While the big news of the day is the launch of Disney+ in general and the debut of The Mandalorian, there were a few small bits of Star Wars news revealed in the launch. One of those was the brand new logo animation added to the beginning of The Mandalorian.
After the standard Disney+ and Lucasfilm Ltd. logos, a beeping sound begins before flashes of various Star Wars images from throughout the saga appear before he traditional Star Wars logo fades in, first multi-colored, but then to its usual yellow. The beeps are part of The Mandalorian episode but do happen to tie in nicely with the animation.
Here’s the full animation. Apologies for the slight hiccup at the end, as the stream got interrupted during capture.
What does this mean?
While this logo isn’t that big of a deal to the average viewer, it does signal to the consumer that Disney has entered a new era of Star Wars branding and brings Star Wars more in line with how Marvel is handled. All MCU films have an opening logo animation, marking them as part of the Marvel Studios experience. This new animation is just the Star Wars version of that.
What remains to be seen is if the animation will appear ahead of The Rise of Skywalker. Skywalker Saga films have a traditional opening sequence that begins with the Lucasfilm logo before fading to the “A long time ago…” text and introduction crawl. I expect we’ll see this animation after the Lucasfilm logo, but before the traditional text. We’ll find out for sure on December 19th when early showings begin.
