Star Wars Visions: The Ninth Jedi’s Elegant Storytelling And What it Can Offer Screenwriters

Warning: this article will feature spoilers for the series Star Wars: The Ninth Jedi. 

Star Wars: Visions began as an out-of-universe experiment on the part of Lucasfilm with the intention of seeing how Japanese storytellers and their world-class animation studios interpret the world of Star Wars. Lucasfilm engaged a number studios to imagine their own version of the Star Wars universe, giving them carte blanche to ignore canon in any way they wished and filter the universe through their own cultural lens. One such short was The Ninth Jedi, produced by Production I.G. and written and directed by Kenji Kamiyama. Kamiyama got his start as a background artist on films like Hayao Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, and went on to join Production I.G where he wrote and directed Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and has become a legend in animation in his own right. Most recently, he directed 2024’s animated film Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim, which I covered in detail here.  

With Star Wars as his canvas, The Ninth Jedi is his unadulterated vision of the Star Wars mythology. The first short tells the story of a world where Jedi and Sith are all but extinct and lightsabers have practically become a lost technology. An old Jedi sends a message across the galaxy in hopes of drawing out any other remaining Jedi so that they can work together to restart the order. To do this, Master Juro (Andrew Kishino) finds the sabersmith Lah Zhima (Simu Liu) and contracts him to build nine lightsabers. The message doesn’t only reach the Jedi but remnants of the Sith as well, eager to get their hands on lightsabers. The sabersmith is kidnapped and the rest are left with the sabersmith’s daughter, Lah Kara (Kimiko Glenn), to accept them. 

There’s a catch, however. Lah Zhima was such a capable sabersmith, he forged the kyber crystals in such a way that they would change color naturally to reflect the hearts and emotions of the Jedi (or Sith) wielding them. When the Jedi assemble to take their sabers, over half the sabers turn red, revealing the Sith among them. A fight breaks out and the story ends with the Sith defeated, but the Jedi routed and Lah Kara asking for help finding and rescuing her father. 

The third season of Star Wars: Visions saw a sequel episode with another tear-jerking step on Lah Kara’s journey. Together, these episodes set the stage for the new Disney+ series, streaming in its entirety now. The series not only documents Lah Kara’s search for her father, but a galaxy that hangs in the balance. She’s tested repeatedly as a Jedi padawan and is forced to become something of a “Chosen One” as a matter of circumstance rather than choice. Told across eight more episodes, The Ninth Jedi weaves a stunning tapestry of complicated story and does so much elegant storytelling that I’ve watched it three times admiring how carefully the beats are constructed. Not only does it have plenty to offer Star Wars fans and people new to the franchise alike, it also contains a lot worth studying for screenwriters. 

One of the things The Ninth Jedi uses to its advantage is the visual storytelling and assumptions made by the audience, thanks to the lightsabers whose colors change to reflect the heart and emotions of their wielders. Since the colors can change from good to evil and back at any time, it creates a number of terrific revelations through the story. This is accomplished by establishing early in the story how the lightsaber mechanics work in this iteration of the Star Wars galaxy. Once the audience has a clear idea of how things should work, then they’re able to create memorable moments that appear to break the rules. 

After it’s been established that a character’s heart and intentions determine the color of their saber — the villains cast red light, Jedi green and blue (and in one case purple) — we’re primed for the first turning point revelation of the show. Nawaam (Young Mazino), the Kylo Ren-like villain, has plans to bring order to the galaxy and feels that he is above the base concerns of the conflict between the Jedi and the Sith. He fancies himself as something else entirely, though his actions and attitudes are unquestionably evil to any objective observer. So when the characters and audience first see him raise a lightsaber and ignite a blue blade, we’re all left in shock.  

What could be going on here? 

The text tells us exactly what’s going on, actually. Before the event, there are clues, and after, we see the real reasons play out. Our minds are reeling so hard, however, that it’s hard to remember the small details that would have given us the whole story. The sabersmith spoke of how he crafted these particular sabers specially, and he forged the crystals to perform in their color changing ways. This is something new for the sabersmiths of this universe, but the narrative allows us to believe that all other lightsabers have been destroyed, even though we could have tracked all the sabers in Kara’s possession to this point and known that Nawaam doesn’t have one. Some viewers might be upset, assuming the filmmakers forgot the rules they set, mainly because it seems like media literacy is dead. Patient viewers are rewarded with the answer: he had pulled this lightsaber off Zhima’s murdered master. The revelation has a perfectly valid explanation that keeps within the established rules, but causes an utterly jaw dropping moment upon first blush. 

The second major moment that really leans into this visual storytelling comes in the show’s fifth episode, as we near the climax. Lah Kara has been separated from her comrades and is forced to fend for herself on a distant, low-technology planet. There, the indigenous tribes of aliens integrate her into their society. She lives peacefully among them until Nawaam’s forces arrive. Their mission is to capture Lah Kara to use her as a hostage to lure her father out of hiding after he’d escaped their clutches. In pursuit of Kara, they hurt those innocent and peaceful aliens who harbored her, and something in her snaps. She goes after every single one of them with prejudice — her lightsaber remaining blue the entire time. The audience is lulled into thinking that this sort of revenge — ending the violence and its cycle here — is somehow righteous. Unfortunately for Kara, she’s met with the horrified, slack-jawed stares of the aliens when she tells them it’s okay, she’s killed them all. 

She hadn’t noticed that her lightsaber had turned blood red. 

Horrified, she flees. 

It’s one of the most powerful moments in the series. Kara eventually learns to control those emotions while dealing with a pair of bounty hunters that were involved. She kills one because it’s unavoidable, but the other she offers a chance to live and work in her employ. He agrees and she gives him a lightsaber. Although she read his feelings through the Force and knew, he is shocked when the blade emerges blue from the lightsaber hilt. Later, the assembled Jedi are skeptical of him and raise their sabers to deal with him, but he raises one hand in surrender and with the other, ignites the saber, revealing the blue blade. Everyone takes that for a positive identification for whose side he is on and trust him implicitly from that point forward. 

The way the story turns on the tale told by the colors of the lightsabers and the visual revelations is some of the best, most elegant storytelling I’ve seen on television in a long time.  

What items or visual representations can you bring into your work to help tell the story in ways that better engage the audience and show them something new? 

I know I mention this a lot, but when it’s done well it makes stories absolutely sing. The Ninth Jedi is an excellent example of practicing what it preaches in the text. The characters act wholly consistent to their arcs, even when they act in surprising ways. Lah Kara is an impulsive young woman who must spend the arc of the story learning to control her whims and emotions and understanding the true path of the Jedi. It’s left to her to defeat Nawaam on her own and she does it in the most unorthodox way possible. Guided by the mistaken notion that, being above the fray and looking down on both sides, she finally embraces what makes her unique, her lightsaber transforms in color before Nawaam’s eyes from a silver to a blue. 

There’s a thread that runs through the entire series that asks what the point of being “above the fray” is. Nawaam talks continuously about being above the Jedi and the Sith, that’s he’s transcended that. And over and over again Kara is forced to remind him that his actions are still having the same effect as evil. And her father is forced to reconcile with his neutrality, having removed himself from the conflict. Kara herself puts herself above the fray, “transcending” emotions and watches as her lightsaber turns silver. Ultimately, she realizes that neutrality or arrogance (in Nawaam’s case) always hurts the people he’s trying to bring peace and stability to. Neutrality always aids the oppressor. Kara and Zhima are forced to reconcile the harm they did in staying out of those fights, and Nawaam is forced to recognize that his “altruism at gunpoint” is actually evil as his saber burns red. 

This treads some of the same ground that the character work in The Last Jedi did, and it did so beautifully. I wrote about that here. Both stories forced every character to make a decision about who they really were. 

That’s where the best writing happens: forcing characters to make decisions and having those decisions affect the outcome of events. It’s really well-wrought stuff and worth your study. 

The Ninth Jedi is structured in a ten episode format, but it’s hard to count those first two episodes in the structure of the series because they were likely made before they knew there would even be a series. As we start the series proper, however, the structure of the eight new episodes is elegant. The opening episode reintroduces us to the dilemma and rules of the world. The next two really show us what every character believes. Starting with episode four, everything we learned is slowly deconstructed and re-contextualized and then blows it up entirely. Episode five gives us a breather, but also the most emotional moments in the show, where Kara is separated from everyone after their false victory and is forced to reconcile with her rage. She spends the rest of the series growing and learning until she comes back to save the day. 

It’s so elegantly structured with the right peaks and valleys across the landscape of the story, allowing it to ramp with tension, alternate with action, and give us some truly special writing.  

Every episode poses a new question and forces us to reevaluate what we thought we knew, and each one has a moment that forces us to re-contextualize what we thought we knew. It’s really worth watching and studying for how each episode moves forward predicated on the actions and desires of the characters. Never once does it feel like the plot moves without the hand of the characters in the decision-making process. It’s hard to write something that carefully, but Kamiyama was able to supervise fine, complicated writing indeed. 

I know some writers won’t watch the show. Some will dismiss it as merely anime, others still will do so for being Star Wars, but there are lessons to be had here and we’re well served to learn them. 

Star Wars Visions Presents: The Ninth Jedi is streaming now in its entirety on Disney+. 

To learn more about Bryan Young, visit his website.