I can still remember the Friday nights back in middle school waiting for the newest episode to come out. Though not as popular as it would become once available on streaming, the show was “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” an animated series that was premiering its first season at the time.
Ironically, the show was airing on Cartoon Network, not Disney which would later go on to purchase Lucasfilm and all the rights to the Star Wars franchise, while also making The Clone Wars series available for streaming after its stint on Netflix. But its airing on Cartoon Network was also reflective of how serious the show was taken and perceived. An experiment in its first two seasons whose plot and structure was all over the place, by the end, it became coherent, emotional and hard-hitting as it uncovered new details about Anakin Skywalker’s life, the introduction of Ahsoka Tano and the rest of the Star Wars universe.
It introduced in much greater detail than the movies ever did the planet and plotline of Mandalore, which surely sparked the inception of the wildly popular series, “The Mandalorian,” starring the brilliant Pedro Pascal. And it was the success of The Mandalorian which has likely spurred on the flurry of 10 Star Wars projects announced at Disney’s Investor Day.
While undoubtedly entertaining and one of the best pieces of Star Wars content in recent years, the Mandalorian has also been propped up by the supreme failings of “The Force Awakens” and the two subsequent movies that continued the storyline. To avoid the recent and increasingly tired tropes, Disney must look to the structure and style that was perfected in The Clone Wars and continued with “Star Wars: Rebels.”
As previously stated, the early seasons of The Clone Wars were almost overly geared towards Gen-Z audiences with a directionless plot and cookie-cutter storylines in the animated world. The same problems with Jedi always mysteriously appearing to save the day, inevitably involving star-crossed siblings, that have plagued the movies were also commonplace in the early days of The Clone Wars. It was also a problem that smeared The Mandalorian's ending for myself and other-seasoned Star Wars fans.
The build-up for the finale had been masterful, as had the conclusion of the previous season. Cornered on the bridge of Moth Gideon’s star cruiser with the most powerful droids ever created bearing down on The Mandalorian and his allies, fans were on the edge of their seats to see how he would escape this trap and succeed in his mission. Instead, however, Luke Skywalker inexplicably shows up and makes The Mandalorian’s once-mighty foes seem incompetent, further marred by the awkward CGI technology used to portray a young Mark Hamill. It was a disappointing ending to a show that had otherwise bucked many of the trends of the movies and helped fans appreciate and explore new storylines in the Star Wars universe.
The Mandalorian had already proved countless times he could overcome such a challenge, his Mandalorian colleague Bo Katan had shown her prowess for defeating longer odds dating back to The Clone Wars series. Yet by reintroducing the magical Jedi savior, The Mandalorian reintroduced a trend I thought The Clone Wars had eviscerated.
Don’t get me wrong: there were Jedi; they often saved the day in The Clone Wars. The difference was that the setting and time-period dictated their presence and heroics, but the show became so much more than that. Like any good drama, the good moments were countered by even darker and more riveting ones. Ashoka Tano leaving the Anakin and the Jedi Order, the fun side-stories of different clone squads and the introduction and (spoiler) ultimate death of Obi Wan-Kenobi’s unexpected lover Dutchess Satine all tugged on the heartstrings while helping fans appreciate new aspects of the universe.
That’s why of the 10 newly-announced additions to the Star Wars saga, I am most excited for “The Bad Batch.” The band of elite-commando misfit clones was first introduced in the final season of The Clone Wars, and figure to avoid Jedi intervention's pitfalls while further exploring the clone psyche. I have similar hopes for “The Book of Boba Fett,” given Fett’s notorious bad-blood with Jedi, while even “Ahsoka” figures to be largely removed from the Jedi pitfalls.
If those shows and any of the other announced content can successfully focus on their own plots without falling into the past's tired trends like The Clone Wars eventually mastered, it will be a boon for all like-minded Star Wars fanatics.
