A Lost Star Wars Show Is Going to Be Shown For the First Time

There are a few Holy Grails of the Star Wars galaxy, things that were made and then never released and have become objects of obsession among hardcore fans. We’re talking stuff like the Boba Fett toy with the backpack that actually fired a rocket (before the prototype was altered for safety reasons), or the unmade Star Wars movie that was supposed to be produced by Kevin Feige, or Star Wars: Detours, a TV show that actually did get made (by George Lucas himself) that never saw the light of day.

We covered this show and its sad saga on ScreenCrush over a decade ago. The short version: In the early 2010s, Lucas brought in the creators of Robot Chicken to make an animated comedy set within the world of Star Wars. (Robot Chicken’s Seth Green later said Lucas wanted to make The Simpsons for Star Wars.) It was called Star Wars: Detours, and because Lucas already had more money than the Emperor, he didn’t make it for any specific channel or under and exclusive deal; he and the creative team just made it.

But right around the same time Lucas was developing Detours, he was also negotiating with Disney to buy Lucasfilm. Once they did, they understandably wanted to make their own Star Wars movies and shows. And they weren’t exactly thrilled about the notion that first big Disney Star Wars show would be this silly comedy they had nothing to do with creatively called Star Wars: Detours. But by that point, Lucas and the staff had produced several dozen fully animated episodes.

Incredibly, Disney just shelved all of them. A fully finished Star Wars television show ready to air wound up in a vault at Lucasfilm. Apart from a few clips that emerged online, it has basically never been seen. For over a decade.

But now there is a happy ending worthy of the Battle of Yavin. At Comic-Con this week, Seth Green revealed that Detours will finally be available to the public at Lucas’ own museum, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which is set to open later this year in Los Angeles.

“There’s going to be a curation of episodes from that show on display for the public in the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art,” Green announced on the Lucas Museum Comic-Con panel.

This is not the only reason to go to the Lucas Museum, especially if you like Star Wars, but I love that this will play there. And there is a lot of obscure George Lucas produced stuff that could play at this museum if Lucas allows it. George, play The Star Wars Holiday Special every year on Christmas at the Museum too! Go for it! Let us honor Life Day the way it was meant to be celebrated!

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is scheduled to open to the public on September 22.