Star Wars TV within the Disney+ period: 12 seasons, ranked

A very long time in the past in a media panorama far, distant, Star Wars TV didn’t have the best monitor 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 will not discover it anyplace on Disney+ at present. You could find the primary Star Wars TV collection, the Nineteen Eighties animated exhibits Ewoks and Droids, however there is a motive they are not precisely entrance and middle on the service. Lucasfilm’s twenty first century animation choices Clone Wars and Rebels have been liked by the trustworthy, however usually 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 loads 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 motion pictures from 1977 to 2019.

And there’s, arguably, just one actual dud within the bunch.

Six of these seasons are stay motion, six are animated. Rating all of them collectively would make for a really subjective listing, since each viewer’s tolerance for animation varies. For that motive, we have divided our rankings into two lists — beginning with the one closest to the area fantasy franchise’s cinematic coronary heart.

Half I: Stay-Motion Star Wars

1. Andor Season 1 (2022)

Like lots of its characters, Andor dared to interrupt the principles. The backstory of Rogue One‘s Cassian Andor, plus a rising forged of different gamers who acquired sucked into the Insurrection, this present defied our expectations from episode 1. It most well-liked 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 among the most harrowing in TV historical past, not simply in Star Wars. Here is hoping the remainder of Gilroy’s “24-chapter Dickensian novel” holds up when Season 2 arrives in 2024.

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 area western enjoyable with one thing darker and extra advanced. 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 marvel it felt so surprisingly proper, so earned, when Luke Skywalker, the hero who went via all of that in Empire, got here to say Grogu from his successor. And if all that wasn’t sufficient, the season additionally launched estranged Jedi Ahsoka Tano in live-action type, performed by Rosario Dawson. If solely that good Skywalker ending hadn’t been reversed so swiftly.    

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 known as a “good little Star Wars poem” on the time, was higher. That pattern line of rising pleasure saved 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. 

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 “here is a superb 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 rigidity, given each Star Wars viewer know they escape unscathed, they made up for in pleasant lightsaber-lit visuals.    

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 pictures, child; Season 3 is why you do not get cocky. Showrunners Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau appeared to care extra about organising future tales than specializing in this one. They benched their hero for quite a lot of 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 point out for it on the way-too-pat ending. Plus they tried to get us to care about disputes between factions of principally faceless Mandalorians, and it labored about in addition to that point Star Trek Discovery needed us to care about lengthy scenes between rubber-masked Klingons.  

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 a superb story; a number of good tales, most certainly. However that was earlier than Lucasfilm made the doubtful option to graft a preexisting movie-length undertaking in regards to the famed bounty hunter of the title, which might have lined not more than an episode or two by itself, onto what primarily turned The Mandalorian Season 2.5. Fett regarded 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. 

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 this planet of animation as Andor was for stay motion. The franchise has by no means regarded this fashionable, and it has by no means been this fearless about telling every kind of tales. And for those who 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 cannot convey the darkness in humanity each bit as a lot as movie? 

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 have by no means seen it earlier than or since — over a number of episodes, from the angle of clone troopers abruptly 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!  

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 might begin to inform some fascinating tales round its edges. Tales of the Jedi gave us an surprising anthology of moments we did not know we needed to see: Ahsoka’s delivery; the backstory of Depend 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 most effective praise this present might be paid is that this: none of it felt like fan service, though it clearly was. 

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 acquired 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 acquired to see a wider galaxy of clone troopers react realistically to their substitute by conscripted Stormtroopers, and the present apparently is not afraid to sacrifice certainly one of its core characters — although we’ll have to attend for Season 3 earlier than we all know for certain. 

watch: The Unhealthy Batch is now streaming on Disney+.(opens in a brand new tab)

5. Star Wars: Visions Season 1 (2021)

It could have been a extra slender collection of visions than season 2 — particularly, tales made by a premium set of Japanese studios. But when anime is your factor, and for those who’re pleased with 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. 

watch: Star Wars: Visions is now streaming on Disney+.(opens in a brand new tab)

6. The Unhealthy Batch Season 1 (2021)

It is a mark of the standard of all these exhibits that the primary Unhealthy Batch season brings up the rear. There’s nothing notably dangerous on this spin-off following a bunch of rogue clones who opened Clone Wars season 7; it simply felt at occasions like a Clone Wars story arc stretched out a bit of 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 could not be rescued by a superior second season, which is an effective signal for the way forward for Star Wars animation.

watch: The Unhealthy Batch is now streaming on Disney+.(opens in a brand new tab)

Want extra Star Wars? Here is all 12 Star Wars motion pictures, ranked from worst to greatest.