Star Wars, like any universe, contains multitudes. You can create a space opera, a space western, or a space political thriller. But no series has truly grasped this possibility for variety like Star Wars: Visions, the animated anthology series that has explored the lesser-seen corners of the Star Wars universe since 2021. Season pulled exclusively from Japanese anime studios, while Season 2 covered the rest of the world.
Now, in Season 3, Visions is honing in on anime studios once again, but is still finding new ways to explore this vast world.
While Volume 3 of Visions will contain sequels of three episodes of Volume 1, “The Duel,” “The Village Bride,” and “The Ninth Jedi,” there’s still room for more. At Anime NYC (via Starwars.com), fans were treated to david production’s “BLACK.” The short is described as depicting “a psychedelic battle between past and present,” showing “the haunted psyche of an Imperial stormtrooper on the cusp of defeat.”
Star Wars has never shied away from the fantastical or even surreal moments — take Luke’s spooky Cave of Evil vision in The Empire Strikes Back, for example. But these moments have always been sequences in a greater narrative. This short, on the other hand, is entirely psychedelic, showing the last gasp of consciousness from a stormtrooper.
In recent years, we’ve seen more and more stories from the perspective of the collateral damage — the seemingly innocent parts of the Empire who thought they were fighting for the right cause, totally unaware of Palpatine’s Sith identity. It’s an idea that’s been flirted with, like Finn’s origin story, but we haven't seen someone who is fully an Empire soldier, start to finish, be the protagonist of a Star Wars story on screen.
When Star Wars focuses on the people in power, it can make for an epic story with massive implications. But you can’t forget about the little guys, all the people who lose their lives because of the decisions of those people. Luke never forgot those people, and we shouldn’t either.
