There has been no shortage of new Star Wars content in recent years, and while the franchise continues to break new ground, it already boasts a rich history of 48 years’ worth of fan-favourite material. It is into the veritable treasure trove of classic characters and franchise deep cuts that series creators Dan Hernandez and Benji Samit have continued to plunder with gleeful, childlike abandon for LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy – Pieces of the Past.
Serving as the second season for the original four-part animated series that debuted in 2024, Pieces of the Past picks up the story of Sig and Dev Greebling, two nerf herders from a backwater planet whose lives are turned upside down when Sig rewrites the entire history of the galaxy when he stumbles across a mysterious Jedi artifact.
Ahead of Pieces of the Past’s streaming debut on Disney+, we caught up with leading stars Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin from Stranger Things) and Tony Revolori (Flash Thompson from the Spider-Man: Homecoming trilogy), as well as Hernandez and Samit about their delightfully absurd mashup galaxy.
“I’ll confidently say that I’m pretty well versed in pretty deep Star Wars lore,” Matarazzo explains in relation to the show’s many, assorted references to the entire saga’s decades long history. “So, most of it that came up, rather than confusing me, just excited me because they were references I was well versed with beforehand.”
Darth Dev (Tony Revolori), Sig Greebling (Gaten Matarazzo), and Servo (Michael Cusack), meet Jaxxon (Ben Schwartz)
However, one such reference that did admittedly fly over both Matarazzo’s and Revolori’s head was the inclusion of the one Legends character that George Lucas himself despised more than any other, the 1977 comic character Jaxxon T. Tumperakki. A six-foot green rabbit-like character who would later find himself dragged back into other Star Wars media, even Jaxxon’s original co-creator and Supa-Star alum Roy Thomas admitted that Lucas was not fond of his addition to Star Wars lore.
Voiced by Sonic the Hedgehog’s Ben Schwartz, Hernandez explains that Jaxxon’s addition was chosen to signal that their show was heading into the “deep, deep, deep fringes of the saga”.
“That’s where Jaxxon came from,” he explains. “And it’s also a great character design. [Artist] Howard Chaykin designed him for the Marvel Comics, [he’s] a legend.”
Of course, Jaxxon isn’t the only Star Wars deep cut to make it into Pieces of the Past, and season two continues with the traditional established by last year’s season one in bringing back some of the franchise’s original actors, one of which admittedly left Revolori a little star struck.
“I saw [Billy Dee Williams] walk out of a session,” Revolori recalls fondly. “Either I was going in and he was coming out, or I was leaving and he was coming in, and he did the [impersonating Williams’ voice] ‘Good job, baby’ and I went, ‘I’m in love.’ So, he was really cool. And I think he killed it as the [mashup character] Landolorian.”
For Hernandez, however, it was Star Wars: The Last Jedi star Kelly Marie Tran who he picked as his standout voice actor among the many returning franchise faces that also included the likes of Mark Hamill, Ahmed Best, Anthony Daniels, Sam Witwer, Dee Bradley Baker, Ashley Eckstein, Alan Tudyk, and November Supa-Star guest Cameron Monaghan.
“Kelly Marie Tran is as good a voice actor as I we have ever worked with,” Hernandez enthuses. “And she will be, I hope, in everything that we do going forward because she’s that good.”
Jedi Vader (Matt Sloan), Greedo (Jake Green), Princess Leia (Shelby Young), Jedi Jabba the Hutt (Kevin Michael Richardson), Jedi Palpatine (Trevor Devall), Yoda (Piotr Michael), and Jedi Jannah (Naomi Ackie)
Funnily enough, taking and twisting Star Wars lore for comedic effect seems to have worked in Hernandez and Samit’s favour, with the pair now working on the recently announced Spaceballs 2 with Josh Gad. Yet, for all their hilarious reworkings and playful jabs at the franchise’s long history, the pair have praised Lucasfilm’s willingness to let them explore their ideas without being policed.
“It’s one of those things where when we started this project, even before the first series, like we were expecting that maybe a lot,” Samit explains their initial hesitation about what they could and couldn’t do in the Star Wars universe. “Because we wanted to take some big swings, and we did take some big swings and to everyone’s credit, both Lucasfilm and LEGO, they never really said ‘no’ to anything.
“I think they understood what we wanted to do with this show of celebrating the way people play with their Star Wars LEGO, and that sense of creativity and fun and rebuilding the galaxy.”
You too can enjoy the fun of one of the most outrageous Star Wars mashups with LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy – Pieces of the Past, out now on Disney+.
Lead image: Jedi Bob (Bobby Moynihan), Servi (Michael Cusack), Sig Greebling (Gaten Matarazzo), and Yesi Scala (Marsai Martin) in a scene from ‘LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy – Pieces of the Past’
