“Blue Harvest,” the hour-long season 6 premiere of Family Guy, is hailed as one of the show’s greatest episodes. It’s a loose remake of the original 1977 Star Wars movie with Family Guy’s characters in place of George Lucas’ iconic creations. The episode proved to be so popular that the show followed it up with a parody of The Empire Strikes Back, titled “Something Something Something Dark Side,” and a parody of Return of the Jedi, titled “It’s a Trap!”
At the end of “It’s a Trap!” when Peter finishes telling the story of Jedi, he says, “The end, and that’s the final chapter in the Star Wars saga.” Meg asks, “What about the prequels?,” and Peter replies, “I think The Cleveland Show’s gonna do those.” But The Cleveland Show was canceled years ago and the only movie parody it did was Die Hard, so that clearly isn’t going to happen.
The original Family Guy Star Wars episodes benefited from Fox owning both franchises. Now that Disney has acquired both Lucasfilm and 21st Century Fox, putting both properties under the same corporate banner once more, Family Guy should spoof the remaining Star Wars movies. Family Guy’s increasing meta-ness would open it up to revisiting the fan-favorite concept. The show shouldn’t just parody the original trilogy, but the prequels, and the sequels, too.
One of Family Guy’s defining qualities is that it goes for the jugular, and there’s a lot more opportunity for biting parody in the controversial prequel and sequel trilogies than the universally adored original trilogy. The prequels have become a goldmine for meme templates and there are a million and one plot holes to expose in the sequels. There’s a ton of comedic mileage that Family Guy could get out of the cringeworthy Anidala romance in the prequels or the toxic Reylo romance in the sequels.
In recent seasons, Family Guy has amped up its self-awareness. It’s always been a meta show – it remade Star Wars in the sixth-season premiere, after all – but in the past couple of years, the show has totally bulldozed the fourth wall. In season 17, there was a whole episode of the characters doing a DVD commentary for a non-existent episode. In season 18, there was an episode pitching several Disney-mounted Family Guy reboots in the wake of the Mouse House’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox. With the show’s current creative trajectory, finally lampooning the rest of the Star Wars saga would be par for the course.
Doing six hour-long specials covering the prequels and sequels might be a little daunting to a team of writers who admitted in the opening crawl of “It’s a Trap!” that they didn’t even want to finish spoofing the original trilogy. But they don’t necessarily need to do a whole special for each movie – one tightly written special would probably be enough to cover each trilogy.
Since Stewie played Vader in the “Blue Harvest” trilogy, it would make sense for him to play Anakin in a parody of the prequels. Anakin’s fall to the dark side would be a fun way to show the modern hypercamp Stewie slowly morphing back into his original evil matricidal characterization. Carter could reprise his role from the “Blue Harvest” episodes as Palpatine and Stewie’s mature on-and-off love interest Olivia could play Padmé. Chris could play Obi-Wan, Peter could play Qui-Gon, Lois could play Shmi, a bald Cleveland could play Mace Windu, Joe’s booming voice could be affected by General Grievous’ persistent cough, Peter’s judgmental Catholic dad could be a fun choice for Count Dooku – the possibilities are endless.
After playing the Dianoga in Star Wars, the space slug in The Empire Strikes Back, and the Sarlacc in Return of the Jedi, Meg could finally take center stage as the show’s stand-in for Rey in a parody of the sequel trilogy. As an angsty, disturbed teen, Chris would make the perfect Kylo Ren. The animators could reuse designs of older Peter and Lois from flash-forward episodes so they could reprise their roles as Han and Leia. The grumpy old man version of Luke could be played by Carter. Cleveland would make a great Finn, Stewie would make a great Poe, and with Patrick Warburton’s rich voice, Joe would make a great Snoke.
Based on the open admission at the beginning of “It’s a Trap!” that the writers phoned it in, it seems that the Family Guy writing staff just didn’t find spoofing Star Wars as fun as it sounds like it would be by the time they were on the third movie. In that case, they probably wouldn’t want to give the same treatment to two additional trilogies. But it’s been over a decade since the original trilogy parodies aired, which is long enough to get over Star Wars fatigue – and the flawed prequel and sequel trilogies are much more susceptible to the show’s biting sense of humor.