When Star Wars: The Clone Wars originally ended its TV run on Cartoon Network in its fifth season, it was in the middle of the series’ biggest story arc to date. Darth Maul was back from (what looked like) the dead, he had taken over the Mandalorian homeworld and was building a new Sith Empire to rival Sidious, and Ahsoka Tano had left the Jedi. The stage was being set for a final confrontation involving all these major players that would conclude the series on a bombastic note. Unfortunately, Cartoon Network cancelled its run of Clone Wars episodes soon after, and the show was forced to scrap this idea in favor of a short, though admittedly cool, duel between Darth Sidious and Darth Maul.
With the advent of Disney+, however, Clone Wars fans will finally get to see the “Mauldalorian” (their word, not mine) Clone Wars arc come to its proper conclusion when the series is resurrected for its seventh and final season later this February. And, thanks to a new trailer posted to the official Star Wars channel earlier this morning, we know that things will be tenser than they’ve ever been before.
The trailer opens with narration from Darth Maul himself, who seems to have escaped Palpatine after being captured in season 5 and is now (correctly) foreseeing the deaths of the Republic and the Jedi. After a few ominous shots of clone troopers and droids marching, the real tease begins- the increased animation quality. It’s been over a decade since the first season premiered in 2008, and the show seems to have grown with the times. Character movement is fluid and rubbery, models are more detailed while still retaining their original art style (Yoda in particular gets quite the glow-up), and the series seems to have picked up some new lightsaber lighting tricks from the sequel trilogy.
I won’t spoil the rest of the trailer for you in great detail, but it’s easily the most cinematic the show has been, leading up to a final confrontation right out of the films while still taking time to breathe and show our characters question their motivations as the war drags on. We see Ahsoka talk about why she left the Jedi, we see Captain Rex explain his mixed feelings on the war, and we even see Darth Maul- still solidly Sith- nonetheless express a sort of fear over the sheer scope of the situation (perhaps he will try to avert Palpatine’s plan?).
Clone Wars’ nature as prequel content has always made the show feel like it has a Sword of Damocles over its head. No matter how good it is, it always has to lead into the memeworthy Episode III. And while we do see hints of that here- Anakin’s design is updated to match his Episode III appearance and Padmé is pregnant, this new trailer does a great job of using the show’s original characters to set it up for a conclusion all its own, rather than letting it fizzle out as a midquel or rely on other content to do its heavy lifting.
This isn’t the first time The Clone Wars has been resurrected for streaming. Shortly after season 5 finished airing, Netflix briefly brought the program back in 2014 for a truncated season called “The Lost Missions.” And while The Lost Missions does have some of the series’ stronger one-off arcs, it focuses more on episodic storytelling and doesn’t seek to rectify season 5’s lost potential or act as a conclusion for original characters like Rex and Ahsoka and even kind of Darth Maul, who is drastically different here from his Episode I counterpart. Now, according to this new trailer, Clone Wars fans will get to see the series end with the bang it deserves when Clone Wars season 7 hits Disney+ on February 21.
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