The Ninth Jedi Trailer Expands Star Wars: Visions Into Full Anime Series

Lucasfilm has unveiled the first trailer for Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi, a new eight-episode anime series that expands one of the anthology’s most beloved shorts into a full-length story. According to Polygon, the series will premiere on August 5 on both Hulu and Disney Plus, continuing the journey of protagonist Kara well beyond the original 2021 short.

The trailer debuted at Anime Expo, giving fans their first extended look at the follow-up to “The Ninth Jedi,” the fifth episode of Star Wars: Visions volume 1 directed by Kenji Kamiyama. Polygon notes that episode has long stood out as one of the anthology’s most memorable entries, with a scope that many fans felt rivaled Lucasfilm’s own mainline productions.

A story too big for one short

Set generations after the Skywalker Saga, “The Ninth Jedi” imagined a galaxy in which the Jedi have become myth and lightsabers are nearly extinct. Kara’s father, a renowned saber-smith, was positioned as one of the last links to a fading legacy, a premise that Polygon says Kamiyama built with room to grow far beyond a single 20-minute short.

The story previously continued in a volume 3 follow-up titled “Child of Hope,” and the new series now marks the first time a Visions tale has been developed into a complete television show, according to Polygon. That makes it a notable experiment for Lucasfilm, which has largely kept Visions as an anthology of standalone, self-contained shorts from different studios around the world.

Production I.G. brings acclaimed anime talent back

The series is animated by Production I.G., the studio behind Ghost in the Shell and Psycho-Pass. Kamiyama returns as supervising director, while Shunsuke Tada, known for his work on Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War, steps in as lead director, Polygon reports.

Based on the footage shown, the new series leans into large-scale set-pieces, including a massive black hole sequence that Polygon compares visually to Interstellar, alongside tense lightsaber duels and imposing new antagonists. The combination of samurai-inspired choreography, high-concept science fiction and kinetic combat that defined the original short appears to carry over into the expanded format.

What it means for the future of Star Wars: Visions

Beyond continuing Kara’s arc, the show is being framed as a test case for Lucasfilm’s broader anime ambitions. Polygon suggests that if The Ninth Jedi proves successful, it could pave the way for other standout Visions shorts to be adapted into their own extended series, rather than remaining one-off entries in the anthology.

The series also pushes Star Wars storytelling further away from the core Skywalker timeline, exploring what the Force and the concepts of Jedi and Sith mean in a galaxy where that history has largely been forgotten. For fans eager to see the franchise venture into new eras and perspectives, The Ninth Jedi looks poised to deliver exactly that when it arrives on Disney Plus and Hulu on August 5.