Jon Favreau teases his Star Wars television series with an alarming board picture

It's time to put it away, dear friends of Star Wars. The atrocities Holiday Special is officially canon.

Jon Favreau treated Instagram followers of a teasing video nugget related to his upcoming TV series, The mandalorian. You can look at the picture and think, "So what? It's just a great Star Wars blaster, is not it?"

Right. And false. This image contains multitudes. Watch it and cry, true to Star Wars.

This is not any blaster, you see. This blaster contains multitudes. He's wearing a striking resemblance to that an animated version of the famous bounty hunter carried in the infamous Star Wars Special, a televised attack on the senses, motivated by hilarious writing and excessive schmaltz.

the Holiday Special lives thanks to the magic of the Internet (just Google, people). But you can see the blaster here. Favreau is much more sophisticated and detailed, but it's clearly a spiritual successor to what you see below.

Now, of course, the "gun" is a little too much. It's only a cool design blaster, and Favreau – and the many creators he works with – should be given the creative license to remove visuals from Star Wars' past and to breathe them a new meaning. This is a cornerstone of the success of the larger imaginary universe, frankly.

But it's still shocking for a Star Wars fan to see this relic of Holiday Special surface this way. Or, really, no serious reference to that in modern culture. It was a bad time, people.