LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures Review

LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures premiered on Disney XD today. Kids will enjoy it, but fans concerned about canon will need to turn elsewhere.

LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures is Disney XD’s latest Star Wars offering, set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The half-hour long show features a new cast of characters: the Freemaker family, made up of Zander, Kordi, and Rowan, and their droid, a BT-1 battle model aptly named Roger.

The three siblings, Rowan being the youngest, are making their way through the galaxy as enterprising scavengers, when Rowan discovers he has a powerful and unique connection to the Force. Unfortunately for him, it’s a power the Emperor, Darth Vader, and a new servant of evil want to exploit.

Here’s the thing: The show is entertaining enough, the scenes with the Emperor and Darth Vader particularly because LEGO makes them hilarious. But don’t enter it thinking it’s going to be the next Star Wars Rebels or The Clone Wars. For one thing, there are clearly parts of the show which aren’t canon (sadly, the Emperor probably wouldn’t say “Emperor likey!” in any of the canon films, shows, or literature). Secondly, the plot feels too epic and serious to be canon in a LEGO format. Some of it may make you wonder which parts of it are Star Wars in-universe history and what are not, because some of it is actually really cool.

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Here’s the main lowdown of the plot: while on a scavenging trips with his siblings on a planet covered in Clone War relics, Rowan discovers he can hear the Force calling to him through the fragments of the kyber crystal lightsaber, the very first lightsaber ever built. Not only does the weapon have a solid blade, it also augments its user’s Force powers by astronomical proportions. It’s a blade any self-respecting Sith would die to get their hands on, but given Rowan’s connection to the kyber lightsaber, the dark lords will just let him take the fall, after he gets them all the pieces.

And he’s going to get the pieces for them, because he just made friends with a person who he believes is a Jedi, but who is really a dark servant of the Emperor. Naare befriended Rowan on the planet where he first discovered the hilt of the kyber lightsaber. Not only has she convinced him she is a Jedi, but also that he needs to find all the fragments of the lightsaber blade in order to have a weapon to fight the Emperor and restore peace to the galaxy with.

Why isn’t the kyber lightsaber intact? The Jedi who fashioned it decided its power was too great, so he broke the blade into fragments and instructed several Jedi Knights to take the separate pieces to distant parts of the galaxy. To put the blade back together, the Freemakers will have to travel across multiple systems, blissfully unaware of the ticking Imperial bomb that is their supposed Jedi ally.

Sounds pretty cool, right? It makes me wish the plot was canon, and the show was animated in the style of Star Wars Rebels, or even in a 2D-animated form like Avatar: The Last Airbender. But being that it’s not canon, I’m cautious about how much love I invest in the story The Freemaker Adventures is gearing up to tell.

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In the end, though, it’s a great romp for fans who don’t care about canon. And if you’re looking for a fun Star Wars show that’s both lighthearted and features some interesting storytelling, The Freemaker Adventures is a good show to check out for you, too. Just heave a sigh that it might not matter to the grand scheme of established in-universe events.

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