Kathleen Kennedy, the woman who took some of the world's greatest cinematic franchises and drove them into the ground, is finally stepping down as head of Lucasfilm. That should be good news, but the damage is already done, and now Kennedy gets to ride off into the sunset with zero repercussions for the destruction she's left in her wake.
George Lucas created one of the greatest cinematic universes in the history of entertainment, Star Wars, and he gifted it to Kennedy on a silver platter. What followed was an intentional dismantling of Star Wars from the story audiences loved into a sloppy, feminized girl-boss dumpster fire targeting "Modern Audiences" (that don't exist — more on that in a moment)."
Kathleen Kennedy is officially leaving Lucasfilm after 14 years.
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) January 15, 2026
This will be her last week as head of the studio pic.twitter.com/a5ZQEtpVAT
I will give Kennedy credit where it's due. She was a producer or executive producer on many really good films, including Indiana Jones, The Goonies, Jurassic Park, The Sixth Sense, and Back to the Future. Those films have grossed more than $10 billion in the global box office.
About to be LOTS of bad takes about Kathleen Kennedy, but she made:
— Joe Russo (@joerussotweets) January 15, 2026
Indiana Jones, Poltergeist, ET, Gremlins, Back to the Future, The Goonies, Batteries Not Included, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Cape Fear, Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, Twister (and MORE).
She’s GOAT’ed. pic.twitter.com/TXGcbzevSC
But the bigger decisions about these films were made by people other than Kennedy. People who were more talented with better visions for the films, and who understood what audiences wanted.
The reality is this: when Kennedy took over, she broke all those good things. Here are some of the bad decisions Kennedy herself either made or agreed to during her time as the head of Lucasfilm:
- Cancelling the Star Wars Expanded Universe. George Lucas' space trilogy gave birth to the Expanded Universe (EU), a wide collection of books and comics that carried on the stories of Luke, Leia, Han, the Empire and the Rebels beyond the movies. It provided continuity after The Return of the Jedi. In 2014, Kennedy announced the EU and the hundreds of stories were no longer canon, and rebranded them all as "Star Wars Legends," in favor of "new stories" going forward, including the lesbian space witches of The Acolyte (more on that in a second). This means that the plethora of books and comics from which Lucasfilm could have drawn inspiration for movies was shelved. In a 2019 Rolling Stone interview, Kennedy said, "There’s no source material. We don’t have comic books. We don’t have 800-page novels" to use to create movies. So it's clear she either didn't know about or didn't care about the EU that she canceled just five years prior.
- Killing Han Solo in The Force Awakens, which meant fans would not get the much-desired reunion of Han, Luke, and Leia, and setting up the subsequent Han Solo standalone film for failure, because everyone knows how his story ends.
- Firing the directors of the Solo movie. When the film was more than half finished, Kennedy fired directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and reworked the entire film. It ended up flopping at the box office —a first for Star Wars.
- Shutting down LucasArts, creator of Star Wars video games including X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, and KOTOR. Kennedy oversaw the shift from an in-house game studio to one that did licensing instead. This also shelved Star Wars 1313, a game that was highly anticipated by Star Wars fans.
- Making Luke Skywalker a pathetic old man. Yes, Mark Hamill is a woke jerk, but Luke Skywalker was one of the biggest, most recognizable movie characters in cinematic history. Kennedy turned him into a cranky hermit who literally throws away his lightsaber and ends up dying in the newest trilogy, too.
- Galaxy's Edge. Hailed as an immersive Star Wars experience at Disney, Kennedy decided not to include any of the original Star Wars characters because she didn't want the park to "cater to 50-year-olds." Of course, those 50-year-old fans are the only ones who had the disposable income to pay the $4,800-$6,000 price tag for two people to spend two nights in Galaxy's Edge. "There are way more Star Wars stories ahead of us than behind us," was Kennedy's thinking. The Galactic Star Cruiser Hotel cost $1 billion and closed after 18 months.
- Firing Gina Carano, which ended in a massive (albeit undisclosed) settlement with Disney after Elon Musk paid for Carano's legal team.
- The Acolyte. Kennedy hired Harvey Weinstein's former personal assistant, Leslye Headland, to head up one of the worst Star Wars shows in history: The Acolyte. The show featured lesbian space witches who used The Force to create twin girls, Osha and Mae. It was so bad that it has a 19 percent fan score on Rotten Tomatoes.
- Willow. The television reboot of the fantasy film was so bad that Disney erased it from streaming.
- Indiana Jones. She was the reason we got Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and the Dial of Destiny. Need I say more?
Of course, rather than look at the mistakes and fan criticisms, Kennedy and the media took the failure of Star Wars as proof that the fans were "toxic" and "sexist." When the Obi-Wan Disney+ series flopped, star Ewan McGregor said fans were also racist. There hasn't been a Star Wars movie in films in over half a decade, and the next offering — The Mandalorian and Grogu — will likely flop, too.
In an interview with Deadline about her departure, Kennedy said she has no regrets. "I think we did find new characters. We continue to find new characters," she said. Of course, 30 years from now, no one will remember Rey or Finn or Kylo Ren...and those are the only characters I can name off the top of my head. On the other hand, Darth Vader is universally recognized, as are Luke, Han, and Leia, Chewbacca, R2D2, C3PO, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Lando Calrissian, Jabba the Hutt, and a slew of others from the original trilogy.
What that tells us is that those "Modern Audiences" Kennedy wanted to bring into the Star Wars fold do not exist. There is no untapped demographic of gay/lesbian, feminist Star Wars nerds who just couldn't get into the films until a bunch of lesbian space witches changed, "the power of one, the power of many." They were never fans, and they're never going to be fans. Instead, you have people like me who grew up on Star Wars, even the prequels, who got to sit and watch Kennedy destroy a piece of our childhoods and our culture to appease her belief that "The Force is Female."
To make matters worse, Kennedy isn't riding off into the sunset. She'll still have some influence, and it appears one of her successors, Dave Filoni, wasn't a fan of the one decent Star Wars property to come out of the Kennedy era: the show Andor.
Andor, widely regarded as one of the strongest creative achievements of Kathleen Kennedy’s tenure at Lucasfilm, was reportedly disliked by Dave Filoni, according to Lucasfilm sources cited in a new analysis by @DrewTailored and @TheWrap.
— Scott Gustin (@ScottGustin) January 16, 2026
Story: https://t.co/iLNfzZHZan pic.twitter.com/ulVm6v9bj2
That means you won't ever see another Star Wars show or movie of that caliber. Instead, you'll get more versions of The Acolyte, and you'll like it. Or else.
Kathleen Kennedy will no doubt be celebrated by the same legacy that insisted every flop was a triumph and every critic was a bigot. But outside that bubble, her record is unmistakable. She inherited a generational phenomenon and leaves behind a brand so damaged that Hollywood is afraid to put it back in theaters. That’s not progress. That’s mismanagement on a historic scale, meaning there is nothing to celebrate about Kennedy's departure. She's leaving in her wake the smoldering ruins of a once-great franchise, and she'll be applauded as a hero for it.
But I, for one, won't miss her.
