In the current year of 2020, the Disney+ service has been going on strong, adding many old series and movies to their expansive gallery of classic Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars media, ranging from movies, series and other forms of media. But today we’ll focus on the Star Wars aspect of it, namely the award winning series from 2009, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and how it managed to be revived from cancellation and how it’s 7th and final season is developing in Disney+. The Clone Wars was a 2009 series from Lucasarts, airing on Cartoon Network for over 5 years and spanning across 5 original seasons in the channel; the series is originally based on the 2008 spin-off move of the same name, although the movie was received poorly, the series is now considered one of the best Star Wars media has to offer in terms of good story telling, character development and a series that many fans can agree is very good.

In 2014, around a year after Disney had bought the rights for Star Wars from George Lucas, the series was firmly cancelled from Cartoon Network by Disney, as a way to push away the old canon stories in order to try to tell their own stories. This soon heavily backfired as many Star Wars fans found the decision to be very poor, as the series had already grown to be such a favorite for many fans and the abrupt end made many fans feeling empty over the fate of many characters that are original to the series such as the fan favorites Ahsoka Tano, Cad Bane and Captain Rex. This soon lead to the creation of Star Wars: Rebels in late 2014 as a way to make up for the absence of The Clone Wars, even being directed by the same guy, Dave Filoni, that helped build up and co-write the original series. Rebels had an extremely rough start as the strong sense of “kid friendliness” and a lack of a solid plot during the first season put off many fans from the series, although this soon changes as the series grows into its 4 season, introducing more mature plots, old fan favorites from the Clone Wars series and even a canonical response to certain characters such as Admiral Thrawn and the creation of the Rebel Alliance faction from the Original Trilogy.

While Rebels had grown to be a fan favorite as it grew, the cancellation of Clone Wars still was apparent to many fans, with only certain novels and comics to make up for the lack of a proper final season for the show. But in 2018, a trailer was shown and revealed the active production of another season being made for the Clone Wars series, being said to be the final one before the events of Revenge of the Sith. Many fans rejoiced as many stories that were written and developed throughout the years will finally be animated properly, along with having a sense of completion towards the beloved series; later down the 2 year long wait for the first episodes, a lot of hype was built up and in January 22, 2020, the first episodes aired with the “Bad Batch” arc, bringing in older fans in rejoice and newer fans to see what the hype was all about. Currently the series is still on going and growing in popularity within the new fan-base, and more episodes are still in the way. I made this post to clarify both my love for Star Wars and this series, along with how much I can appreciate Dave Filoni and his efforts to bring back what many fans would consider the saving grace of the franchise after the many bumps it has taken with the Sequel Trilogy; point is, I can admire how much a series can play into the hearts of fans and how such a strong demand of a good ending can take a series which was believed to never come back, to be brought up and keep on going, without missing a single beat.

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Dave Filoni, former co-writer and now director/writer of The Clone Wars and The Mandalorian
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