Tartakovsky’s animation puts more emphasis on visuals than dialogue, and it better utilized the environments, planets, and tech designs from the prequels. Without the plot requirements of a film, an animated show could reinvent the iconography and tell a more expansive story. Star Wars had never had a strong television presence before, but Tartakovsky had seen the potential in the brief animated segment of The Star Wars Holiday Special and the early Droids and Ewoks cartoons. Although it's been wiped from the official Star Wars canon and only just been made available on Disney+, Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars was ahead of its time. Clone Wars made the prequel era exciting even for those unimpressed with George Lucas’s new trilogy, and it proved a Star Wars television show could work long before the countless projects currently in development. Clone Wars didn’t just bridge the gap between two other movies, but fleshed out the universe through an exciting new medium. Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars wasn’t supposed to be anything more than an extended toy commercial.

Attack of the Clones had just debuted in theaters in May 2002, and Hasbro was keen to reap all of the merchandising potential of the “Clone Wars,” hinted at in the original Star Wars, in the marketing lead-up to Revenge of the Sith. When Samurai Jack creator Genndy Tartakovsky was first approached by Lucasfilm to produce an animated Star Wars series, it was at the request of the company’s action figure manufacturer Hasbro.

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