People have wildly varying opinions on the Star Wars franchise. Some fans adore recent entries like The Mandalorian and Grogu, some couldn’t care less. Some loath the prequel trilogy, but for others, it’s their nostalgic happy place. If you go back far enough, you’ll even find fans who felt let down by 1983’s Return of the Jedi, even though that movie is widely considered a classic today.
One underappreciated piece of Star Wars media is The Clone Wars, an animated series that ran for seven seasons between 2008 and 2020. Fans swear by this show, but they don’t all agree on the best way to watch it.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars, front to back
The traditional approach
Star Wars: The Clone Wars is set after the events of 2002’s Attack of the Clones, which ends with the Galactic Republic going to war with the Separatists. And the tail end of Season 7 overlaps with the events of 2005’s Revenge of the Sith, where Anakin Skywalker fights his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi and becomes Darth Vader.
A lot of stuff happens in between. We meet Ahsoka Tano, a Jedi Padawan training under Anakin Skywalker. Together, she, Obi-Wan, and Anakin fight against familiar figures like Count Dooku and General Grievous. They travel to the planet of Mortis, where we learn more about how the Force works. We meet clone troopers like Captain Rex, whose squad is more independent than most of the clone troops fighting in the Grand Army of the Republic. Darth Maul, the Sith lord who got chopped in half in 1999’s The Phantom Menace, returns from the dead and becomes an important antagonist. And that’s just to start.
Obviously, one way to experience this series is to watch it in the order in which it was released. That means starting with the 2008 Clone Wars movie, which is set near the start of the conflict, and going all the way through the end of Season 7, where we see what characters like Ahsoka and Captain Rex were up to when Palpatine was taking over the Republic in Revenge of the Sith.
But like a lot of shows, especially those with this many episodes (133 in all, 134 if you count the movie), there are flashback episodes throughout the run, and some flash-forwards. In short, some episodes are aired out of sequence, but if you want to watch them in chronological order, Disney is here to help.
The “right” way to watch Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Embrace chronology
Disney put together a list of how to watch The Clone Wars in chronological order, starting with the episode that takes place furthest back in time and ending with the series finale. Sometimes it’s the same as the release order, and sometimes it’s very different. Check out the list below:
- Episode 216: “Cat and Mouse.” This flashback episode takes place even before the events of The Clone Wars movie and revolves around Anakin Skywalker using a special stealth ship to get supplies past a blockade.
- Episode 116: “Hidden Enemy.” In this episode, Anakin and Obi-Wan flush out a spy within the ranks of the Republic Army.
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars movie
- Episode 301: “Clone Cadets.” This episode features clone troopers Heavy, Fives, Echo, Cutup, and Droidbait getting trained into the Republic Army.
- Episode 303: “Supply Lines.” This episode follows Senator Bail Organa and Representative Jar Jar Binks as they undertake a tense diplomatic mission to secure food and medical air for the Twi’lek home world of Ryloth.
- Episode 101-115: Finally, we get to the beginning, with only a brief jump to skip over Episode 116, which we already watched.
- Episode 117-121
- Episode 201-203
- Episode 217-219: Episode 203 concludes a three-part story arc where bounty hunter Cad Bane steals a Jedi Holocron. Episode 217 picks up directly after it and features Anakin, Ahsoka, and Obi-Wan crash-landing on the rainforest planet of Felucia.
- Episode 204-214: We then jump back in time to watch the rest of Season 2, except for one episode we’ll get to later.
- Episode 220-222
- Episode 305-307
- Episode 302: “Arc Troopers.”
- Episode 304: “Sphere of Influence.”
- Episode 308: “Evil Plans.”
- Episode 122: “Hostage Crisis.” The Season 1 finale involves Cad Bane trying to break the imprisoned crime lord Ziro the Hutt out of a Republic facility. Episode 308, “Evil Plans,” sets this up directly, and involves Cad Bane kidnapping C-3PO and R2-D2 as part of his scheme.
- Episode 309-311
- Episode 215: “Senate Murders”: Watching this episode between Episodes 311 and 312 keeps the political and anti-war corruption storylines involving Padmé Amidala and Bail Organa flowing naturally.
- Episode 312-322
- Episode 401-422
- Episode 502-513
- Episode 501: “Revival.”: The Season 5 premiere continues the story of Darth Maul and his brother Savage Opress, but then the show attends to other matters for a while. Watching the premiere before Episode 514, when the brothers return to the narrative, tightens up the chronology.
- Episode 514-520
- Episode 601-613
- Episode 705-708: The seventh and final season is divided into three arcs of four episodes each. Chronologically, the second happens before the first.
- Episode 701-704
- Episode 709-712
It’s all optional
There’s a reason they aired the episodes out of order
Having laid all this out, it’s still entirely permissible to watch the episodes in broadcast order. In fact, for first-time watchers, it’s recommended. After all, even though some events are shown out of sequence, the writers generally have dramatic reasons for doing that, and watching the episodes in the original order preserves the intended pacing.
The Clone Wars lives on
Several elements from The Clone Wars TV show have made their way into the live-action Star Wars TV series on Disney+, most notably the character of Ahsoka Tano, played in live-action by Rosario Dawson.
Also, Dave Filoni — who was one of the biggest creative voices on The Clone Wars — is now the president and chief creative officer at Lucasfilm, so he controls the future of the Star Wars franchise going forward. So whether you watch the show in release order, chronological order, or not at all, you’ll feel its influence.
- Release Date
-
2008 – 2020-00-00
- Network
-
Cartoon Network, Netflix, Disney+
- Showrunner
-
Dave Filoni
- Directors
-
Brian Kalin O’Connell, Steward Lee, Giancarlo Volpe, Bosco Ng, Danny Keller, Rob Coleman, Justin Ridge, Nathaniel Villanueva, Saul Ruiz, Jesse Yeh, Duwayne Dunham, Atsushi Takeuchi, Robert Dalva, Walter Murch
- Writers
-
Katie Lucas, Christian Taylor, Brent V. Friedman, Matt Michnovetz, Drew Z. Greenberg, Steven Melching, Chris Collins, Charles Murray, Eoghan Mahony, Bonnie Mark, Craig W. Van Sickle, Daniel Arkin, Jose Molina, Steven Long Mitchell, Cameron Litvack, George Krstic, Carl Ellsworth, Craig Titley, Julie Siege, Jonathan W. Rinzler, Ben Edlund, Douglas Petrie, Kevin D. Campbell, Kevin Rubio
