The Best Star Wars Show Reveals The Franchise’s Biggest Problem

This is one Star Wars theory that I’m confident most fans already know, deep inside. Search your feelings and ask yourself: what are the things you like most about The Clone Wars?

Many in the fandom enjoy how it fleshes out the Obi-Wan/Anakin relationship and reveals Palpatine’s slow manipulation, all while fleshing out one-note characters like Darth Maul and the Clone Troopers.

The end result is something that fans have been saying since the beginning: that this show forever changes how you view the prequels and even improves on those film’s storytelling shortcomings.

Here’s the thing, though: The Clone Wars should never have had to shoulder the burden of fixing the prequels in the first place. All of that stuff we enjoyed seeing in the TV show honestly should have been in the Prequel Trilogy in the first place.

We should have had a carefully-plotted development and then degradation of Obi-Wan and Anakin’s relationship across all three films—instead, they go from virtual strangers to bickering brothers to bitter enemies, with most major relationship shifts occurring offscreen.

The same thing goes for Emperor Palpatine’s behind-the-scenes manipulation of the Jedi, the Senate, and everything in between. It was great seeing all of this fleshed out in The Clone Wars, but why did we hardly see any of it in the prequels?

This is arguably the most important setup for the original films, but all we get from Palpatine before he turns into a bunch of goofy meme fodder is, like, one evil speech and the bizarre revelation that he’s inexplicably been leading the evil rebellion that nearly killed him at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith.  

Speaking of fodder, the Clone Troopers were introduced as disposable army units with no personality or purpose beyond “shoot and get shot.” Darth Maul, who had perhaps the coolest design in any of these movies, was obviously made just to sell action figures, which is why he only has three lines of dialogue in The Phantom Menace.

Pretty much the only reason anyone even cares about Maul as a character is that The Clone Wars rehabilitated him into someone much more compelling than “evil red guy.”

So, why was George Lucas so careless with all these great new characters, and why did he leave so many interesting relationships unexplored? It’s possible he’s just a bad storyteller, or maybe he got so distracted by the advent of CGI that he forgot what fans watch these movies for.

But I believe the real reason is something simpler and sadder: he knew he didn’t have to tell these great stories because someone else would do it for him.

By the time the Prequel Trilogy hit theaters, the Star Wars Expanded Universe was more popular than ever before. That meant it was less important to tell a complete story on screen—for example, why give Darth Maul any background or motivation in The Phantom Menace when you can count on fans to seek out more info in comics and novels?

Why bother developing the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin or showing the slow descent of Darth Vader when you can count on the next 20 years of other writers to do that for you?

The Clone Wars remains the best Star Wars show ever made, and judging from series like The Acolyte, it won’t be unseated from the throne anytime soon. Every time I watch an episode, though, I can’t help regretfully thinking “why weren’t the prequels more like this?”

But it doesn’t take the wisdom of Yoda to realize that George Lucas, someone who became obscenely wealthy from selling toys, simply relied on better storytellers to fill in the gaps while he pursued his true passion: swimming through piles of merchandising money like Scrooge McDuck.