Note: Full spoilers for all five season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars follow.
As a big fan of the show, I will greatly miss Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Over its five years, the show has delivered some truly wonderful and exciting stories that rank among the best that Star Wars can offer. But when it was announced yesterday that the TV series – at least as we know it – was over and would not be continuing past Season 5, I wasn’t angry about it, especially given the rest of the information included. But a glance at the comments on our original news story about the show ending indicate some are outright furious.
I understand being upset when you hear about the end of a series you loved, but the end of The Clone Wars is not a cause for dark side rage. Here’s why…
Given we’d known for quite awhile that more Star Wars: The Clone Wars episodes were being made, it would have been one thing if we heard that not only was the show over, but there were no plans for those episodes to be released. But that’s not the case – the announcement made it clear that work on those stories was still underway and we will see them. The only question is where and how, and there are plenty of theories. I think the most likely outcome is editing together each of the unreleased four-part storylines as movies and distributing them either as TV-Movies -- on a Disney-owned channel, one would expect -- or via DVD or Blu-ray.
But the point is, we are going to get all the stories made for Season 6, even if they’re not called “Season 6.” Yes, it’s frustrating not knowing yet the when and how of it all, though I’m guessing we’ll learn those details by Star Wars Celebration Europe in Germany at the end of July. But once again, it’s important to remember we will get more Clone Wars and the hard work by Dave Filoni and his cast and crew will still be released.
When Star Wars: The Clone Wars was first announced, it was going to be a five-year series, but as mentioned above, production continued past that point. However, The Clone Wars has always been limited by the fact that it takes place in-between Episode II and Episode III. And it’s clear that we are getting closer and closer to the events of Revenge of the Sith at this point. Ahsoka leaving the Jedi order, the deaths of characters like Satine and moves Palpatine has made to undermine the Jedi make it increasingly notable that there simply isn’t a lot of time left until the inevitable occurs.
That’s not to say there aren’t still unanswered questions, most notably what happens to Captain Rex and Darth Maul by Revenge of the Sith. But one would hope the upcoming story arcs will tie up those loose ends. If this is not the case, well, that will be cause for a more agitated editorial...
And for those who’d say Ahsoka is still a loose end, I’d argue she isn’t any longer. She left the Jedi order. What happened next in her life is something fans are understandably curious about, but there no longer is an onus on The Clone Wars to explain why she isn’t in Revenge of the Sith. We have our explanation for that.
[And yes, I share the hope that we do see Ahsoka again, whether in the upcoming Clone Wars arcs or some other story, at some point…]
If you listen to IGN TV’s podcast, Channel Surfing, you’ve probably heard me talk about my theory that all TV shows, especially ones with any modicum of serialization, should end after five years. It just seems to me that most shows peak by their fifth season, and there are very few shows where fans go, “Yeah, Season 7 was my favorite!” (No, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some TV series with great Season 6s or beyond – there are always exceptions).
I was excited for The Clone Wars: Season 6 and am still looking forward to seeing those storylines, whatever form they're released in. But even if they didn’t have the Revenge of the Sith continuity to fit into, it would have been pushing things for the show to go more than another year or two at the most. Ahsoka leaving the Jedi -- which really is a great and powerful event to end the series proper on -- is pretty much wrapping up the overall story that began in the Clone Wars movie. Again, that doesn’t mean everything is tied up in a bow or more isn't left to discover, but just how many years should this series have gone on for? There’s something to be said for going out strong.
One big question we probably won't get a concrete answer on anytime soon is the "why" of it all. If we're still going to see the episodes made for Season 6, why not just keep the show on the air for another year? Of course, there are plenty of reasons we can speculate about...
It had been assumed since Disney bought Lucasfilm that The Clone Wars would be leaving Cartoon Network at the end of Season 5, when their current deal was up. At that time, it was presumed the show would move to Disney XD for Season 6 and, if there was one, Season 7. But the fact is, The Clone Wars was probably nearing its end, no matter what. Would Disney XD really want to spend the money to promote and re-launch the series, knowing it wasn't going to last much longer? And yeah, you could say, "Well, then just let Cartoon Network have it for another year," but that is not something Disney was probably keen to do either. The fact is, Lucasfilm's new owners, coupled with the decision to make a new Star Wars trilogy, means everything is shifting in Star Wars. And again, they didn't just shut everything down and decide to not finish the episodes they were making.
This is the messiest aspect of all of this, to be sure. As a viewer, I agree, it would be so much more simple to just get Season 6 this fall, regardless of what channel it aired on. But huge, huge things are occurring in Star Wars, and before you know it, we'll be in the midst of the avalance of promotion for Episode VII -- a movie we'll all be excited to see -- and that obviously is the focus right now.
Fans of The Spectacular Spider-Man, myself included, felt the heartbreak when that show ended due to legalities, caught up in the middle of Disney buying Marvel and Sony releasing the TV rights to Spider-Man. But that situation was a far more tough one, as we got no more stories set in that world and it was left as its own 26-episode series, never to be directly touched upon again. But The Clone Wars is already part of Star Wars canon. It's had a feature film and five seasons to make its very notable and impressive impact, and it's still not done. The announcement yesterday obviously indicates the goodbye process has begun in a big way, and I sure will miss seeing new episodes of the show each week. But it had a great run, and we still have more to see...
Lucasfilm being secretive about what they're planning is nothing new, Disney-owned or not. So for now, all we can do is ponder what the press release yesterday meant when it said a new Star Wars animated series was coming, "set in a time period previously untouched in Star Wars films or television programming." Whether it be this project or another one though, I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping that Dave Filoni and his collaborators are involved in other Star Wars animated series, beyond The Clone Wars, considering that the terrific series they've created has proven they have the knowledge, talent and passion to deliver truly great Star Wars stories. But given that they still are hard at work at Lucasfilm right now, there's reason to be optimistic.
In the meantime, let's hope we find out all the specifics on when we get to see the final Clone Wars story arcs soon (again, I'm betting on late July). To tide us over, I recommend checking out the seasons released so far on Blu-ray, because man, they sure look awesome...
Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @EricIGN, IGN at ericgoldman-ign and Facebook at Facebook.com/TheEricGoldman.
Source : ign[dot]com
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