Star Wars: The Clone Wars' Conclusion May Kill Fandom's Toxicity

It's a volatile time to be a Star Wars fan.

Between actors being driven off social media by toxic fandom, entitled "fans" starting petitions in a delusional attempt to remake The Last Jedi, and uncertainty swirling around LucasFilm's plans for standalone spinoff films after the lukewarm box office response to this year's Solo: A Star Wars Story, the fandom needs something to rally back around.

Enter the surprise revival of the popular animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Announced by co-creator Dave Filoni during the series' tenth anniversary panel at Comic-Con International, the show will return with twelve brand new episodes closing out the story set in between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. The revival will premiere on Disney's upcoming premium streaming service, a situation not unlike how next year's Young Justice revival will premiere exclusively on DC Universe.

If there's perhaps a recent addition to the Star Wars mythos that fans have rallied around most visibly, it's been the franchise's two animated series The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, the latter of which concluded this past March after an acclaimed four season run. Indeed, the fans' vocal support for LucasFilm's CGI Star Wars series was confirmed by Filoni as the primary reason for The Clone Wars upcoming return over four years since the last new episodes first aired.

LucasFilm shocked fans in March 2013 when they announced that The Clone Wars was being cancelled after five seasons so the studio could focus on production for 2015's The Force Awakens and Rebels with new animated series taking place in between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope. Given the advanced production schedule for The Clone Wars, several episodes for a planned sixth season had already been completed before the cancellation with the thirteen completed episodes premiering on Netflix in 2014 with the subtitle "The Lost Missions". Despite this, there were still plenty of narrative loose ends from the series unaddressed in the incomplete sixth season.

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These loose ends include an expanded backstory for iconic bounty hunter Boba Fett. The unaltered clone of Jango Fett was to have a showdown with rival bounty hunter Cad Bane which would explain how Fett received the dent on his helmet present throughout the original Star Wars trilogy.

Another major unresolved plot line involves the further adventures of the resurgent Darth Maul. Long presumed dead after being bisected by Obi-Wan Kenobi in the climax of 1999's The Phantom Menace, Maul resurfaced in the fourth season of The Clone Wars having survived the grievous injury and being fitted with robotic legs. After starting his own criminal empire, Maul sought out both Obi-Wan and his former master Darth Sidious for revenge only for the Sith Lord to subdue him for his own nefarious agenda. While Maul made a surprise reappearance as a crime lord at the end of Solo, his renewed connection with Sidious is something that has yet to be explored.

It is unclear what, exactly, the seventh season of The Clone Wars will explore across its twelve episodes; the SDCC trailer showcased fan-favorite characters like Anakin Skywalker's young Padawan Ashoka Tano and Clone Trooper Rex, and it promises to finish the war once and for all.

While Star Wars fans still remain one of the most passionate fanbases in the world, they are absolutely in need of a win or at the very least closure to help the franchise move forward. As long as it's communicated respectfully, it is perfectly valid to either like or dislike The Last Jedi; it's a subjective exercise. But both sides of that divide need something to bridge the gap and remind them all over again why they fell in love with that galaxy far, far away in the first place. And they need something that can galvanize the fanbase and connect with audiences around the world in a way that Solo: A Star Wars Story unfortunately wasn't quite able to.

The fan-driven revival of Star Wars: The Clone Wars is a prime example of how fandom can not only be a supportive community, but also help bring about positive change. The fandom needs to use that momentum and positivity to expunge its more problematic elements that have arisen with the past couple years. They need to remember what brought them to the sci-fi fantasy franchise in the first place. They need to ditch the entitlement issues and appreciate new content that not only honors the franchise's history but also is designed to bring in new generations of fans. Hopefully, the upcoming Clone Wars revival will have all those answers embedded in its computer-generated DNA (No, not like midochlorians). And more importantly, perhaps that much-needed and long-delayed closure will clear the decks to bring on something new.

May the Force be with them.