After the refreshing Life Day fun in last years’ The LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special, LEGO returns instead with a sinister plan in mind: scare all the Disney+ subscribers with some Terrifying Tales! LEGO Star Wars: Terrifying Tales, the premise of which sounds an awful lot like the Vader’s Castle series of yearly frights from IDW, will premiere on Disney+ October 1, with stars like Tony Hale, Christian Slater, Dana Synder, and more bringing the spooky special to life.
Here’s the synopsis:
“After the events of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Poe Dameron and BB-8 must make an emergency landing on the volcanic planet Mustafar where they meet the greedy and conniving Graballa the Hutt. The crime boss has purchased Darth Vader’s castle and is renovating it into the galaxy’s first all-inclusive Sith-inspired luxury hotel. While waiting for his X-Wing to be repaired, Poe, BB-8, Graballa, and Dean (a plucky and courageous young boy who works as Graballa’s mechanic) venture deep into the mysterious castle with Vader’s loyal servant, Vaneé. Along the way, Vaneé shares three creepy stories linked to ancient artifacts and iconic villains from across all eras of Star Wars. As Vaneé spins his tales and lures our heroes deeper into the shadowy underbelly of the castle, a sinister plan emerges. With the help of Dean, Poe and BB-8 will have to face their fears, stop an ancient evil from rising, and escape to make it back to their friends.”
Since 2018, Cavan Scott’s writing via IDW comics frightens readers every October with the Vader’s Castle series, and the overall premise is very similar, as characters recount tales of horror and scares with Vader’s Mustafarian Castle being a recurring setting for the framing story, even including Vaneé in the tale spinning, even showing us his origin story. I really hope they give a shout-out or credit due for Scott and the various artists who have delighted year-after-year, especially since they didn’t seem reach out to them when making this; at the very least the official site could’ve mentioned the series in the article for the announcement. The final Vader’s Castle miniseries begins this September, titled Ghost of Vader’s Castle!
Tony Hale of Arrested Development fame will voice the creepy and now very ancient Vaneé, while Christian Slater, who I’ve grown to love due to Mr. Robot, will voice Ren. I highly doubt this means Kylo Ren, as it seems like a strange omission to not include Ben Solo’s full dark side name, so it likely means Ren himself, the leader of the Knights of Ren before Kylo kills him, as played out in the comic miniseries The Rise of Kylo Ren. Having read the series, I will say, now that they cast Christian Slater, his voice fits perfectly for the confident, slightly crazy, and magnanimous but tough personality writer Charles Soule gave Ren. I’m really looking forward to seeing what the LEGO version of him will be up to in Vaneé’s tale! Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, who voiced Governor Pryce in Star Wars Rebels and Freya in Star Wars Resistance (and was even a Voice Director!) will play NI-L8, which took me a moment but once I got the droid’s name, it gave me a good laugh. Jake Green returns as Poe Dameron from the Life Day special; Raphael Alejandro will voice Dean; Dana Snyder returns to voice Graballa the Hutt, from LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures; and Trevor Devall as Emperor Palpatine from other LEGO shows. I’m sure there’ll be more voices and cameos to come.
LEGO Star Wars: Terrifying Tales premieres October 1 on Disney+. Check back for my review around then!
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor.