Star Wars TV reveals from Disney+, ranked by season
A very long time in the past in a media panorama far, distant, Star Wars TV didn’t have the best observe report.
In spite of everything, the primary small-screen entry within the movie-led franchise was 1978’s Star Wars Vacation Particular(opens in a brand new tab) — a turkey so notorious, you gained’t discover it anyplace on Disney+ as we speak. Yow will discover the primary Star Wars TV collection, the Nineteen Eighties animated reveals Ewoks and Droids, however there’s a purpose they’re not precisely entrance and heart on the service. Lucasfilm’s twenty first century animation choices Clone Wars and Rebels have been liked by the devoted, however typically struggled to succeed in mainstream viewers.
Fortunately, ever since The Mandalorian Season 1 helped to launch the Disney+ streaming service in November 2019, Star Wars TV has fared lots higher with each critics and ever-larger audiences alike. As of the discharge of Star Wars: Visions Season 2 on Might 4, 2023, there are 12 seasons of Star Wars TV from the Disney+ period — as many seasons in 4 years as there have been Star Wars movies from 1977 to 2019.
And there’s, arguably, just one actual dud within the bunch.
All 12 Star Wars movies, ranked worst to biggest
Six of these seasons are reside motion, six are animated. Rating all of them collectively would make for a really subjective record, since each viewer’s tolerance for animation varies. For that purpose, we’ve divided our rankings into two lists — beginning with the one closest to the house fantasy franchise’s cinematic coronary heart.
Half I: Reside-Motion Star Wars
1. Andor Season 1 (2022)
Like lots of its characters, Andor dared to interrupt the foundations. The backstory of Rogue One‘s Cassian Andor, plus a rising forged of different gamers who obtained sucked into the Riot, this present defied our expectations from episode 1. It most popular deep conversations between morally ambiguous characters to motion sequences; it swapped cliffhangers for chapter endings. Nonetheless, showrunner Tony Gilroy ratcheted the strain expertly, and his jail arc is without doubt one of the most harrowing in TV historical past, not simply in Star Wars. Right here’s hoping the remainder of Gilroy’s “24-chapter Dickensian novel” holds up when Season 2 arrives in 2024.
How ‘Andor’ fulfills George Lucas’ plan for ‘Star Wars’
How you can watch: Andor is now streaming on Disney+.(opens in a brand new tab)
2. The Mandalorian Season 2 (2020)
Name it the Empire Strikes Again of the Mando trilogy, and never simply because Boba Fett confirmed up in each. Season 2 constructed on its predecessor’s strong basis of house western enjoyable with one thing darker and extra complicated. By the tip, a villain’s revelation had surprised our hero, Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin, together with a sudden separation from his discovered household. No surprise it felt so unusually proper, so earned, when Luke Skywalker, the hero who went via all of that in Empire, got here to assert Grogu from his successor. And if all that wasn’t sufficient, the season additionally launched estranged Jedi Ahsoka Tano in live-action kind, performed by Rosario Dawson. If solely that good Skywalker ending hadn’t been reversed so swiftly.
Why we must always have mentioned bye, child Yoda
How you can watch: The Mandalorian is now streaming on Disney+.(opens in a brand new tab)
3. The Mandalorian Season 1 (2019)
The opening episode of Season 1 launched the world to The Youngster, a closely-held Star Wars secret extra beautiful than any since “I’m your father.” The second episode, which I referred to as a “good little Star Wars poem” on the time, was higher. That development line of rising pleasure stored going up for an episode or so extra, and even whereas it sagged in the midst of the season, the ultimate scene — Moff Gideon (Carlos Espocito) slicing via his TIE fighter with the suddenly-revealed Darksaber — made clear this present had multiple season of promise.
How you can watch: The Mandalorian is now streaming on Disney+.(opens in a brand new tab)
4. Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)
Whereas the story by no means fairly justified itself past “right here’s an excellent excuse to get Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen again collectively once more,” this off-world interlude in Obi-Wan’s Tatooine exile delivered surprises and emotional wallops in equal measure. Key to each was younger Princess Leia (Vivian Lyra Blair). And what the a number of Obi-Wan and Darth Vader showdowns lacked in stress, given each Star Wars viewer know they escape unscathed, they made up for in pleasant lightsaber-lit visuals.
How you can watch: Obi-Wan Kenobi is now streaming on Disney+.(opens in a brand new tab)
5. The Mandalorian Season 3 (2023)
Seasons 1 and a pair of have been nice photographs, child; Season 3 is why you don’t get cocky. Showrunners Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau appeared to care extra about establishing future tales than specializing in this one. They benched their hero for various episodes; even when concentrating on his story, they systematically sucked the strain out of each storyline they’d constructed up (the Darksaber duel, Moff Gideon’s evil scheme, Grogu’s departure) with little to indicate for it on the way-too-pat ending. Plus they tried to get us to care about disputes between factions of largely faceless Mandalorians, and it labored about in addition to that point Star Trek Discovery had needed us to care about lengthy scenes between rubber-masked Klingons.
Memo to ‘The Mandalorian’: That is the best way (to repair the present)
How you can watch: The Mandalorian is now streaming on Disney+.(opens in a brand new tab)
6. The Ebook of Boba Fett (2022)
Someplace buried in The Ebook of Boba Fett was an excellent story; a number of good tales, probably. However that was earlier than Lucasfilm made the doubtful option to graft a preexisting movie-length challenge concerning the famed bounty hunter of the title, which might have lined not more than an episode or two by itself, onto what primarily grew to become The Mandalorian Season 2.5. Fett appeared oddly weak, and never simply because he was unable to maintain management of his personal present. Telling his story in flashback, a primary for Star Wars, didn’t assist. Nor did these weird bikers.
Disney’s Star Wars fan service is downright suffocating in ‘The Ebook of Boba Fett’
How you can watch: The Ebook of Boba Fett is now streaming on Disney+.(opens in a brand new tab)
Half II: Star Wars animation
1. Star Wars: Visions Season 2 (2023)
Imagine the hype: Star Wars: Visions‘ second outing of artsy anthology tales, commissioned from a wider world of studios than its predecessor, is as extraordinary on the planet of animation as Andor was for reside motion. The franchise has by no means appeared this trendy, and it has by no means been this fearless about telling every kind of tales. And if you happen to thought Andor‘s jail episodes have been bonkers, take a look at Visions Season 2, episode 8, “The Pit,” a narrative which dumps its prisoners on the backside of an enormous mining properly and locations a blissfully ignorant metropolis above. Who says animation can’t convey the darkness in humanity each bit as a lot as movie?
How you can watch: Star Wars: Visions is now streaming on Disney+.(opens in a brand new tab)
2. The Clone Wars Season 7 (2020)
A becoming send-off for an animated collection that went from power to power, and helped to redeem the Star Wars prequels within the course of. The Clone Wars Season 7, the one season of the present to be produced for Disney+, clearly benefited from being frozen in carbonite after the present was initially canceled when Disney purchased Lucasfilm in 2013. Season 7 gave us Order 66 as we’ve by no means seen it earlier than or since — over a number of episodes, from the attitude of clone troopers all of a sudden compelled by unseen programming to wipe out their Jedi generals. The sense of doom was enhanced by Ahsoka’s makes an attempt to know and escape the bloodbath; the Order 66 scenes in Revenge of the Sith pale by comparability. Take that, live-action Star Wars!
How you can watch: The Clone Wars is now streaming on Disney+.(opens in a brand new tab)
3. Star Wars: Tales of the Jedi (2022)
With Clone Wars within the bag, showrunner Dave Filoni may begin to inform some fascinating tales round its edges. Tales of the Jedi gave us an sudden anthology of moments we didn’t know we had needed to see: Ahsoka’s start; the backstory of Rely Dooku, the treacherous Jedi-turned-Sith from Assault of the Clones; plus some noble heroics from Yaddle, the feminine of Yoda’s species seen solely briefly in The Phantom Menace. The best praise this present may be paid is that this: none of it felt like fan service, although it clearly was.
How you can watch: Tales of the Jedi is now streaming on Disney+.(opens in a brand new tab)
4. The Unhealthy Batch Season 2 (2022)
The story of a rogue group of clones who resisted their Order 66 programming obtained higher and darker in the midst of three deliberate seasons: the Empire Strikes Again impact was at work once more. In The Unhealthy Batch Season 2, we obtained to see a wider galaxy of clone troopers react realistically to their substitute by conscripted Stormtroopers, and the present apparently isn’t afraid to sacrifice considered one of its core characters — although we’ll have to attend for Season 3 earlier than we all know for positive.
How you can watch: The Unhealthy Batch is now streaming on Disney+.(opens in a brand new tab)
5. Star Wars: Visions Season 1 (2021)
It might have been a extra slim collection of visions than season 2 — particularly, tales made by a premium set of Japanese studios. But when anime is your factor, and if you happen to’re proud of cheeky cute remixes of core Star Wars ideas, then Visions didn’t disappoint on its first outing. Nor did it outstay its welcome: A number of of the disconnected tales ended on uncommon notes that left us wanting extra.
How you can watch: Star Wars: Visions is now streaming on Disney+.(opens in a brand new tab)
6. The Unhealthy Batch Season 1 (2021)
It’s a mark of the standard of all these reveals that the primary Unhealthy Batch season brings up the rear. There’s nothing notably dangerous on this spin-off following a gaggle of rogue clones who opened Clone Wars season 7; it simply felt at occasions like a Clone Wars story arc stretched out just a little too lengthy. The thriller of Omega, the clone sister of Boba Fett — is she Power-sensitive — felt underdeveloped. However nothing was too off-the-rails that it couldn’t be rescued by a superior second season, which is an efficient signal for the way forward for Star Wars animation.
How you can watch: The Unhealthy Batch is now streaming on Disney+.(opens in a brand new tab)
Want extra Star Wars? Right here’s all 12 Star Wars movies, ranked from worst to biggest.
