The writers behind the upcoming LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy special have revealed why Darth Jar Jar is no laughing matter.

It’s going to be a day to remember when LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy finally hits Disney+ on September 13. Eager fans have been eagerly anticipating the chance to finally check out the upcoming four-part animated special since the first trailer dropped earlier this year.

Since then, three more LEGO Star Wars sets based on Rebuild the Galaxy have been released, with 75388 Jedi Bob's Starfighter, 75389 The Dark Falcon and 75393 TIE Fighter & X-Wing Mash-up offering twisted versions of existing ships and characters.

Ahead of the release of LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy, Benji Samit and Dan Hernandez, the special's showrunners and writers, shared some of their alternate takes on familiar heroes and villains.

“I think we wanted to have an all-encompassing sense of both LEGO and Star Wars,” Dan explained, “and so it felt to us, especially in the case of Darth Jar Jar, that we actually had the dramatic delivery system to tell his story in a way that wasn't a joke.”

“Of course he’s funny and the memes and the theories are hilarious, and we love all that. But we also said, you know, let’s really challenge ourselves. We can even get a little bit scary. We can make it totally make sense that Darth Jar Jar would exist in this version of the LEGO Star Wars universe.”

“It was the same with Jedi Bob and his deep history. So from an early point we said, let's try to incorporate some things that are unexpected, but let's try to do it in a way that's not just, 'oh, I recognize that meme,' but that's actually part of the larger story that's being explored.”

“It would be really easy to turn this into a bunch of different little sketches of 'what if...?' scenarios,” Benji added, “jumping between a silly Ewok bounty hunter thing and now here's a little silly Darth Jar Jar moment.

But I think it would have gotten old pretty quickly and it was important for us to have a strong, real Star Wars story with three-dimensional characters at the heart of it. Then all those other jokes and funny things would be in service of the actual story."

You can watch all four parts of the upcoming LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy special when they hit Disney+ on September 13.