Lucasfilm has recently announced that the animated series The Clone Wars is making a comeback. One…Last…Time. But is it too good to be true?

After years of fans tweeting #SaveTheCloneWars, they rejoiced with #CloneWarsSaved. Twelve brand new episodes of the beloved animated series will launch with Disney’s forthcoming streaming service in 2019.

But one can never truly go home again, and this upcoming return of The Clone Wars doesn’t come without some costs. Will it truly be the same as if the show were simply allowed to continue prior to cancellation?

As soon as I read that there would be a panel for The Clone Wars at San Diego Comic-Con, I had a suspicion that something was up. One of the largest IPs on the planet is having one panel at the largest media-pushing convention to hold what was initially billed as a 10-year retrospective? No. Something new was coming out of that panel. I was overjoyed to hear we were finally getting a proper wrap-up to this series.

The Clone Wars was nothing short of significant Star Wars storytelling. From serving as an entryway to a new generation of younger fans to find Star Wars, to giving older fans a show they can watch together with their kids, to giving minor Star Wars characters a spotlight, The Clone Wars was a beautifully crafted romp in the Galaxy Far, Far Away until it was cancelled shortly after Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm.

Let’s look at the pros and the cons of bringing The Clone Wars back in 2019:

PROS

Prequel Prelude

One incredibly popular story type Star Wars fans are used to by now is the “prelude” story: tie-ins that chronologically lead a character directly into the events of the next forthcoming Star Wars film. Revenge of the Sith interestingly had two conflicting stories telling what happened to Anakin and Obi-Wan prior to their entering the Battle of Coruscant at the top of the film (the third season of the Genndy Tartakovsky-produced Clone Wars animated micro-series, as well as the novel Labyrinth of Evil). Both of these have been deemed as no longer canon thanks to the shift of the Legends continuity in 2014. Now, these episodes of The Clone Wars will give us the proper canon prelude to the final film in the Prequel Trilogy.

Disney’s Resources & Technological Improvements

The animation improvements over the run of The Clone Wars can be staggering at times. Compare any given Season 1 episode with one from Season 5 or 6 and the differences can be made clear. Even if these episodes had been released when initially planned, they would likely be the best-looking episodes Lucasfilm Animation had put out.

Of course, two major things have changed. First of all, the animation department has even more experience working in 3D animation, thanks to four seasons of Star Wars Rebels, under its belt. Secondly, Lucasfilm is now a part of Disney, which brings with it more potential for a larger budget and more resources allocated for these projects. While these soon-to-be-released episodes are certainly not starting from scratch, the current circumstances will certainly add a bit of extra polish to give The Clone Wars an incredible final bow; a polish that would not have been as prominent had the show simply completed its run as originally planned.

George Lucas’ Fingerprints

These scripts will likely be the last Star Wars projects that will be produced from George Lucas’ direct involvement. George worked very closely with showrunner Dave Filoni to develop the story of The Clone Wars. Many Star Wars fans know that the majority of George’s ideas for the Sequel Trilogy were discarded when The Force Awakens went into production. Since these stories for The Clone Wars were all written before the show’s cancellation, George Lucas’s influence will be strong.

What’s Old is New Again

For a variety of reasons, Star Wars content has only dabbled in the Prequel era very sparingly over the last half-decade. With Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm, the content put out in the new canon was safely targeted for the Original Trilogy era or eras around their new film releases (primarily focusing on shortly after Return of the Jedi, shortly before The Force Awakens and in the “Dark Times” between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope). There’s been enough of a gap from the Prequel films and the original run of Prequel-era stories where returning to that time period actually feels refreshing. Living in an era where Lucasfilm has released nearly as many Star Wars films after Disney’s acquisition as it had before it, “Prequel hate” isn’t what it used to be, and this era can be appreciated by its own merits without being tainted by the fan angst of its heyday.

CONS

Platform Exclusivity

A TV show being “saved” from cancellation by a streaming service is nothing new. It’s not even anything new for The Clone Wars. Netflix picked up exclusive rights for a shortened Season 6 of the series (after 5 seasons on Cartoon Network), presenting it with a subtitle of “The Lost Missions.” When released, this new season was only available to Netflix subscribers. In much the same way, this final season of episodes will be exclusive to Disney’s forthcoming streaming service, meaning you’ll need to pay for the service in order to watch the end of the series.

Unlike “The Lost Missions” which eventually saw a DVD and Blu-ray release, such is not necessarily guaranteed for these last 12 episodes. Given the series won’t drop until 2019, the possibility of a disc release will not be seen before sometime in 2020, at which point the market for physical media will have shrunk even more. It also wouldn’t be surprising to see the other seasons of The Clone Wars to leave Netflix whenever their contracted term has ended post-Disney service launch.

Continuity Conundrums

It’s far easier for a showrunner to control the continuity of a story when everything is being told by yourself and your writers. It gets more complicated when more cooks get added to the kitchen. Since the end of The Clone Wars’ initial TV run in 2014, a handful of stories have been repurposed for a release in a new medium, whether that be comic books (Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir), novels (Dark Disciple, Ahsoka), or mentioned in passing in other shows (Star Wars Rebels). Lucasfilm’s story Group has claimed that they’ve treated these unreleased The Clone Wars stories as having happened in the canon, but the devil is in the details. Small story changes can lead to bigger consequences later.

The revived series now also has to contend with other stories that went into production after the show ended (such as lining up Maul’s character arc to end up where he is in Solo, and allowing for Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala to have their adventure featured in Thrawn: Alliances). Are changes made by these new collaborators going to mess with any of the original plans for The Clone Wars? We may never know.

Reduced Number of Stories

While I can absolutely concede that getting 12 episodes is far better than getting none, I can’t help but be a little wistful for what still could have been. Over the years since the show’s cancellation, a lot has been slowly revealed about planned episodes for the show’s final episodes, which would have spanned at least one if not two seasons longer. Not including the few episodes that have been either adapted to other media or released as story reels, there were still many story arcs to be told that will surely now remain untold. The proposed 12 episode season only allows for 3-4 story arcs at most, and we already know that the “Siege of Mandalore” (the series finale) will be one of those arcs. That doesn’t leave much room for the others. A few arcs have since been released in rough animation “story reel” form on StarWars.com, so it will be interesting to see if any of these episodes are selected for completion.

Considering Dave Filoni’s tendency to play the long game with storytelling, it’s hard to just dismiss episodes on his shows as “filler” until the final stories have been told. Surely what is coming will fill in the most important gaps in the story between the end of Season 6 of The Clone Wars and the events of Revenge of the Sith. Still, it’s a shame we never got to see some of the other proposed arcs, including more Yoda on Kashyyyk and an episode that would have introduced the Yuuzhan Vong from the New Jedi Order series.

Unsatisfying Endings

Providing an end to a show that was left incomplete will certainly be satisfying no matter what. However, now that we live in an age after Star Wars Rebels, in which many The Clone Wars characters have carried over after the events of the Prequel Trilogy, a lot of the wind will be taken out of the sails of dramatic tension.

One of the biggest examples would be Ahsoka Tano. From the moment Ahsoka was introduced in 2008 until her departure from the Jedi Order in Season 5, fans were wondering about the character’s fate since Anakin clearly did not have a Padawan during the events of Revenge of the Sith. We, of course, know the majority of what happens to her in the following years thanks to Rebels and the Ahsoka novel, so her wrap-up in the series is bound to be a little lukewarm compared to how it may have played out originally. The same for Captain Rex, Bo Katan, and others. We already know they move on to other adventures, so there is no suspense when viewing these final stories.

However, I feel the biggest losses for Quinlan Vos and Asajj Ventress. Their stories were technically showcased (and, for the most part, ended) in the novel Dark Disciple, but the audience for novels has always been smaller than that of the audiovisual media in Star Wars fandom. Quinlan Vos had a major storyline within the Legends continuity’s first telling of stories about the Clone Wars. In the first six seasons of the TV show, the character only appeared once (and was portrayed differently than he had been in Legends). The eight “Dark Disciple” episodes would have been a return to form for the character, and given a new audience a way to appreciate Quinlan Vos’ story of falling to the Dark Side and then returning. Vos got robbed of a shot at the limelight for a generation of fans.

Ventress, however, suffers the worst of all of the characters. Her introduction to the fandom (the Tartakovsky Clone Wars micro-series) was considered canon when The Clone Wars debuted, so Ventress was treated as a normal part of the “rogue’s gallery” of Separatist villains. She was eventually given a more fleshed out history thanks to the series, but her ultimate fate is now only told in novel form, which will be appreciated by a significantly smaller audience than that of the TV series. To television audiences, Ventress merely appears and disappears without a trace.

“Detours” Detoured?

This one will feel a little out of left field, but I had a gut reaction that the “postponed” Seth Green-produced Star Wars Detours comedic series would finally see a release on the Disney streaming platform. Considering the surprisingly large number of episodes that have already been produced, it would be an easy way for Disney to release an extra piece of content that is already in their back pocket onto a platform where it is available as an exclusive.

Of course, with the return of The Clone Wars, this is unlikely to happen, at least upon launch of the streaming service. The Clone Wars is already a resurrected project, and adding a second at the same time would give a negative impression that the service is simply a “dumping ground” of old content instead of a fresh destination for new exclusives. Detours may still be released on the platform one day, though if it does happen it’s likely not to be the case until a few months after the platform launches if not much later.

Despite these cons, I am beyond thrilled to see “The Siege of Mandalore” finally come to the screen. These last few The Clone Wars episodes will surely be cherished by fans old and new.

What are you most looking forward to about the return of The Clone Wars? Sound off in the comments!

Bryan Patrick Stoyle is an actor, writer, producer and Star Wars contributor to The Geekiverse.

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