Full Series Should new viewers see CW season 7 before starting Rebels?

Like the title says, should people who start watching the cartoons after CW season 7 is finished finish the entirety of CW before starting Rebels? That's what I originally thought, as there were some instances in Rebels that didn't really make much sense due to CW not being finished (namely Ahsoka stating she last saw Anakin shortly before rescuing the Chancellor despite having left the Order a year before ROTS, and Maul still being alive, both of which would have been explained in the originally-planned ending of CW). But with the most recent episode of CW showing Ahsoka using the title Fulcrum, it makes it so that viewers who watch CW season 7 before starting Rebels would know from the get-go that the mysterious Fulcrum operative in Rebels season 1 is Ahsoka.

 

I'm going to go with finish all of CW first. Usually, I'm a release-order advocate. And yes, you'll miss out on the winks and references to Rebels. But...

- CW was meant to be finished before any followup material. It was a cancellation that screwed up those plans. Yes, they've changed some things to accomodate the content that came out since then. But by and large, what I'm seeing this season looks like an organic continuation of what went on before.

- This preserves the advantage of not knowing the ultimate fates of Ahsoka, Rex and Maul. That adds back the tension that was intended to be part of the experience. This assumes, of course, the viewer is truly spoiler-free which is hard in this age.

- And as for "spoiling" the Ahsoka reveal in Rebels, the whole reason there was much suspense and anticipation over that was because her story was left in such a lurch in TCW and we'd heard nothing for two years and many thought at the time that Disney was hell-bent on burying her along with all the other prequel stuff. Without that context, I don't think Ahsoka appearing at the end of S1 would have the same impact. It depends on how SoM wraps up her story.

 

In retrospect it was pretty obvious Ahsoka was fulcrum because the scrambled voice in the transmissions is pretty obviously Ashley Eckstein. And there was the whole forehead tattoo symbol on the drops in Season 1. The only way you wouldn't associate the two is if you haven't watched The Clone Wars in the first place. The name drop in S7E9 is just another obvious hint in the retroactive.

 

This isn't the Fate franchise. I think you can tackle the TV shows and movies in any order and still be fine. TCW and Rebels are no exception. Still, if you haven't seen Rebels yet you may offer some interesting perspective because you have the advantage of not knowing certain outcomes. If you can stomach it I'd say wait. I want to hear those perspectives.

 

Rebels is great, I don't think order matters though.

 

Could not have stated it better myself. TCWF, do you favor a chronological viewing of TCW in this instance given your preference of release order?

 

Mostly release with a few personal adjustments to keep important character arcs chronological. (like moving Clone Cadets before Rookies.)

 

I think they should watch at least the major episodes and arcs before seeing season seven.The order 66 arc,Ahsoka leaving arc,Darth Maul arcs,etc

 

So after watching the utterly brilliant Season 7 of TCW - I went back to Rebels. Basically to re-watch Ahsoka's story arc LOL. And I have to say, the last episode of Season One, and the first 4 of Season Two, where she is introduced back into the story up until she re-unites with Rex - are BRILLIANT!. Even though I know she is about to show up, I look forward to it every scene, is it healthy for a 51 year old male to get excited about seeing an animated character show up! She is by far, one, if not my favorite character in ALL of Star Wars canon!

 

Watching all of TCW makes the most sense before starting Rebels.

 

I'm watching Clone Wars for the first time, and I plan to watch Rebels also. For people who have seen it all, am I better off watching Rebels after Clone Wars season 6, and then season 7, or should I watch all of Clone Wars then all of Rebels?

 

I'd recommend watching clone wars completely before moving onto rebels. Not watching rebels adds a lot of suspense to the final season of clone wars, and although there may be a few small callbacks to rebels in the clone wars, which you would miss, watching clone wars without knowing what happens in rebels would probably enhance your viewing experience. The final season of the clone wars is great even after knowing what happens in rebels, but without it i think it would be even better.

If you want me to delve into specifics (I don't mean spoilers) then, clone wars s7 and rebels both spoil each other. But the rebels spoilers that spoil clone wars are more in number and much more apparent, whereas the ones in clone wars s7 are much less in number and at the same time are kind of hard to notice if you haven't watched rebels already as they are nothing more than little callbacks which you wouldn't really note if you haven't watched rebels already.

Also, welcome to the forums.

 

Personally I would watch all 7 seasons of Clone Wars and then watch Rebels.

 

I wish I could have experiences SoM without having seen Rebels. I can only imagine what it would be like without any of the spoilers from Rebels which I'm sure would compound what is already an emotional ride at its end. As it stands the second to the last episode "Shattered" was I think crafted to assume the viewer has already seen not just ROTS but Rebels and uses that against the viewer. It takes a single, pretty black and white line in Rebels then twists it without completely contradicting it. That allows that episode to deliver nearly 10 minutes of stomach-churning suspense and dread. Then it spends the rest of that run time and the final episode torturing the characters making the inevitable worse than I had imagined.

 

SoM?

 

Is that Maul's 'running away again' line (which I've been wondering about, myself) or something else?

Siege of Mandalore

 

I hate abbreviations like that...

I definitely think that the whole Siege of Mandalore thing should be seen before Rebels. I still hold to watching Clone Wars as a whole series, seasons 1 to 7 before starting Rebels. I wish I had done this, as I just watched both season 7 and Rebels recently for the first time.

 

Maybe the "Running away" line now refers to Maul's point of view of being used as a distraction. The last he saw of Ahsoka was her backing away after she let him out and refused to join him to escape. A sith who can only see people as something to be used can't understand the desire to help or save friends. I was actually referring to Rex's lines which are now either a lie, from a certain point of view, or in my opinion changed in context at the end of the Bad Batch arc. Tempted to use spoiler tags in the odd chance someone in this thread has no idea of what happens between the two shows. That to me is what allows "Shattered" to be so suspenseful compared to if TCW had actually tackled "it" earlier".