Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi Hits Disney+ Aug. 5 With 8 Episodes
Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi drops all eight episodes at once today on Disney+ and Hulu, marking Lucasfilm’s first attempt at a full-length anime series and the debut of a new “Visions Presents” banner built for longer-form spinoffs of the beloved Visions anthology. The new Star Wars anime has eight episodes, all available to stream when the show releases on Disney+ and Hulu. The timing is notable: the show lands just weeks after Lucasfilm’s live-action tentpole, The Mandalorian and Grogu, stumbled badly at the box office.
Eight Episodes, One Drop: The Ninth Jedi’s Disney+ Release
Star Wars: Visions Presents — The Ninth Jedi is currently slated to premiere on Disney+ on Aug. 5, 2026, according to CBR, and Disney’s own streaming portal confirms the full run drops simultaneously rather than on a weekly schedule. Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi picks up not long after the events of the Visions shorts, with Lah Kara continuing to train in the ways of the Jedi under Margrave Juro amid an epic journey of self-discovery as she and Juro’s small fellowship of Jedi-in-training embark on a quest to save her father. The series had already screened for fans a month earlier, previewing its first episode at a First Look panel during Anime Expo on July 2, 2026, before today’s full-series launch on Disney+ and Hulu.
From Two Fan-Favorite Shorts to a Full Kara Saga
The series traces its roots to “The Ninth Jedi,” the standout Volume 1 short from 2021, and its 2025 follow-up “The Ninth Jedi: Child of Hope” from Visions Volume 3. Both were written and originated by Kenji Kamiyama, and the new series continues to follow Lah Kara, the Force-sensitive daughter of the galaxy’s last known lightsaber-smith, as her fellowship of Jedi-in-training hunts for her missing father. Production I.G, one of Japan’s most celebrated animation studios, brings Kara’s latest Star Wars adventure to life in anime form.
Lucasfilm’s senior vice president of franchise content and strategy, James Waugh, has described the drive behind expanding the Visions shorts into full series, recalling that “every time we finished one of the anthologies, the first conversation would be, ‘God, I’d love to expand that story.'” That instinct is now paying off with The Ninth Jedi as the first project to make that leap from anthology episode to standalone show.
Kamiyama, Tada and the Voices Returning as Lah Kara
Shunsuke Tada directs The Ninth Jedi, Mitsuyasu Sakai writes the series, and Kenji Kamiyama serves as supervising director. Behind the scenes, the executive producers include James Waugh, Jacqui Lopez, Josh Rimes, Justin Leach, and Mitsuhisa Ishikawa, with producers Hitoshi Ito and Kanako Shirasaki, and co-producer Caroline Keller. Kimiko Glenn returns to voice Lah Kara in the English dub, reprising the role she originated in the original 2021 short and its 2025 sequel episode.
A Rocky Year: The Mandalorian and Grogu’s Box Office Struggles
The Ninth Jedi’s arrival follows a genuinely difficult stretch for Star Wars on the big screen. The Mandalorian and Grogu, Jon Favreau’s feature spinoff starring Pedro Pascal, opened May 22 and earned a disappointing $98 million domestically, the lowest for a Disney “Star Wars” release, and saw a catastrophic 70% drop in its second weekend. With a global box office of $342.2 million against a $165 million production budget, its performance has been underwhelming.
Critical reception was also mixed rather than triumphant. The Mandalorian and Grogu currently has a critics’ score of just 62% on Rotten Tomatoes though audiences have been more generous, awarding it 89%. Against that backdrop, a smaller-scale, character-driven anime series built around a story fans already loved gives Lucasfilm a lower-risk way to reset momentum without another nine-figure theatrical gamble.
Streaming Access for New Zealand and Australian Fans
Disney+ operates as a standard subscription service across both New Zealand and Australia, and Lucasfilm’s past Visions volumes have historically dropped for local subscribers at the same moment as the US release rather than on a delay. With all eight episodes of The Ninth Jedi landing in one go today, Kiwi and Aussie fans of the original shorts won’t need to wait through a weekly rollout to see where Kara’s rescue mission goes — a binge-friendly format that suits time-zone-shifted viewing on this side of the world.
For a franchise still shaking off the disappointment of its last big theatrical swing, handing the wheel to Production I.G and the team that made the original shorts fan favourites is a considered bet: smaller canvas, established goodwill, and a story that already proved it could win over audiences twice before ever becoming a series.
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