‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ Is Suddenly the Most Important Piece of Star Wars Canon

There’s a lot of Star Wars in our galaxy. Even if you don’t read the novels, collect the comics, or play the video games, there’s still more than enough canon to consume in the feature film franchise and the quickly expanding TV show slate. Outside of the main 9-film Skywalker Saga, there are spinoff movies (Rogue One and Solo) and an animated feature (2008’s Star Wars: The Clones Wars). The launch of Disney+ came with the launch of The Mandalorian, a live-action show that will soon be joined by the untitled Cassian Andor and Obi-Wan Kenobi shows (release dates TBD).

But considering the massive (and deserved!) hubbub around the major motion pictures and The Mandalorian, it often feels that the animated component of the Star Wars canon is an afterthought outside of its intensely passionate fanbase. We know that Star Wars Rebels is a perfect TV show, but your BFF who goes to all the Star Wars preview night showings with you most likely has never seen it or even heard of it. Hell, I’m a massive Star Wars fan and the the Star Wars Resistance animated series came and went without me knowing 1. that it debuted and 2. that it ended! And just look at the rollout of The Mandalorian, the first-ever live-action Star Wars TV show, compared to the revival of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Disney+. It’s a big deal, but nowhere near as big a deal as it should be. Why? Because while the larger SW fandom wasn’t paying attention, Star Wars: The Clone Wars became the most important part of the entire canon.

The cartoon series that launched in theaters as a controversial, panned, box office bomb quickly became not only the definitive version of Star Wars for the entire post-prequel generation of fans, but it’s impacted nearly every single live-action feature film and TV show of the Disney era. When it comes to Star Wars as a franchise, Clone Wars has become the Force itself: “it surrounds us and penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together.”

This probably comes as a surprise if you’ve never watched Clone Wars, which is entirely possible considering that the movie really turned people off and the series has a daunting episode count (121 half hours of clone-filled action!). I know plenty of Star Wars fans from the casual to the devoted that only know bits and pieces about Clone Wars, and I’m including myself among them! Yeah, me! I’m Mr. I Scream/Cry At Star Wars Trailers and I’m still trying to make my way through all six seasons. It’s a lot. But The Clone Wars is worth exploring and committing to (at least starting with the new Season 7) because as Clone Wars goes, so goes the entire franchise.

Clone Wars‘ importance to the big picture should’ve been evident when it launched a decade ago, but back then it was just novel that the cartoon was actually telling fun stories in the prequel era. Y’know all those Jedi famous for sitting in chairs in a scene of The Phantom Menace? They get to do things in Clone Wars, like have voices and personalities!

The series always had ties to the original trilogy thanks to Yoda, Obi-Wan, and Anakin, but the ties strengthened as the series went on. We saw Bossk, Chewbacca, pre-Imperial Tarkin—Clone Wars started to bridge the gap between trilogies in new, unexpected ways. That led into Star Wars Rebels, a companion series that aired entirely between Season 6 and 7 of Clone Wars. Clone Wars introduced Rebels canon like Hera’s father Cham, clone trooper Rex, Mandalorian insurgent Bo-Katan Kryze, the Mandalorian Darksaber, and—most importantly—Jedi warrior Ahsoka Tano. Star Wars Rebels began with a pretty clean slate, completely detached from Clone Wars, and became richer and better with every established connection.

But two animated series from the same creative force, showrunner Dave Filoni, informing each other wasn’t a surprise. But then Clone Wars leveled up in 2016 with the release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, a motion picture that included a live-action version of a character initially introduced on Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker).

The connection wasn’t integral to Rogue One’s plot at all, but it was a massive Easter egg that told Clone Wars fans that the show they watched for six seasons really mattered. Furthermore, Rogue One included cameos and references to Hera, Chopper, and the Ghost from Star Wars Rebels.

While Rogue One didn’t require you to know any Clone Wars canon, 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story did. That film included a coda that reintroduced Darth Maul to movie audiences. The last time moviegoers saw him, he was sliced in two in 1999’s Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace. How’d he get his groove and/or legs back? All of that was detailed in multiple episodes of—you know it—Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

The connections haven’t slowed down, either. Disney+’s The Mandalorian, which counts Filoni as an EP, is built on Clone Wars canon. Mandalorian culture, the Death Watch, the Darksaber—they’re all integral to both shows. The connections even continued into Star Wars: Episode IX—The Rise of Skywalker via Clone Wars legend Ahsoka Tano, whose voice can be heard (alongside plenty of other Jedi who got their time in the spotlight in Clone Wars) in Rey’s head. There’s also an argument to be made that Clone Wars, which explored the nature of the Force in a few trippy storylines, set the stage for Rise of Skywalker’s heavy lean into the more mystical aspects of the Force mythology.

What’s remarkable is that while all this was going down, fans were more concerned about the potential connection between Marvel movies and TV shows. We never really stepped back and gave Star Wars the proper credit it deserves for achieving seamless synergy between film and TV, creating a unique whole that feels driven more by story and character than restricted by character rights, red tape, and creator friction.

And it all flows from Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

The show legitimized the prequels to older fans who shunned them, bonded the disparate tones of the prequel and original trilogies, added new pieces of canon that filmmakers have picked up and ran with, and expanded the borders of what Star Wars can be and do. And on top of all that, it introduced Ahsoka Tano, by far the most popular character in the Star Wars canon to not have a live-action counterpart (yet).

This is why Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season 7 should be as much of a deal to fans as The Mandalorian Season 1. No other piece of the Star Wars puzzle has mattered as much as Clone Wars. It’s more than just a fun action series with cool characters, and it’s more than just set-up for Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith. Star Wars: The Clone Wars is the integral piece  that connects the franchise to its past, it’s present, and its future.

Stream Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Disney+