Where did your Star Wars journey begin? As a co-host of the GrowingUpSkywalker podcast, I get to shepherd my wife through her Star Wars Journey. When we met, she had never seen a single Star Wars, and I was in my 3rd or 4th straight watchthrough of the Clone Wars. It was the pandemic. I ran, I baked banana bread, and I watched Star Wars.
After I eventually got her to watch The Mandalorian, I told her that we had to watch more to figure out who Ahsoka was, who Luke is, and who Bo-katan is, was, and will be! She proposed that we do a podcast where we watch all of Star Wars – movies and shows, in in-universe chronology.
Thus, GrowingUpSkywalker was born, and as of this week, we are in the Original Trilogy. Three years of Clone Wars, Rebels, Kenobi, Andor, Tales of the Jedi, and here we are. So the question: Is this a good way to watch Star Wars? Is this the best way to watch Star Wars?
I was born in 1986 and watched various VHSs of the Star Wars Original Trilogy before and after the special editions throughout my childhood. I enjoyed The Phantom Menace but was busy being a teenager for the rest of the prequel trilogy. At some point after college, I found the animated series and realized that they pulled together the whole thing. My journey is pretty normal for someone my age. But if you were starting now or starting again, how would you do it?
This is the very best time to start watching Star Wars, from the beginning, the way we did. You may worry about missing some cultural impact; of course, you will; it’s a 47-year-old franchise. To reach the full import of A New Hope in the zeitgeist of the time you have to bone up on the Brehznev v Carter era of the Cold War and also forget one of the most misquoted lines of movie history: “Luke, I am your father.”
Or…
Or you watch it in order…
Let me take you through my reasoning:
When they came out, the prequels had some pushback. Namely, the dialogue which was par for Star Wars and Jar-Jar Binks. Watching The Clone Wars (2008) Animated Series brings all of this together. Clones are people; Anakin is complex, nuanced, loveable, and darkly dangerous. Obi-wan is a gem, and there exists a whole third way to the war – the Mandalorians.
The plotlines of the Clone Wars, with Maul, Ahsoka, the Mandalorians, and the Clones, all open a whole new dimension of Star Wars that allows a viewer to feel more lived in. My wife talks about how the Ahsoka-centric episodes speak to her because Ahsoka is the key protagonist and audience stand-in so often.
The Cantina scene in A New Hope (1977) stands out in the meta-lore of Star Wars because every single character in that scene has a backstory. Bo’shek (obviously the dude who Obi-wan talks to before talking to Chewbacca) is a crew member in the excellent Outer Rim board game.
But in the climactic Battle of Yavin, dozens of X-wings go up, and two come down. Are the pilots expendable? The rebel crew? The soldiers killed in the opening sequence? In a pulpy sense, they all are, but Rebels and Andor give those characters names and motivations and backstories and moral quandaries. Rebels not only finishes some of the stories that the Clone Wars left behind but tells a whole narrative of family, sacrifice, and rebellion. When Luke meets the droids and stands up, vibrating with the energy of a 19-year-old, and says, “You know about the rebellion against the Empire?” It’s Hera Syndulla’s Rebellion. It’s Cassian Andor’s. It’s what Ezra and Kanan fought and sacrificed for. It’s what Obi-wan had to face in his show and what Maarva Andor crashed her own funeral for.
You can watch A New Hope now and see Beru and Owen die and feel nothing. But if you see them in Kenobi, in the prequels. If you see Obi-wan in Rebels, you see that every single life matters. At the Battle of Scarif, Blue Squadron and Admiral Raddus give it all up for a hope, and if you are with them, of course A New Hope is ready for you.
Somehow, cloning makes sense. It’s really not mysterious or unplanned at all. The larger storyline of The Bad Batch connects with the Mount Tantiss Cloning facility. This facility was adapted from Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire Legends trilogy, as a place where force-driven cloning occurred.
Pair this with the work that Moff Gideon is doing with the Imperial Remnants in the Mando-era, as well as Thrawn’s return in the Ahsoka show, and you have the elements for a rise in the crypto-fascism of the Empire into the First Order.
While Resistance is not the greatest of Star Wars content (reminder that we are a non-toxic podcast, so this is as damning as I get), it does also tell the story of the appeal of the fascist imperial/first-order state in a way that does speak to modern audiences. When we think, “Surely we won’t let Nazis take over again,” and then see our friends and loved ones becoming Nazis, it’s brutal. That is what Resistance was trying to show us.
Put on March of the Resistance from The Force Awakens as loud as you can. It will take 4 minutes. Now tell me you aren’t AMPED. The sequels reward readers of novels and comics. Viewers of all the previous plotlines are especially rewarded.. They reward the fans who are new as well as old.
Reading up on the excellent Dr. Aphra comics and even the High Republic books puts into place why Amilyn Holdo is the only one able to use hyperspace as a weapon and why it was a suicide mission.
The Rise of Skywalker contains so many references to the deep lore of Star Wars, and carries so many stories in the form of haunted holocrons and 50 year old starfighters. It carries such burdens in the way it was supposed to be the chosen one.
We can love the sequels for what they are. One cannot rely on Disney for forecasting what they are going to be working on next, but the sequels are where we are now. It is uncomfortable to be living a cheaper, meaner life than our parents, somehow fighting the same battles they said they won. It is interesting to see that sometimes people throughout Star Wars have just lied about something and the truth is simpler but more embarrassing.
The biggest rumors I hear are that our next installments will be a Mandalorian movie and a sequel-sequel trilogy. This puts a timer on our watchthrough, but where do we start?
The High Republic Era is a classic Lucasfilm/Disney/Star Wars combined multimedia effort that created comics, YA books, novels, and eventually, The Acolyte. Importantly, Star Wars is Space Fantasy. Fantasy is all about the fallen previous greatness trope. The old Kings were stronger; we used to have more powerful magic, and we had to restore the throne. The Nihil, the Great Hyperspace disaster, all showcase peak Jedi. What a time to start in on some of the most intriguing stories of good vs evil! Much of Legends content is devoted to the post-Original Trilogy era and needs to have all the beauty and joy of watching Jedi solve problems. But that era is behind us. It’s here, in the High Republic era.
If you start now with:
You will have watched it all.
There might be another season of Andor or Ashoka or even the Acolyte by the time you get there, but the magic will be sublime.
Every single life, death, and decision will culminate in a way that makes the next moment more and more thrilling, and the filling out of the world will make it all the more lovable. Every character is living in the moment, unaware of consequences, trusting in the Force. My wife tells me watching this way takes away the opinions and turns it into a story worth loving. I implore you to watch Star Wars in the most loving way you can. With a newcomer’s eyes, an open mind, and a heart freed from the past.
What’s your opinion? Share with us on Social or on CouchSoup’s Delightful Circle network where you would start!
This was an excellent article, and what a commitment!
I agree with your list but I think there’s a strategy to watch the movies in the original aired order and then going back and watching all the TV and animated content. I think the movies are still the gold standard and breaking up that narrative would feel underwhelming and in consistent. I have a 3 year old and weighing how I’ll eventually break him into the SW universe. Currently getting him excited by Young Jedi series on Disney+.