The big-screen presence of the Star Wars universe has suffered a wobble in recent years, to say the least. After the lukewarm reception of Solo and the cultural backlash against The Last Jedi – never mind its critical and financial success – Disney hasn’t taken long to scale back its aspirations. A rumoured Obi-Wan movie and James Mangold’s Boba Fett project were both cancelled, and a future trilogy to be helmed by Rian Johnson is little more than a promise at this point.

Instead, it increasingly looks like the future of Star Wars is on the small screen. And after a bombastic sneak peek at spin-off series The Mandalorian and a new trailer for the revitalised Clone Wars, this does not seem at all bad. In The Mandalorian preview, we see sights and designs familiar from the original saga, as well as new worlds and the introduction of a new, Boba Fett-esque character played by Game of Thrones alumnus Pedro Pascal and Carl Weathers. The prospect of entire seasons of that stuff coming out instead of waiting for a new two-hour-long instalment every other year is intriguing, giving fans more material for their theories and fan-fic.

Epic, high-scale storytelling ... Carl Weathers in The Mandalorian. Photograph: Melinda Sue Gordon/Lucasfilm Ltd.

Even so, it would be certainly ironic if George Lucas’s saga found a new, fresh life on TV, as its history with the medium has been less than spotless. Its first appearance on the small screen was the now-notorious 1978 Holiday Special, a carnival of bad jokes, bad music and overall terrible taste that was aimed at young viewers, but missed the mark by galactic measures. Chewbacca’s father Itchy lustfully growling at a hologram of Diahann Carroll and Carrie Fisher singing what is basically a non-denominational Christmas carol set to John Williams’ famous tunes – memories of scenes like these still haunt the fans who endured this 100-minute-long exercise in cringe.

That misfire was followed in the 80s by even more projects calibrated solely towards kids: two Ewok-movies and two short-lived TV animated shows. Then there was cosmic silence for many years, until the prequels introduced a new generation of youngsters to the saga with cartoons and an animated flick.

But now even that generation of young audiences has grown up and Lucasfilm has been acquired by Disney, it might be time for something entirely different. The Mandalorian, set after the events of The Return of the Jedi, looks set to mark a watershed moment in Star Wars TV history. It is the first non-animated project to hit the small screen ever since those weird, weird Ewok movies. Also, it is set to start on 12 November – the same day the studio is launching its own streaming service Disney+ with not-so-discreet intentions to topple Netflix. The Mandalorian will be one of the studio’s first prestige shows, with approximately $10m spent on each episode – something that will emulate the tone of the films more closely, kicking off a wild space west storyline that could even prove to be the successor of such shows as Firefly.

Future TV the is ... Yoda from 2008 series The Clone Wars. Photograph: HO/Reuters

With consumer tastes shifting away from cinema and towards streaming services, and with the recent troubles around the franchise’s silver screen presence, this step might not only be a sound financial decision but a blueprint for the future. As Game of Thrones has established, epic, high-scale storytelling does have a place on the small screen and building hype around Star Wars is still not a hard thing to do, if the now-viral phone recordings circulated by attendees of The Mandalorian trailer premiere are any indication.

You might call this the Star Trek-isation of Star Wars, but if Disney+ is not to end up a complete flop – and given the “treasure trove” of assets the studio has, that seems unlikely – a live-action TV show set in a galaxy far, far away will have a chance to be the franchise’s flagship. Even until now, while the movies were strictly concerned with the troubles of the Skywalker family and their closest buddies, the TV property of Star Wars has been allowing creators to expand on the universe. Now we might be seeing their craft growing up to be the franchise’s saviour – something that could finally pacify the saga’s rabid fans and earn it some new ones.