Over the last few years Marvel has made great strides in adapting existing properties into audio fiction, porting tentpole heroes like Wolverine and the Fantastic Four to podcatchers near you.  MARVELS in particular is exciting from an industry perspective. While a great podcast in its own right, the fact MARVELS features writer Lauren Shippen, director Paul Bae, and sound designer Mischa Stanton shows the big M is paying attention to the podcast industry-at-large, something most traditional media companies haven’t bothered doing as they dip their toes into audio fiction.  

With the news in October that Marvel is producing four more fiction shows to be released through Sirius XM, I think it’s safe to say licensed superhero shows are off to a running start. Now that some favorite be-spandexed characters are in the hopper it feels like a perfect time to try something else Marvel Comics has the rights to and has been doing fun stuff with recently. Something set in a certain galaxy far, far away. 

Whoever needs to hear this at whatever level of IP ownership: please get the ball rolling on a Star Wars audio fiction series. 

It’s difficult to find an interview about the origins of Star Wars where Lucas doesn’t directly cite movie serials like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon as inspirations. He loved them to the point of talking Spielberg into producing something else pulled straight from adventure serials, what we now know as the first Indiana Jones. These serials from the 30s and 40s were frequently adaptations of existing radio drama or pulling from source material that had found success as radio drama. 

Audio fiction, audio drama, fiction podcasting, whatever you want to call podcasts-that-are-fiction, there’s an industry jam-packed with bright stars who’ve been elevating the art form for decades, the world of podcasting allowing said progress to shift into high gear. Podcasting might not be as easy to get started in as lazy journalists will claim, but there’s definitely a lower barrier to entry as a new creator than getting signed at a company like Big Finish. Whether one wants something more contemporary or a style that leans into swashbuckling sci-fi adventure, there’s a community full of bright stars who’ve been delivering phenomenal science fantasy.  They’re here, they’re awesome, put them to work. 

My adolescent years were spent filling my bedroom with hundreds of reference guides, comic books, and expanded universe novels. I devoured the flavor text on the back of action figures, I suffered our painfully slow internet speeds to read through Wookieepedia entries. Suffice it to say, a significant portion of my media diet was ancillary Star Wars content. Through thousands of pages (and hundreds of hours playing video games) there is a consistent thread throught every story: the Star Wars galaxy’s ability to fire the imagination. From its highest highs to its lowest lows that fictional world leaves the audience begging for more. 

The movies walk a careful tightrope, providing so many iconic sights and sounds while also leaving just enough questions unanswered. Questions powerful enough to seduce fantasy and sci-fi authors away from the usual books that pay the bills to write a one-off novel where their name is 10x smaller than the words STAR WARS on the cover. Dozens of expanded universe stories have been published with the sole intention of fleshing out characters who’re on screen for mere seconds. The delightfully goofy stuff Lucasfilm was fine with licensing back in the 90s/00s powered by an “anything goes” mentality does wonders to keep that 1930s Buck Rogers serial spirit alive and well. 

It’s eternally thrilling to see the trappings and tropes of that wonderful universe shown through a different creative lens. The Last Jedi takes a series known for escalating big galaxy-threatening stakes and scales down to a far more local, human level. The Mandalorian, when not enchanting the internet with a certain green puppet, is a spaghetti western with blasters (and a penchant for casting comedians). Rebels follows up The Clone Wars’ rainbow of locations and characters with a small ensemble on one seemingly unimportant planet for a good portion of the first season. 

And that’s just widely-distributed content. If one steps through the beaded curtain into the content now labeled “Legends” they’ll find some decidedly spicy examples of stories with wackadoo plots that would be a blast to adapt. Please, step into Cafe Extended Universe. May I interest you in the time a Hutt built a cut-rate Death Star shaped like a lightsaber? How about the young adult horror novel about two teens stuck on a Star Destroyer full of zombie stormtroopers? Or perhaps the special of the day: that time mere days after Return of the Jedi where Luke has to deal with talking velociraptors who imprison people’s souls in pyramid-shaped fighter craft to do their bidding?

Suffice it to say, one has a lot of room to play in this massive sandbox. 

Then there’s the fact that Star Wars has a leg up over most other intellectual properties when it comes to porting over to audio. It’s borderline cheating, really, as the saga’s sound design and music features some of the most iconic audio ever put to celluloid. There are some sounds that will forever be associated with Star Wars thanks to the tireless efforts of people like Ben Burtt. From simple door foley to the unmistakable hum of a lightsaber, there’s a gargantuan catalog of audio that’d go a long way to giving this new podcast authenticity. The audible world of Star Wars is a potent spice. 

John Williams’ score has already been stripped down and reappropriated dozens of times over in video games throughout the last 40-ish years, a strong seasoning dashed on top of newly-created music to give it proper Star Wars legitimacy. Careful use of both works wonders to create visions of the world in pure audio form. While minimalistic by contemporary audio drama standards, the sound design of the old NPR Star Wars radio drama trilogy still serves as great evidence of how much potential lies in seemingly few sound effects.

A running thread through the Disney-produced Star Wars films has been that of hope. Hope against all odds, hope for a bright future. Audio fiction is a pretty hopeful place full of hopeful people. It’s hard not to get swept up at the thought of an engineer like Mischa Stanton or Jeffrey Nils Gardner being tossed the keys to the archive. To potentially hear what writers like Gabriel Urbina or Jordan Cobb could produce. To possibly hear voice actors young and old build a galaxy of bounty hunters, Jedi knights, smugglers, moisture farmers, Sith Lords, the whole shebang. 

Now is as good as time as any for Star Wars to return to audio. Marvel, Lucasfilm, Big Finish, whoever needs to hear this: the podcasting world is ready and willing to take us all back to a galaxy far far away.  

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