13 Years Ago Today, Disney Ended the Best Star Wars TV Show (So Why Did It Come Back?)

13 years ago, Disney made the controversial decision to end George Lucas’ unforgettable Star Wars TV show. George Lucas had always wanted to expand Star Wars on the small screen, announcing a live-action TV show all the way back in 2005 that sadly never happened. But he finally got his wish with Star Wars: The Clone Wars, an animated show that fleshed out the events of the Clone Wars and – in the view of Hayden Christensen himself – massively improved Anakin Skywalker’s story.

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Then, in 2012, the Star Wars fandom experienced a greater disturbance in the Force than ever before. Disney acquired Lucasfilm, and it was immediately clear the House of Mouse wanted to make something fresh and new. Although Disney bought a sequel trilogy script with Lucas, these plans were shelved in favor of a very different direction. Then, on March 11, 2013, there was another shock announcement: The Clone Wars would end after its fifth season, with Star Wars taking a different direction.

Why Disney Canceled Star Wars: The Clone Wars

The cancellation was officially announced in a press release that was frustratingly short on details. “After five highly successful and critically acclaimed seasons of Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” Disney revealed, “we feel the time has come to wind down the series.” One point did stand out, however, namely that Disney confirmed the studio would no longer be producing new episodes for Cartoon Network. It’s reasonable to assume this was singled out because it was particularly important.

The partnership between Lucasfilm and Cartoon Network made sense in pre-Disney days, because the studio didn’t have any real distribution channels of its own. All that changed after Star Wars was acquired by Disney, because anything made for Cartoon Network would have been distributed by a competitor and rival. There’s a similar logic behind the shelving of The Incredible Hulk as a standalone franchise after Disney purchased Marvel, with the distribution rights owned by Universal until recently.

At the same time, though, part of the rationale is likely creative. Disney wanted to usher in a new era, and Lucasfilm pivoted hard towards the original trilogy era rather than the prequels (the Star Wars sequels demonstrated this same pattern, with The Force Awakens openly riffing on A New Hope). Lucasfilm Animated dropped The Clone Wars in favor of Star Wars Rebels, in an era that had never been explored on-screen before – the same time period as Disney’s Rogue One.

The Clone Wars Never Really Went Away

Lucasfilm Animation’s Dave Filoni soon proved that he had no intention of abandoning The Clone Wars. It wasn’t long before viewers began to realize Star Wars Rebels was a secret sequel to The Clone Wars, with a delightful number of characters returning in a story set so many years later in the Star Wars timeline; the most notable being Ahsoka Tano and Darth Maul, whose stories continued pretty seamlessly. Rebels Season 2 became as much an Ahsoka show as anything else.

Scripts for The Clone Wars Season 6, meanwhile, had already been completed when Disney pulled the plug. Filoni’s animation team finished work on the episodes they’d already begun, wrapping production by October 2013. They ultimately aired on Netflix in the United States and Canada on March 7, 2014, as “The Lost Missions.” It was a sad coda to George Lucas’ best Star Wars TV show, albeit one that featured Yoda’s best adventure.

Somehow, The Clone Wars Returned

But, remarkably, The Clone Wars‘ cancellation turned out to be short-lived. Everything changed when Disney launched Disney+, because every division and studio was tasked with prioritizing content for the new streaming service. Lucasfilm took the lead, with the surprise return of The Clone Wars Season 7 announced at San Diego Comic-Con 2018. Star Wars soon proved to be a highlight on Disney+, as The Mandalorian Season 1 premiered alongside the streamer’s launch.

The Clone Wars Season 7 felt like something of a last hurrah for the show. There’s a sense in which it didn’t quite fulfill the promise of the full series, simply because it had a shorter episode count and dropped several planned arcs. But the episodes that released were absolutely stellar, with improved animation because of lessons Filoni and his team had learned in the last few years. The Clone Wars returned with style, proving Disney had been wrong to cancel the show.

Ironically, there’s a sense in which The Clone Wars has come to define modern Star Wars. The Bad Batch was a three-season sequel, and another is coming this year starring Darth Maul. In fact, none of this year’s Star Wars movies or TV shows would have happened without The Clone Wars, given the show redefined the Mandalorians as well. Even more incredibly, Dave Filoni – mastermind of The Clone Wars, seen as Lucas’ protege – is now co-president of the entire studio. George Lucas’ Star Wars TV really does remain the most influential of all, a testimony to its sheer quality.

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