Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Essential, and the most consequential thing on this page that is not a film. It fills the gap between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith with a hundred and thirty-three episodes, and in doing so it converts the clone troopers from an effect into characters, gives Anakin a student the films never mentioned, and makes Order 66 a tragedy about people rather than a plot development.

It also does not start well. The first two seasons are uneven in exactly the way a weekly animated show is, with standalone adventures aimed at children and a look that had not yet matured, and the common advice is correct: do not watch it in broadcast order and do not watch all of it. Episode guides that reduce it to roughly fifty essential instalments are widely circulated and they work.

What they point at is a show that got progressively more serious. The Umbara arc is about soldiers given an unlawful order by a commander they cannot refuse. The Mortis episodes are a strange theological detour unlike anything else in the franchise. The Maul material rehabilitates a villain who had one line and a crime boss's career. Ahsoka's departure from the Jedi Order, over an accusation they do not defend her against, is the best writing anyone has done about what was actually wrong with the Jedi.

The seventh season, made years later after cancellation, contains the Siege of Mandalore, which runs alongside Revenge of the Sith and ends with the best twenty minutes in any Star Wars television. Watch the films first; this is a commentary on them.