As reported earlier this month, Kathleen Kennedy is finally stepping away from Lucasfilm, but the damage she leaves behind may take years to undo. During her reign of shame, she turned one of pop culture’s most timeless franchises into a battleground for idealogical, sermon-driven entertainment. Under her watch, the Star Wars brand became less about adventure stories and more about lecturing audiences who didn’t clap hard enough for “progress.” The added news that Dave Filoni and Kennedy’s longtime activist ally Lynwyn Brennan will now lead the studio in her absence doesn’t exactly fill fans with hope. It feels like a continuation of the same self-inflicted collapse.
In her parting interview with Deadline, Kennedy looked back on her tenure not with remorse, but with another round of the same, tired blame-shifting. She didn’t reflect on how The Last Jedi split the fandom in half or how The Rise of Skywalker became a revisionist apology tour wrapped in a corporate checklist.
Instead, she rolled out her favorite scapegoat: those darn “toxic fans.”
“I’m honest, especially with the women that come into this space because they unfairly get targeted,” she said. “I don’t try to sugarcoat it. And I emphasize that it’s a very small group of people, with loud megaphones. I truly do not believe that it’s the majority of the fans. And I think we’re also in this weird world of where bots can affect things. You have to develop a tough skin. That is exactly right. That’s what you have to do. You can’t make it go away.”
So after twelve years of record-breaking division and diminishing goodwill, Kennedy’s conclusion was that bots and a “small group” of angry fans were always the problem, not the incoherent storytelling, nor the hiring of ideological activists instead of talented writers, and certainly not her purge of experienced directors (Phil Lord, Chris Miller, Colin Trevorrow, Patty Jenkins, et al) who dared to disagree with her narrative experiments. Nope. According to Kennedy, it’s the fault of internet trolls who somehow caused The Acolyte to flop and Solo: A Star Wars Story to lose tens of millions at the box office. She just couldn’t overcome the trolls.
The irony is that many fans once begged for stronger female representation in Star Wars, and they got that, but when any of them complained about the content itself, they were told that disagreeing with those lazy scripts and all the smug political messaging made them “misogynists.” Kennedy’s “girl boss” revolution became Disney’s shield against criticism. The hard truth that she can’t seem to accept is that when viewers recoiled from The Last Jedi, or mocked the singing, lesbian witches in The Acolyte, it wasn’t because of sexism. It was because Disney had trashed the legacy and stopped honoring what made Star Wars matter to people in the first place: sincerity, myth, and heroism.
Related: ‘The Acolyte’ Stars Play the “Toxic Star Wars Fans” Card Again
Kennedy also blithley opined on Indiana Jones, another casualty of her ego-driven reign. When asked if Harrison Ford may have stuck around for one movie too many sequels, or if she had any regrets since it bombed so spectacularly at the box office, Kennedy waved off the idea with the kind of denial that’s become her trademark. “No, I have no regrets about that because Harrison wanted to do that more than anything. He did not want Indy to end with the fourth movie. He wanted a chance at another, and we did that for him. I think that was the right thing to do. He wanted to do that movie. I don’t think Indy will ever be done, but I don’t think anybody is interested right now in exploring it. But these are timeless movies, and Indy will never be done.”
So it’s Ford’s fault, eh? Kennedy can’t take the blame, because still doesn’t see what went wrong with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, a film that turned one of cinema’s most rugged heroes into a grumpy sidekick who needed rescuing from his own female apprentice. Of course, that apprentice happened to be played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, another one of Kennedy’s feminist recruits. Waller-Bridge had previously voiced an insufferable female droid in Solo: A Star Wars Story, and strutted through Indy 5 cracking lame misandrist jokes while poor old Indy mumbled in the background. It was supposed to be a triumphant revival of a beloved character, but what audiences got instead was the cinematic version of a castrating lecture on male redundancy. The box office collapse that followed wasn’t hard to predict, and it should have been a referendum.
It wasn’t. Kennedy still refuses to admit she might have made some mistakes. In the interview, she frames Ford’s participation as her gift to Harrison Ford, as if letting the actor’s final outing as the hero be hijacked by a snarky “girlboss” was a noble gesture. Is she really that tone-deaf? She took a franchise built on grit, discovery, and fun and turned it into a self-parody that most fans would rather forget. And when asked if the that was the last we’d see of Indy, she added “[Y]ou never know,” she coyly replied, threatening fans with the absurd notion that the old team could reunite again. “we are all still here, Steven and Frank and I, and Harrison and George. So we get to say whether there’s going to be any more, or not.”
Looking back, Kennedy’s pattern was obvious. Every story, every franchise, every legacy hero she’s touched was reimagined to fit a worldview nobody asked for. Then, when the audience fleed, she scolded them for not “evolving.” Whether it’s Star Wars or Indiana Jones, the result was always the same: shrinking profits, alienated fans, and a studio pretending that “bots” are to blame. The truth was much simpler and it’s a shame Bob Iger never dealt with it; under Kathleen Kennedy, Hollywood’s once-great icons stopped being entertaining stories for everyone and became sermons for feminism and inclusion. Similar declines have been happening in Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, James Bond, The Witcher, Alien, Men in Black, Mad Max, Predator, Doctor Who, the MCU and DCU, and way too many more.
Maybe the only thing you could say that was really “timeless” about Kathleen Kennedy’s legacy would be the trail of franchises she’s managed to drag down under the weight of her own ego. Lucasfilm used to stand for wonder, imagination, and adventure. Under Ms. Kennedy, it’s become a platform for lectures and excuses. Fans that hoped she would protect the magic of George Lucas’s galaxy far, far away, instead watched in horror as she turned it into a corporate war zone where creativity went to die and accountability was a myth.
No matter how Disney spins her exit, fans will remember that she wasn’t the savior of Star Wars. She was its greatest saboteur who blamed the once enthusiastic audience when they walked away. Best of luck on all her future endeavors, and good riddance.
Star Wars remains dead.
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