'Star Wars: Visions' season 3 release date, 1st glimpse unveiled at Anime NYC 2025

NEW YORK  — Of all the expansions to the "Star Wars" universe since Disney Plus began streaming adventures from a galaxy far, far away to televisions everywhere, "Star Wars Visions" may be among the most unique.

The anthology series of animated shorts offers a wild range of "Star Wars" stories told through just-as-wildly artistic animation styles, and judging from a sneak peek at its third season — which launches Oct. 29 — that trend isn't about to change. In a special panel here at Anime NYC 2025 on Friday (Aug. 22), Lucasfilm and Disney Plus unveiled an art preview of what to expect in "Star Wars: Visions" Volume 3, including a glimpse of "BLACK" by david productions, which promises to meld images and music into "a psychedelic battle between past and present, light and dark, and life and death in the haunted psyche of an Imperial stormtrooper on the cusp of defeat," according to a description.

"We really got down into some fine details for this film. There's the Death Star … The setting is really super detailed, and the stormtroopers, drawing out the action in the battle scenes, it was really quite an arduous task for the animators," director Shinya Ohira ("Akira," Spirited Away," Kill Bill: Vol. 1") said in a pre-recorded video, according to StarWars.com.

"So that was painful, but it was worth it, and the end result really speaks for itself," Ohira added. "It's really kind of something nobody's ever seen before." (Full disclosure: I couldn't make it into the "Star Wars Visions" panel, but when I spoke to one lucky fan afterward who did manage to get into the packed presentation in Anime NYC's main stage, he assured me "it was awesome!" during a later "Dan Da Dan" panel.)

"BLACK" will feature music performed by singer Sakura Fujiwara set against a stormtrooper's fateful battle on the Death Star. In addition to directing the installment, Ohira is also a character designer and key animator for the short.

“We wanted to offer a film that was mainly based on Sakura Fujiawara's singing voice set against these visuals of intense battles. That was our vision as we made the film,” Ohira said. "As for the interpretation of the story, the viewers, the people watching it, we kind of wanted to leave it up to them … so that's how we made it."

One surprise from the Anime NYC panel included Lucasfilm's reveal of the key art for the nine-episode "Star Wars: Visions" Volume 3, a poster featuring some familiar faces from seasons past.

"Newly-unveiled key art showcases the broad range of storytelling and visual design in Volume 3, including the broken armor of the nightmarish troopers seen in “BLACK” and the return of Ronin from "The Duel," F from "The Village Bride," and Lah Kara from “The Ninth Jedi,” three shorts available in Volume 1 streaming on Disney+," Lucasfilm wrote in its recap. The first three episodes will be sequels to those Volume 1 stories, according to media reports.

"The Duel" (by Kamikazi Douga) was the first episode in the first season of "Star Wars: Visions," and features a wandering ronin protecting a village from bandits — with a red lightsaber, no less. In the fourth episode, "The Village Bride" (Kinema citrus Co.), a Jedi known as F on the run from the Empire intervenes during a wedding to save a village from a droid army run by raiders; and in the fifth episode "The Ninth Jedi" (Production I.G.), a lightsaber-smith works to help resurrect the Jedi order by reforging their weapons, only to have an unlikely wielder answer the call.

"Star Wars: Visions" Volume 3 will include shorts by the studios ANIMA, david production, Polygon Pictures, Project Studio Q and WIT Studio — all newcomers to the series — along with series veterans Kamikaze Douga (which also worked with AMINA), Kinema citrus Co., Production I.G. and TRIGGER.

"Star Wars: Visions" Volume 3 premiers on Disney Plus on Oct. 29.