Star Wars's television shows keep making Episode 9 look worse

'Rise of Skywalker' pales in comparison to the nuance the shows contain

Spoilers for Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars: Rebels, and The Mandalorian ahead

Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker is nearly a year old. This seems hard to believe, in part due to the absolute clusterfuck of 2020 muddying our collective ability to place things in the timeline. But it also seems hard to believe because it’s almost completely fallen out of the pop culture zeitgeist. The film debuted to middling reviews for a multitude of reasons. To quickly recap those issues: completely walking back everything that happened in The Last Jedi and even walking back choices it makes itself (Chewie is dead! Just kidding!), jamming too many plot points into a bloated runtime, failing to flesh out many of its villains, and introducing some plot points in Fortnite (not a joke). The Mandalorian is now what brings people their Star Wars content, and it’s now starting to draw some direct lines to the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels. As more people start to watch them, it’s only going to make Rise of Skywalker look worse.

The Clone Wars ran from 2008-2014 (with a final season dropping on Disney+ last year) and was followed by Rebels from 2014-2018. Both series were critically acclaimed and are beloved parts of Star Wars for dedicated fans, even if they didn’t have huge audiences in their initial runs. As the name might make apparent, The Clone Wars is set during the years between Episodes 2 and 3 during the titular wars. The “main” story follows favorites Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi along with introducing Anakin’s Padawan Ahsoka Tano, but routinely follows lesser known Jedi and clones for multiple episodes. Rebels takes place in the years after Episode 3, when the Empire is firming its grip on the galaxy and the Rebellion is just starting to get off the ground. Main character Ezra Bridger joins the Rebel crew of the ship The Ghost to aid the Rebellion and unlock his Force-sensitive potential.

Part of the greatness of these shows compared to something like Rise of Skywalker obviously lies in the medium. Television shows have much longer to tease out story arcs, explore character, and build a universe. But even with that caveat, it’s astounding watching the television series how much smarter they are than RoS. Let’s take Bo-Katan, the Mandalorian character who just showed up in The Mandalorian. She’s straight out of a major storyline of Clone Wars, wherein the ruler of Mandalore must balance the requirements of neutrality with the reality of a galaxy at war and a culture on her world that was forged through battle. Rebels frequently grapples with the cost of rebellion, the risks and loss required of it, and the uncertainty of its main characters. These are measured, intriguing storylines, and RoS instead plows ahead with a by the books “good guys good, bad guys bad” approach.

The villains in particular outclass anything that RoS has to offer. Some of it is maybe a tad unfair towards the shows, since because of the timeframe they get access to icons like Darth Vader and Count Dooku. But the series fleshes them out as opposed to just rehashing what we knew about them (looking at you, Palpy), and adds great, intricate villains on top. The Inquisitors in Rebels and Asajj Ventress in Clone Wars in particular are characters with great designs, and groups like Death Watch get their own nuance and moments to shine, as opposed to the Knights of Ren who we never learn anything about.

Much of the change in RoS was clearly inspired by fan backlash to The Last Jedi, particularly the portrayal of Luke Skywalker as a jaded man in his twilight and his views on the Jedi as a failed institution. Hence, RoS spends a lot of time speaking for Luke after his death, insinuating that actually the Jedi were as perfect and heroic as could be. Leaving aside Luke himself (although I still contend that is exactly right in how he would evolve over the years), he’s right about the Jedi, and The Clone Wars doesn’t shy away from it at all! There is of course the fact they failed to sniff out one of the most powerful Sith lords in history living basically across the street from them. But they also failed as peacekeepers, and many of them explicitly acknowledge this. Throughout the series they grapple with their roles as generals in a war that’s costing millions of lives, and on more than one occasion they fall to the dark side because of it. Everyone’s fan favorite Ahsoka is framed for a crime she didn’t commit because of the Jedi’s stubbornness and refusal to listen, which drives her to leave the order. Individual Jedi were good, but The Clone Wars makes clear that as an organization they were flawed. Just a hint of this in RoS would have made for a much more satisfying film.

With The Mandalorian dominating social media and more Star Wars shows in the works that will directly connect back to the original animated series, Rise of Skywalker will continue to age like milk. While we can’t go back and change how the movies turned out, the indication that the new shows will learn the lessons of the old should give every Star Wars fans confidence there’s plenty of smart, quality adventures still to come.