Star Wars: Five Major Plot Points You Missed If You Didn’t Watch the Cartoons
Bits of Star Wars lore from the animated series’ have been showing up in live-action. Here’s some history you may have missed out on.
The Star Wars cartoons haven’t always been for everybody. The early episodes of The Clone Wars, for example, turned off many adult viewers. And while this is perfectly understandable, it left the unfortunate side effect of leaving lots of the Star Wars-watching audience with huge gaps in their galactic knowledge. 2023 is about to be full of live-action shows that will have the viewer numbers but will (once again) be built on the foundation left by these animated shows.
The Mandalorian has always been good about making it easy to get what’s going on, even without this background, and I’m sure Ahsoka will do the same. But if you’ve skipped the animated Star Wars shows, you may not be aware of these very important pieces of lore.
Darth Maul Came Back
I want to say that this is common knowledge. But no comment section to a post about Maul’s continuing adventures after Phantom Menace is complete without somebody saying, “Darth Maul is still alive?” The animated shows explain that he lived and is mad. But more importantly, they flesh him out into a fully formed character with a backstory, motivation, goals, grudges, and even the basic ability to say words. Maul may speak too much, in fact. Luckily he’s voiced by Sam Witwer, so it’s okay.
This was a tragically underutilized character in the live-action movies who really gets his due in animation. And while it’s somewhere between doubtful and nearly impossible that we’ll be seeing much of him in any future live-action projects, getting to watch his entire character arc play out is still a highlight of The Clone Wars and Rebels.
Inhibitor Chips
The Inhibitor Chips are mentioned indirectly in Attack of the Clones, but they are such a huge and important part of the full story of Order 66. They effectively act as an override key for the Clones’ brains and force any with functioning and intact chips to fulfill Palpatine’s first order as Emperor. The discovery, function, and eventual tragedy of the chips are explored throughout a series of clone-centric episodes of The Clone Wars. And the seventh and final season spends real time focusing on the hours around Order 66 and what this lack of will means. It’s heartbreaking and poignant, but a fantastic part of the story.
The Crew of the Ghost
Ahsoka is gearing up to be a reunion opportunity for the crew of The Ghost, and if you haven’t seen Rebels, this may not mean a lot to you. With characters cast as Ezra Bridger, Hera Syndulla, Sabine Wren, and the promise of Grand Admiral Thrawn as Ahsoka Tano‘s antagonist, it’s safe to assume that they will be pulling from these characters’ histories at least a little bit in the upcoming live-action show. And it’s a pretty rich history full of Jedi training, secret jobs for the early rebellion, and some of the history of Mandalore. Which we’ll be coming back to in a moment.
Saw Gerrera
Saw Gerrera has come up a few times. We saw him in Rogue One and we saw him in Andor. But live-action-only fans may forget that he came from The Clone Wars first. In live action, we see him as a grumpy extremist, and that’s a completely accurate read of this character. But his full backstory exists in animation including his introduction to the cause and what radicalized him. Saw is easy to like and mostly understand if you’ve only met him in live action, but like an iceberg, there is so much more left to see.
The History of Mandalore
This season The Mandalorian will be bringing us and Din Djarin to Mandalore, and I am fairly certain that the planet’s history is going to come up at least once or twice. It did before when we met Bo-Katan and were introduced to the Darksaber. The history of Mandalore takes hours over the course of various story arcs in The Clone Wars and Rebels to tell. It includes family, betrayal, duty, tragedy, and Darth Maul for reasons that would take entirely too long to explain here. I doubt the whole thing will come into play during The Mandalorian. But we’ve already had bits of the history come up in previous seasons and it’s been illuminating to have the whole backstory.
What is your favorite piece of Star Wars lore from the animated shows? What stories from the animated series’ do you think will come up in future live-action projects? Which animated show is your favorite and why? Let us know in the comments!
May the Force be with you, adventurers!
