How Disney Can Salvage Rangers of the New Republic

News on Rangers of the New Republic has been quiet since the firing of Gina Carano, but Star Wars has a rich cast of characters from various corners of the franchise that could be united together to be the leads of the show and create the next great chapter in the story unfolding in the wake of Return of the Jedi.

Star Wars is having a big resurgence. Despite claims the franchise was dead after the poor reaction to The Rise of Skywalker, the franchise is still going strong in various mediums like comics, books, and most importantly television as Disney+ has become the place for Star Wars stories. While Star Wars has had a couple of animated series throughout its history, it has now made the leap into live-action television as The Mandalorian was one of the launch titles for the streaming service.

At Disney’s 2020 Investor Call, they confirmed The Mandalorian was just part of a larger story they were telling on Disney+ and it would connect with an announced live-action Ahsoka series starring Rosario Dawson, and the then unannounced Book of Boba Fett series. While Book of Boba Fett just finished, Mandalorian season 3 is currently filming and Ahsoka is set to begin filming soon, one series announced at the investor call has sadly gone quiet due to behind-the-scenes issues: Rangers of the New Republic.

Rangers of the New Republic was likely teased in The Mandalorian’s second season in “Chapter 12: The Seige” and was set to be focused on fan-favorite character Cara Dune played by Gina Carano. In February 2021, just two months after Rangers of the New Republic was announced, Carano was fired by Disney due to a series of controversies on social media including mocking mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting voter fraud during the 2020 election despite all evidence to the contrary, mocking the use of pronounces in people’s bio’s on social media, and comparing the political divide in the United States to Nazi Germany. Carano’s firing has apparently scuttled conversation about Rangers of the New Republic with the series no longer in active development.

How To Help Rangers of the New Republic

Yet Disney and Lucasfilm don’t need Carano to make Rangers of the New Republic and the premise suggests the series is less about one character and more about a team of people, and the Star Wars galaxy has a rich catalog of characters to draw from. While Star Wars is desperately in need of creating new characters and not so reliant on fan-favorite characters, this is the one project where they could mine their rich history and bring together characters from different parts of the franchise’s history. Disney should take a page out of their competitor Warner Bros. handbook, specifically how DC and the CW took various supporting characters from their Arrowverse series and spun them off into Legends of Tomorrow. Rangers of the New Republic could be the epic team-up show of the Star Wars universe.

Plotwise, The Rangers of the New Republic could be an elite squad of New Republic officers as they handle and investigate issues through the galaxy about how the New Republic maintains orders in a galaxy that still has a power vacuum left over by the Empire. The series has a chance to really delve into the politics of the Star Wars universe post Return of the Jedi and establish how the galaxy will get to the point in the sequel trilogy. Here are the ideal characters to make up this elite team in Rangers of the New Republic.

Cobb Vanth

First introduced in The Star Wars: Aftermath novels, Cobb Vanth made his live-action appearance in The Mandalorian season 2 premiere, where he instantly broke out as a favorite among the audience, in no small part to the casting of Timothy Olyphant who just has such leading man energy it feels crazy to think that Lucasfilm isn’t already trying to find a way to put him in a spin-off series. The character reappeared in The Book of Boba Fett where he was shot and left for dead by Cad Bane, but the series end credit moments revealed Cobb was preserved in the bacca tank and was about to get a mod upgrade.

Cobb being a lawman of Tatooine makes him an ideal candidate to join the Rangers of the New Republic, and while it would seem unlikely he would want to leave Mos Pelgo (now Freetown), with Boba Fett now watching over Tatooine, Cobb could see the city is in good hands and could be convinced he is needed to help bring law and order to a galaxy that is overrun with criminals and Imperial remnants. Also, they can’t just waste Timothy Olyphant in a supporting role, he is right there they need to use him and get their money’s worth.

Captain Carson Teva

Captain Carson Teva (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) is a New Republic officer who has appeared twice in The Mandalorian and once in The Book of Boba Fett. His second appearance in The Mandalorian teased the Rangers of the New Republic spin-off when it was set to be centered on Cara Dune, so it makes a certain amount of sense to make him part of the series.

He could act as the chief of the squad of rangers, the boss who both struggles to wrangle in his new team but also believes in them. The series could flesh out his character more and examine his time serving during the Rebel alliance. Paul Sun-Hyung Lee is a massive Star Wars fan and his enthusiasm for the material should be rewarded with a lead part in the new series.

Iden Versio & Dio

The lead character in Star Wars: Battlefront 2, Iden Versio was formally the leader of Inferno Squad, a group of elite Imperial soldiers, who eventually defects to the Rebel Alliance after seeing the atrocious the Empire commits to its own people following the destruction of the second Death Star. Battlefront 2 sees Iden fight at the Battle of Jakku, which is shortly before the events of The Mandalorian and there is a big gap in the character’s timeline until the game’s epilogue which takes place right before The Last Jedi.

Iden being a former Imperial and leader of a squad makes her an ideal candidate to join the Rangers of the New Republic both from an in-universe standpoint as she has the training, but also dramatically sense many of her teammates could distrust her due to her former Imperial background. It would be Iden having to earn the trust and respect of her new team and make up for her past crimes. The character also is always accompanied by her droid ID10 nicknamed Dio and that character provides tactile on-the-ground hacking that an R2 unit would provide. Actress Janina Gavankar voiced and provided the motion capture for Iden in the game so she could easily take on the role for the series.

RX-24

The other Captain Rex of the Star Wars franchise, the character made his first appearance in the Disneyland ride Star Tours where he became a fan favorite to visitors of the park. Since his appearance, the RX droids have appeared in Star Wars: Rebels and The Book of Boba Fett. However, this particular unit, RX-24 canonically resides in Ulga’s Cantina in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge where it is established sometime before the sequel trilogy RX-24 crash lands and is reprogramed as the cantina DJ.

While that is where his story ends, there is still plenty left to be explored and it is never established exactly when he crashes on the planet Batuu, so the character could still have a whole series of adventures before then. RX-24 could be a Starcruiser droid that was about to be tossed out but the New Republic took after they saw his impressive flying skills and made part of their team as a pilot. Star Wars always needs a droid character and RX-24 would provide a different type of droid companion to R2D2, C3PO, and BB-8.

Amilyn Holdo

Played by Laura Dern in The Last Jedi, the character is established as having a history with Princess Leia and the Rebel Alliance. A younger version of the character appears in 2017’s Claudia Gray novel Leia: Princess of Alderaan as a more Luna Lovegood type character who is a more esoteric and spiritual person. While there is a contrast to her portrayal in The Last Jedi, given the massive time frame between the two stories Rangers of the New Republic could explore the character’s growth into becoming a more stern but tactical war general that is present in the sequel trilogy.

She could act as the team’s spiritual leader, often knowing about the rich histories and mythologies of the various planets and cultures the team visits and providing much-needed exposition for audiences. It would also give audiences more context for that character in the movie, further deepening the film in the wider Star Wars canon. While Star Wars has been known to experiment with digital de-aging to mixed results, it would be best to recast the role with a younger performer around the same age that Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were during the events of the original trilogy.

AP-5

While the team already has two droid characters in the form of Dio and RX-24, AP-5 function in the team would be more to operate at the central home base. Introduced in Star Wars: Rebels, AP-5 is a former Imperial droid who was tired of being mistreated and joined the Rebel Alliance after befriending Chopper.

Bringing in Rebels characters is tricky since Sabine Wren and Ezra Bridger are set to be part of the upcoming Ahsoka series, and we know the fates of Hera, Chopper, and Zeb after the series, AP-5 status is unknown so he could have stayed working for the New Republic and assigned to this squad as he has a history working with motley crews.

Making him the uptight member of the Squad’s base works for some comedic brevity and voice actor Stephen Stanton molded the character’s vocal of the late Alan Rickman, this is one character who deserves more screentime.

Jaxoon

It’s time for Star Wars to make the big green bunny that George Lucas hated canon already. Yes, the character has appeared in a few books since the Disney acquisition, but it is time to get him out in front of an audience. A good Star Wars story needs an alien character in the cast, and while there are some fan favorites Star Wars does need to expand its roster and introduce something new, but introducing Jaxxon allows them to use a character from the old expanded universe while also creating an entirely new character from the ground up.

The character has a history with Han and Lando, and he could be referred to the Rangers by them as a contact in the criminal underworld. While the presence of a green alien bunny seems silly to even by Star Wars standards, he is very much a Star Wars way of taking a character a worn archetype and making it fresh.

Taking a cool smuggler but subverting it by making him a silly-looking alien is very much a Star Wars thing to do. Star Wars is inherently silly, and what makes the franchises is to go places that other franchises would not because it embraces its silly elements. Jaxxon could go horribly wrong if done poorly, but he could also go over great if done right and that is a risk that Disney and Lucasfilm should not be afraid to take.

Guri

The final piece of the team could be the catalyst for the entire events of the series, as a prototype Imperial weapon who may not know she is one. Introduced in the Legends storyline Shadow of the Empire, Guri is a droid who appears to be human. This detail is an interesting one for Star Wars to explore, and the character could be a relic left over from the Empire, a project they were working on alongside The Death Star and Thrawn’s Tie Incerpeptors.

The Empire could have attempted to create programmable killers that appeared human to infiltrate enemy bases. Essentially Terminator’s in Star Wars. Guri could be revealed to be the one and only model that was ever field-tested and was sent to infiltrate the Rebels but broke away from her programming as she began to develop free will, something many droids in the Star Wars universe possess.

Guri would have interesting dynamics to explore with RX-24 as a fellow droid, Iden as a former tool of the Empire, and Carson Teva who can discover her true purpose and question everything he ever knew about her. A character who appears to be human but is actually a droid and questioning their purpose may seem more Battlestar Galactica than Star Wars, but it would make for an exciting point for the team.

The Star Wars franchise always has had an interesting relationship between concepts of humans and droids. Vader is seen as less because he is ‘more machine than man’ but the droids of Star Wars are some of their most human characters. So much so the tricky topic of if the droids are slaves are not is such a discussed talking point it was integrated into canon with Solo: A Star Wars Story. The Book of Boba Fett introduced The Mods who willingly give themselves cybernetic enhancements. Guri being made a canon character, and a hero of the Rangers of the New Republic allows the creators to tackle a different type of Star Wars story.

What do you think Disney should do with Rangers of the New Republic? What would you like to see from the show? Let us know in the comments below.