Over the years that Disney has owned Star Wars, a distinct pattern of storytelling has emerged. The franchise has shaped itself into three, possibly more, separate, individual genres that once were part of a unified brand. They all have the same type of content and look, and all of them even tie into the same story, but they are noticeably different. There is, of course, the main canon, consisting of the nine episodic movies, but Disney has made a clear distinction in the types of Star Wars content they produce ever since The Mandalorian. Star Wars was not just for kids anymore.

When making a show outside the movies, until The Mandalorian, everything was a cartoon, generally aimed at a younger demographic and set in the prequel timeline. But now we’re seeing a greater investment in shows made for adults, usually set after Return of the Jedi. While there is no hard and fast rule to when the shows take place, you can always tell when you are watching a different kind of Star Wars story, e.g., Star Wars: The Clone Wars is very different from Andor.

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

The Star Wars franchise has chosen to tell one story with three distinct types of storytelling: their main canon, their kids’ cartoons, and their gritty adult shows. This is how they work together and stand apart.

The 3 Types of Star Wars Titles

     Disney+

There are three distinct types of Star Wars movies or TV shows. The first includes the main canon of the three different trilogies: original, prequel, and sequel. They make the main Star Wars story and are created to have a broad appeal. The second is children’s cartoons like Rebels, Bad Batch, and The Clone Wars. And the third is the shows and movies like The Mandalorian or Rogue One: A Star Wars Story that generally has more of an adult audience in mind.

Star Wars was meant for younger audiences until The Mandalorian, which opened a different kind of storytelling for the franchise. The show appealed to the audience of fans that had grown up with the original trilogy or had poor opinions of the prequels. Instead of trying to sell the IP to a continually new audience of children, this played on a nostalgia for the old Star Wars that existed before the prequels and made a show for people that were still fans but had no content to watch. The shows are gritty, live-action series often characterized by their absence of lightsabers which may have oversaturated the market in Star Wars.

Shows like The Clone Wars were aimed at children who grew up with the prequels and wanted to continue creating a fanbase out of those movies. It took one of the show’s most popular characters, Ahsoka, and followed her story after she parted ways with her master Anakin to create Star Wars: Rebels. The series generally tried to create a new generation of fans. Shows like these tell stories that are kinder and focus on younger characters. They also usually focus on Jedi or Force-sensitive characters since they still have a novelty to new fans.

The Difficulty of the Main Canon

     Lucasfilm Ltd.

The main Star Wars canon is meant to be the primary narrative to which all other Star Wars stories connect, and it remains that way. Unfortunately, these films have never had the same power as the original trilogy that inspired the franchise in the first place. This hasn’t stopped fans from coming back time and again, but this main story that controls the rest of the universe is often the least popular and most ridiculed in the franchise.

It creates a strange relationship with the rest of the canon. So, titles like The Clone Wars are forced to work within the confines of stories that might not be as well-liked. And other stories like Star Wars: Rebels become more popular because they have the freedom to tell their own story.

The nine main films now seem more like an obstacle to be navigated around than they are a gift to the Star Wars universe. When other titles come out, the more successful ones operate closer to the original trilogy and fit like puzzle pieces. Rogue One brought its story up to the moment A New Hope began.

The Mandalorian takes a look at what Luke Skywalker is doing after his victory in Return of the Jedi. The prequel and sequel trilogies are almost being actively avoided in the extended universe. Star Wars: Rebels was a very popular show set with ties to the prequels, but it distanced itself enough to tell its own story.

Perhaps it’s a sign that what Star Wars fans really want, more than a connection to the main canon, is an original story set in the same universe.