Why George Lucas Doesn’t Want You to Watch the Original ‘Star Wars Holiday Special’

If you want to try to watch The Star Wars Holiday Special in good faith, the first hurdle you’ll encounter is an extended sequence set in Chewbacca’s family home. We watch as his wife Mala, father Itchy, and son Lumpy go about a pretty boring day on Kashyyk. Worse, there are no words. Just grunts.

The truly insane part of this is that this is what George Lucas wanted the whole damn special to be! He allegedly just wanted a standalone story about Wookies! Also if this is Chewbacca’s family, does that mean he has otherwise abandoned them to play space pirate with Han???

If you can make it through these ten minutes of hell, The Star Wars Holiday Special will just hit you with far worse…

One of the biggest, uh, stars brought on board for The Star Wars Holiday Special was sketch comedy heavyweight Harvey Norman, who played three roles in the special. However his most well-known character? A female droid chef hosting a cooking show. It’s bizarre because it’s not funny and because a Wookie is watching it and because it’s just…bizarre.

There are musical numbers peppered throughout The Star Wars Holiday Special and one of the more straightforward ones is also one of the most curious. We watch an Imperial officer tune into a Jefferson Starship performance for fun. Note this is not only the Grace Slick-less Jefferson Starship, but there doesn’t seem to be any kind of in-universe rebranding of the band beyond it being a “hologram.” Maybe the weirdest part is this is the most humanizing thing we’ve seen from an Imperial officer?

Just saying that Star Wars is known for working magic with prosthetics and this makeup is on the level of my high school drama production of Pippin… It’s not a good look!

Okay, ironically this might be one of the best parts of the whole damn Star Wars Holiday Special…but yes, Bea Arthur appears as a cantina owner named Ackmena who has to calm an uproarious crowd of patrons by treating them to a round on the house and a round of song. Arthur’s appearance isn’t just amusing, but it’s tonally in line with the kind of cheeky cameos we’ve seen lately in The Mandalorian. The only problem is it thematically doesn’t fit with the rest of The Star Wars Holiday Special. In fact…nothing does.

For a long time, The Star Wars Holiday Special’s claim to fame amongst Star Wars nerds was the fact that it is the canonical introduction to Boba Fett. The Mandalorian-armored bounty hunter shows up in an animated short voiced by the main cast. It not only teases the character’s introduction in Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, but helps account for why some fans were so obsessed with the minor character for decades. He was cool! In The Star Wars Holiday Special!

Okay, this is where The Star Wars Holiday Special gets wild. A third into the special — which is designed for home viewing with children, mind you — Chewbacca’s father Itchy is gifted a hologram performance. It’s Diahann Carroll as a very seductive singer and the elderly Wookie is clearly turned on by it all. The whole thing is borderline soft core porn. Not to mention, cross-species flirtation. It’s just bananas that anyone let this slip into The Star Wars Holiday Special in the first place! It’s uncomfortable to watch! As is…

The most cringe-worthy moment for me in The Star Wars Holiday Special comes at the end. All our heroes have come together to celebrate Life Day and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) sings a ballad in the holiday’s honor. It’s cringe-y for a lot of reasons. Do we need this song? Does Leia need to change clothes from the original movie? Is Carrie Fisher high? Yes, the glassy-eyed actress does indeed look high.

It’s just another insane moment from a made-for-TV movie full of them.

Don’t ever watch The Star Wars Holiday Special, but also never forget how weird it truly got….

Where to stream The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special