So, I've been browsing some of the Star Wars Subreddits, and the amount of coping on display from Disney Drones is hysterical. You'll still find new threads about how "The Hate For the ST NEEDS to Stop!" or "This is why TLJ will be regarded as the next ESB in ten years" or "Future kids will love the ST, and that's okay"...that kind of sad, desperate attempts to deal with the new movies' plummeting reputation within the fandom.
But one recurring sentiment that I keep seeing rear its ugly head as a thread topic is the ST Fans clamoring for a TCW-style show set during the films. I keep seeing this bandied about everywhere, and it only skyrocketed once the new Bad Batch series was announced (which is still the source of a lot of salt among ST shills, with them declaring that "the Clone Wars and the PT have enough content, focus on the sequels, REEEEEEEEEEE"). It's fueled by the idea that TCW allegedly "fixed" a lot of problems with the PT, and a similar show expanding the ST would fix all the maladies with those movies, bolster their reputation in the eyes of the fandom, and finally grant the ST the forgiveness and appreciation it deserves...the same way that TCW did for the PT.
There are so many reasons that a show of that kind won't do fucking shit to save the ST, for reasons that these Disney Drones will furiously dance around or consciously ignore, and they are as follows:
1. In the eyes of many, TCW didn't "fix" the reputation or critical failings of the PT. Any warm or glowing response to the PT is either a result of people who already liked them upon release (myself very much included), or people whose standards have been so crippled by the abysmal quality of the newer movies that they have actually returned to the PT with a slightly rosier lens...albeit one in full awareness of their critical failings as films. The TCW didn't do shit to alleviate public perception of the PT...if anything, the ST was so awful that it ended up validating those films.
2. There already was an attempt to expand the ST era through animation...it was called Star Wars: Resistance, and it was fucking awful. It had horrible ratings, and receives little to zero fanfare amongst core fans (for all of the autism around Ahsoka, people at least talk about her. Same with Kanan Jarrus and Hera Syndulla of Space Aladdin fame...when was the last time you heard someone raving about more media, toys, or game inclusions for Pilot Dicknose and Golden Stormtrooper?)...effectively crushing all potential cult status. That series expanded on the individuals fighting, and the nature of the conflict in the ST, tying directly to TFA...and it registered all the impact and consequence of an underwater fart. Kind of like the rest of the material relating to the ST.
3. Stuff like TCW, the Clone Wars Multimedia project and Genndy Wars were able to exist precisely because there was enough in the PT to expand upon. The politics, Clone Wars, Jedi Council, various new aliens and species, as well as abundance of new characters to work with allowed for exploration in several episodes and story arcs...because they were ORIGINAL content worth expanding upon. The ST spends so much of its time being a Kroger Brand Rehash of the OT that it barely introduces any novelties or original content to elaborate on. And on top of that, the films race through their respective plots at breakneck speed with no pause to do any actual worldbuilding....meaning, that anyone who writes content for the ST in the form of a TV series has a new burden that the TCW writers weren't saddled with: having so little to work off of that they have to create everything from scratch. Characters, locations, and events exist in the ST, but they have such little substance behind them that the show writers will be doing all of the legwork to make something out of them. Anakin and Padme's forbidden romance, the CIS's dissent and departure from the Republic, Obi-Wan uncovering the Sifo-Dyas conspiracy, and the Jedi unknowingly playing into the hands of Darth Sidious were not plot elements that TCW's writers had to concoct themselves....they already EXISTED in the PT films, and only required building off of. But there's so little to work with in the ST that writers for the books and comics have had to essentially concoct entire library's worth of documentation and explanation just to explain shit like Kylo Ren's dark side turn or the existence and rise of the First Order, because J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson couldn't be bothered to have that shit in the films. And they've already gone over that stuff in books and comics outside the films (of quite dismal quality, I might add), so there's no way they're going to go over those details again for some throw-away animated show.
4. The Clone Wars was a conflict that took place over 3 years...the First Order War (or whatever it's fucking called) only takes place over a single year. Disney Drones who talk about a prospective ST Animated Series expanding the conflict in the way that TCW did almost always dance around this point, probably because it undercuts the entire possibility of such a show. How many story arcs, milestone events, large scale plotlines, new characters or instances of character development are you going to be able to squeeze into one in-universe year? Fuck, even the Expanded Universe couldn't cram anything overly substantial in the year between ESB and ROTJ, outside of small-scale side-stories like Shadows Of The Empire, and that was just to explain the lack of galactic gangster activity in the films outside of Jabba the Hutt, as well as the Heroes' search for Han Solo. Anyone who thinks that a TCW-with multitudes of characters and sprawling story arcs have been stuffed into a single year is fooling themselves. In fact, there are some fans who feel that the amount of stuff that happens in TCW is too implausible for a three-year war. And speaking of which...
5. While the amount of things that happen in TCW's small timespan is derided as implausible by some, it can be justified by the sheer scale of the Clone Wars. Remember, it's a conflict that involves virtually every single known planet in the galaxy, with dozens of battles being fought simultaneously between two massive galactic factions. When watching the PT films, you already get the sense that a ton is happening off-screen, a feeling that's all but compounded by ROTS, which takes place during the final height of the Clone Wars--we're even treated to references to off-screen events like Quinlan Vos' excursions, the countless Jedi that have fallen to Grievous, the Jedi Council's inability to distribute their Clone Forces on all of the planets being affected by the war. Things are happening off-screen. The problem with the ST is that the conflict is of such a small scale that there is virtually NOTHING happening off-screen. The war is literally limited to everything we see happen in the films--no other planets are involved, no other governments or factions are lending aid to the Resistance, and the First Order is only affecting one group of people with their military might: the protagonists. That's it. The conflict of the films is so tight-knit and involving so few main players, and the only thing we're told about the rest of the galaxy is all the war profiteering nonsense on Canto Bite, and a few fugitive stormtroopers hiding out on Kijimi. What fucking grand adventures and season-long story arcs are you going to tell with that? The only time where multiple planets seem involved in what's going on is during the final battle at Exegol, and that's at the ass end of the last film. Some people will argue that a similar contention can be made about the civil war in the OT, but that's utter bullshit: we know that the rebel alliance is more than what we see in the films...that's why Admiral Ackbar and Mon Mothma appearing in ROTJ and not in the previous two makes sense, because we hear about other rebel cells fighting throughout the galaxy across the films, on Dantooine, on Sollust, etc, and see tactics of dispersing and reconvening after defeats like the one on Hoth, for example. There's far more to the Rebellion than what we see on-screen, but with the Resistance, what we see on-screen is the entirety of their forces, cut off and isolated from the New Republic or any allies by the films' own admission. Every other planet is just standing by, unaffected by the conflict. There are no other military operations happening, no other Jedi or substantive characters to focus on, nothing. Thanks to the barren world-building and microscopic scale of the conflict, the setting of the ST films is relegated solely to what's actively happening to the main characters, with life going on as usual throughout the rest of the galaxy...the first time in the saga where the main threat is affecting the main characters, and only the main characters. And yes, there is a year between TLJ and TROS...a year where the First Order makes no significant progress in defeating the Resistance, a year where Rey is doing nothing but training, and where the only Resistance activity being a few slipshot guerilla attacks and smuggling runs as seen in the books like Resistance Rising and Black Spire. Again, not exactly riveting material for a multi-season TV series. Ultimately, nothing substantial can happen off-screen because the films allow no breathing room for that to happen, by keeping a chokehold of important, large-scale events around the main characters, and keeping galactic life normal and relatively unaffected everywhere else. This is what really saps the creative breathing room to tell good stories during the ST War, because there's so little of it happening, and too little of it affecting the larger setting for writers to do anything truly exciting with it. You can't even do something similar to Star Wars Rebels, because there are no origins of the conflict left to establish, or hundreds of planets under the grip of the First Order like Rebels depicted with the Empire, or any Jedi characters to embark on their own journeys separate from Rey...thanks to the Knights of Ren killing them all. By trying so hard to pigeon-hole the Resistance into a desperate situation, and trying to make the ST less like the prequels, the writers have effectively made it harder to economize on the era they've created...and have ironically prevented a show in the same style as the PT's alleged "saving grace", TCW, to exist for their trilogy as well.
TL ; DR The ST Era is a creative dead end from which no TCW-style show can emerge, for the same reasons why any interesting stories told in that era through books, comics and games can't emerge. There's too little time, and too little creative novelties to work with in order to properly flesh out this era. It's what will cripple the ST era for years to come, make it age faster and less favorably then the PT era, and prevent time and supplementary material to heal their reputation in the fandom...in spite of hordes of shrieking Disney Drones declaring otherwise.
