More Star Wars Is Coming to Disney+, Including Part of the Infamous Star Wars Holiday Special

It’s not just a flood of Marvel content coming to overload the Disney+ user interface in the near future—Star Wars wants in on the fun as well. The company announced that some long-lost and rarely seen Star Wars properties would be headed to the streaming service in April, including the two live-action Ewok TV movies of the 1980s, and even a segment of the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, which has never been publicly available on any streaming service.

Most of the stuff arriving on April 2 (they presumably didn’t want to pick April 1, or people would have thought this was a joke) hasn’t ever been easy to find, in fact. The two films are 1984’s Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure and 1985’s Ewoks: The Battle of Endor, which both take place among the Ewoks between the time of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Neither are particular well regarded by Star Wars fans, but the completionists will surely be unable to resist.

Also being added to Disney+ in April are the two-season animated TV series Star Wars: Ewoks from 1985, and Genndy Tartakovsky’s Star Wars: Clone Wars animated shorts, which led into the Clone Wars animated TV series. But the crown jewel would be “The Story of the Faithful Wookie,” a 10-minute segment of animation that is frequently regarded as the only watchable portion of the legendarily painful Star Wars Holiday Special, which first aired in 1978, never to be seen on TV again.

As any Star Wars superfan knows, “The Faithful Wookie” was the original introduction for the character of Boba Fett, predating his appearance in 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back. In the animated story, Han and Chewie have their first run-in with the legendary bounty hunter, and its visual style has gone on to inform Star Wars properties right up to The Mandalorian. In fact, the titular Mando of that series uses the same pitchfork-shaped rifle as Boba Fett did in “The Faithful Wookie.” Those who have never seen this odd bit of Star Wars ephemera will definitely want to check it out on April 2, 2021.