How "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" Legitimized The Prequel Trilogy

It's never a great time to be a Star Wars fan. No matter what, there's some controversy, some backlash or some tearing down of the thing you like. Since they started making Star Wars sequels, fans have been complaining. In the 80s, it was Ewoks. In the 90s, it was Jar Jar Binks. In the 00s, it was pretty much everything. Well, not everything. One bright spot in a galaxy far, far away was a little animated TV show called ‌Star Wars: Clone Wars. If fans spent any time at conventions or comic book stores, they probably remember hearing about how much better General Grievous is on the show than in the movie or how Anakin actually does something other than whine. Prequel detractors were among the first to latch onto the show. However, in the 17 years since the early incarnations, Star Wars The Clone Wars helped legitimize the tone, characters and mythology of the prequels, creating a space for a new generation of fans to find enjoyment in the once-despised series of films.

Clone Wars, in its first incarnation, premiered in 2003, with a series of short, animated episodes directed by Samurai Jack and Hotel Transylvania director Genndy Tartakovsky. The episodes were very well received at the time, garnering strong reviews and a handful of Emmy nominations. Designed to chronicle the period between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, the show delivered the small adventures and big character moments that felt lacking in the prequel films. Still, by 2005, after completing the prequel trilogy, Star Wars appeared to close up shop. Clone Wars ended, and there was no more story to tell.

Three years later, LucasFilm released the first computer-generated version of The Clone Wars in the only animated Star Wars film to ever get a theatrical release. 2008's Star Wars: The Clone Wars pretty much bombed by Star Wars standards, pulling in a little over $68 million at the worldwide box office. Not bad for an $8 million animated film, but certainly well below the standards set by other Star Wars movies. It remains the lowest-grossing installment in the franchise by about $300 million. Thankfully, LucasFilm didn't give up on the concept, following through with the season premiere of Star Wars: The Clone Wars television series that fall. While quietly removed from the mainstream, the show continued throughout this relatively dormant era in Star Wars history.

The late-00s were peak anti-prequel time. Red Letter Media's viral Star Wars reviews crystalized the majority opinion of prequels. To many viewers, the three movies never fulfilled the original trilogy's promise. Audiences never got to see Anakin Skywalker as the dashing hero and courageous pilot described by Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars: Episode IV -- A New Hope. But during this time, The Clone Wars took the prequel trilogy mythology and ran with it, expanding the character interests and showing fans what the Clone Wars were rather than just stating that "begun they had." The show's second, post-film run lasted six years, and reintroduced and recalibrated characters like General Grievous and Darth Maul, and made heroes out of newer characters like Ahsoka.

The fandom of the series blossomed at this time. In December 2012, the official /r/CloneWars subreddit launched, and as of July 2020, more than 36,000 Redditors subscribe to the group. Meanwhile, the cosplay of Ahsoka exploded with popularity at fan conventions and on social media. Characters like Anakin, who fans met eye rolls in 2002, were growing in fan appreciation. Liking the prequels, slowly but surely, was becoming a more acceptable position.

In 2012, Disney announced that they would purchase the franchise from George Lucas and begin work on a new series of films. As a new era of Star Wars began, a generation of fans who grew up on the Clone Wars and the prequels started to express their enjoyment of both, re-evaluating what many older Star Wars fans considered a blight on the legacy of the franchise. In 2013, several months after season five ended, the "Star Wars Prequel Appreciation Society" Facebook group launched, signaling a new era of Star Wars fandom.

Shortly after the Facebook group launched, other pro-prequel groups and meme communities spread throughout the internet. During the time of overwhelming prequel hate, The Clone Wars single-handedly kept the characters, situations and ideas from that trilogy alive by putting those characters in situations other than trade negotiations. Unlike the movies, fans and critics alike loved the series. The Clone Wars garnered heaps of praise during its run and seven Emmy award nominations. That's certainly a lot more than can be said for the Star Wars Holiday Special. The series's positive critical reception helped fans of the prequels back up their claims that the prequels were worthwhile, partly because the show filled in the story gaps left by the movies. And during the doldrums of Star Wars fandom in the early 2010s, it was one of the few properties still running with the idea that George Lucas' later stories were worthy of the full Star Wars treatment. It even inspired it's own, equally popular spin-off, Star Wars Rebels.

In 2016, prequel memes took over the internet. Born out of a true appreciation for the trilogy, prequel memes helped to solidify fan enjoyment of the series. Not to be outdone, the subreddit group /r/CloneWarsMemes launched in October of that year, recontextualizing the show into jokes that only other fans would totally grasp. That's the thing about these kinds of fan communities, they rely on an intimate knowledge of the source material to be apart of the game. There's certainly a level of irony about Star Wars here, but making fun of the franchise has always been a part of the fandom. Having a meme community devoted to The Clone Wars and prequels means that they're now a part of that tradition.

Fan appreciation of and loyalty to the series brought it back from the dead twice, in 2008 and 2020. Moreover, the show is one of the few examples of a non-film Star Wars property having an actual impact on the films. 2018's Solo: A Star Wars Story attempted to continue a story arc about Darth Maul from the show. Regardless of the future of Solo, the writers and producers must have believed that interest in The Clone Wars was big enough to share its mythology with everyday audiences and assume that they'd understand it.

By the end of the decade, the fandom had largely moved away from hating the prequels. They simply became another part of the greater whole (hating the sequel trilogy, on the other hand, is a different story). But ultimately, the reaction to The Clone Wars kept the mythology of the prequel trilogy in the zeitgeist. Other franchises, like The Matrix, did not benefit from a popular animated series to keep the property fresh in the minds of fans, and thus, seemingly disappeared from the mainstream. The Clones Wars featured characters fans loved and helped keep the images of young Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi on merchandise throughout the decade-long Star Wars drought between 2005 and 2015. In 2020, Disney aired the final season of The Clone Wars, but the show would not be gone long. Star Wars The Bad Batch, a spin-off of one of The Clone Wars' earlier episodes, was announced just this week, promising to keep the once-maligned era of Star Wars alive. To paraphrase Luke Skywalker, nothing's ever really gone, and as long as The Clone Wars universe and fandom are around, the prequels remain integral to Star Wars mythos.