of that demographic. Right off the bat we meet a group of Jedi younglings– namely Kai Brightstar (voiced by Jamaal Avery Jr. from The Burned Photo), Lys Solay (Better Call Saul’s Juliet Donenfeld), and the adorable Pooba Nubs (The Bad Batch star Dee Bradley Baker)– plus their pilot friend Nash Durango (Luca’s Emma Berman) and Nash’s cantankerous droid RJ-83. In the first episode, the Jedi younglings learn to work together as they go up against a remote training droid and eventually learn a lesson from Master Yoda (Jimmy Kimmel Live! Impressionist Piotr Michael, doing his best Frank Oz). You see, Young Jedi Adventures takes place during the High Republic era– hundreds of years prior to the events of the Skywalker Saga– so viewers won’t have to worry about any of these characters eventually facing the red lightsaber blade of Darth Vader.
Instead, Kai Brightstar and friends go on misadventures through the forest, rescue RJ when he falls in a river, chase an escaped Tooka kitten, and in the last two shorts actually travel into space by themselves to face off against the youthful pirate Taborr Val Dorn (Trey Diaz Murphy from The Wingfeather Saga). This actually brings me to my one nitpick about the series: it appears as though these kids are allowed to go off on dangerous adventures without any adult supervision, which not only comes across as counter to what we already know about the Jedi Order but also maybe a bad lesson for real-world children? I mean Nash apparently owns her own ship and runs a transport service and she’s, what, something like eight years old? Perhaps I’m not supposed to think about these things and just have fun with the series, in which case I’d say the mission is definitely accomplished. If you’re just in it for the fun and laughs, as most kids admittedly will be, Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures absolutely delivers on that promise, at least in the form of these shorts. And for further hijinks with Kai, Lys, Nubs, and Nash, we’ll have to wait until the series proper arrives on Disney+ one week from tomorrow.
All six installments of Star Wars: Young Jedi Adventures – Shorts are now available to stream on Disney+.