Star Wars: The Clone Wars is returning with 12 new episodes, supervising director Dave Filoni revealed at the show’s 10th-anniversary celebration panel at San Diego Comic-Con.
The panel, which featured many of the show’s voice actors, was promoted ahead of Comic-Con as a reflection on the groundbreaking show created by George Lucas, which aired on Cartoon Network from 2008 until 2013. The show was canceled soon after Disney purchased Lucasfilm, and a shortened sixth season premiered on Netflix in 2014. The show took place between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith and chronicled the Clone Wars we’d only heard whispers of as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, and Anakin’s padawan Ahsoka Tano were often in the thick of the action.
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But toward the end of the panel, fans were shown new footage of what was revealed to be a new season of The Clone Wars. It’ll be the second animated Star Wars TV show airing after the upcoming Disney series Star Wars Resistance; the other Star Wars animated series, Star Wars Rebels, ended earlier this year.
#CloneWarsSaved pic.twitter.com/sV2KC7JfUo
— Dave Filoni (@dave_filoni) July 19, 2018
“I honestly didn’t think we would ever have the opportunity to return to The Clone Wars,” Filoni said in a statement. “Thanks to the relentless fan support and the team behind Disney’s direct-to-consumer streaming service, we will now get to tell more of those stories. We feel a tremendous responsibility to make something that lives up to the legacy that George Lucas created with the original series and I think our team, many of whom worked on the show from the beginning, has risen to the challenge.”
Featuring the clone leader Captain Rex, Anakin, and a few other familiar faces, the trailer teases a major battle toward the end of the war—Anakin’s design is similar to how he looks in Revenge of the Sith—and a more than welcome reunion between two of the show’s most compelling characters. At the end of the trailer, the hashtag #CloneWarsSaved appears—an acknowledgment of the years-long fan campaign #SaveTheCloneWars to bring back The Clone Wars after its untimely cancellation, which resulted in tens of thousands of letters being sent to Lucasfilm. (The writers had plans beyond season 6, having written scripts for the show up to season 8 before its cancellation.)
Filoni credited the fans for helping bring back The Clone Wars, emphasizing how important it was for many of its fans.
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“Clone Wars was a piece of Star Wars that older fans might have, initially, not taken seriously because it was animated, but that wasn’t a barrier for kids,” Filoni told StarWars.com. “They loved the clones and identified with them. Ahsoka gave kids a character that was like them—someone their age that was experiencing life’s challenges and learning along the way. Plus, having a new episode each week really allowed us to explore what was going on with the new and legacy characters in a dynamic way, including Anakin and Obi-Wan. I think the stories left an indelible impression and, of course, George knew it would. He always knew.”
The new season of The Clone Wars will air on Disney’s “direct-to-consumer streaming service,” which is set to launch sometime in 2019.