The following article contains spoilers for: The Rise of Skywalker.
Who knew that an animated TV series could have such an impact. After about seven years of getting the ax from Disney, “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” is back! The animated Star Wars series returns for one last season on Disney+! The series’s seventh season debuted on Disney+ with “The Bad Batch” this past Friday.
As it was previously announced, the final season would have three story arcs and only twelve episodes. I am perfectly fine with twelve episodes if I am being completely honest. I just want this series to be given the ending it deserves.
It was a total surprise announcement that the series would be returning for a final season. It was first announced during San Diego Comic Con 2018 that the series would be receiving a proper finale.
The series was originally canceled in 2013 after the show wrapped up its fifth season. Rightfully so, fans of the animated Star Wars series were very upset over the surprise cancellation of the beloved show.
The show started off with a pretty rocky reception. Some felt that the series was a bit childish and did not appreciate some changes to the Star Wars lore. For example, Star Wars creator, George Lucas, came up with a new change to the Anakin Skywalker character.
He gave the character a Padawan, which essentially means an apprentice. Fans were upset because his Padawan was very childish and did not think it was plausible that he would be master when he was not even a Jedi Master.
The reception around Anakin’s padawan, Ahsoka Tano, would soon change however, for the better. Audience members would later realize that she was the perspective of all the young fans. By the end of the show’s original run, she would have amassed a major fanbase. Ahsoka Tano could even be heard in The Rise of Skywalker!
Just when the show was going beyond amazing, a video was released announcing the winding down of the series. The executive producer of the series, Dave Filoni, announced that there were still vital stories to be told. Because of the show’s cancelation the deal with Cartoon Network, where the show originally aired, was now over.
A deal was then struck with Netflix to release what episodes were completely animated before Disney ceased production. Why did Disney cancel the show in the first place? Especially if it was beloved by the fans? Well there are multiple factors that go into the decision of pulling the plug really.
To start off, while “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” was no longer airing on Cartoon Network, they still owned some of the rights to it. Warner Bros. also owned the distribution rights for it. In Disney’s greedy track record, they prefer that no one meddles with their monetary sales. Which is fair because they do own the property.
In March of 2014, the sixth season of the show was streamable on Netflix. I remember the day it became available on Netflix and binging the entire season in less than five hours. However unlike previous seasons which contained 20+ episodes, the sixth season contained thirteen episodes. The fan community of the series was still extremely grateful.
During this time it was also announced that episodes that were not yet fully animated would not see the light of day but the stories would. The stories pulled from scripts for the unproduced episodes were released via comic books, novelization adaptations, or story reels with rough animation on StarWars.Com.
All this was really bittersweet because on one hand fans would be able to read about these stories that were not animated but on the other hand these stories would not be animated. To deepen the wound more, during panels at the Star Wars Celebration events story details emerged about even more unproduced stories.
Just hearing about it and seeing all the concept art of them was really painful. “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” was already an absolute game changer but the show was about to get even higher with the stakes and emotions!
So it is safe to say that the creative team was really saving the best for last. Fans then learned that most of the creative team who brought The Clone Wars series to life would be working on a new animated series, Star Wars Rebels. Some of the first looks at the show were met with mixed reactions.
Many fans loved the new animation style which was in fact a lot simpler and more free. On the other hand, many Star Wars fans did not appreciate this new look. It was also very clear that this series would be directed towards younger audience viewers.
However the show would grow with the targeted audience members. While at first this series received mixed reactions and reviews, this show was able to reel in fanatics from The Clone Wars series. Star Wars Rebels continued some story threads from the previous show and brought back fan favorite characters that The Clone Wars first introduced such as Ahsoka Tano.
Now fast forward several years and here we are. We are on the brink of The Clone Wars’s epic finale. It is a weird feeling if I am being completely honest. We the fans have gone from making peace at the notion that the series was long dead and we moved on to see our favorites in Star Wars Rebels.
With the show being wrapped up, now we are back where we left off which is so fascinating to me. Now some people were upset to learn that the series would be getting a weekly release rather than the way Netflix dropped the series onto their streaming platform.
I must say that I much prefer the weekly release schedule. In my opinion it slows things down a bit. The fans get to really enjoy and digest every episode rather than binging all of it at once. It also helps keep the conversations rather than talking about the show for one week and moving onto the next thing.
The conversations have already begun as the final has already begun streaming on Disney+. Every Friday from up until May 8th a new episode will be dropped on the Disney streaming service. Here’s to one last ride.