Star Wars has been producing TV shows for a long time, and in the last few years, we’ve had more shows than movies, as Disney+ gave us a selection of new series. From live-action to animation, good and bad, here’s every* Star Wars show ranked from worst to best.

Obi-Wan Kenobi

Trying to find the worst live-action Star Wars TV show is a bit difficult. There have been so many failures since Disney+ was launched, it’s hard to settle on just one. But I think that Kenobi might just have the lead.

Wouldn’t a show about Obi-Wan Kenobi set between Episodes III and IV be great? Well, to be honest, no. It seems it like a great idea when it’s just an idea, but when the reality of trying to write a story arises, you realise that there’s not much to talk about.

With everything we know about Kenobi during this time, it’s clear that his whole purpose was to stay on Tatooine so he could protect Luke and hopefully train him, though Owen wouldn’t allow it. It’s the only reason he has for staying on such a backwater planet, rather than seeking out Vader a second time or else joining up with the Rebellion. There’s no way to fit an interesting story in the gap here without some serious crowbar action.

The direction the show took was the most ridiculous, introducing Leia where she shouldn’t be, having Kenobi abandon Luke, and making him into a sad, pathetic, stupid mockery of his character; in short, giving him the “TLJ” treatment. At times the show becomes a farce, but one where all the characters take everything very seriously. I could go into great detail about how ridiculous this show is, and the way it shifts focus to the unlikable but supposedly heroic Reva.

There are a lot of reasons to put this show last, but the fact it destroys one of the best legacy characters–in fact, make that two with Vader–is the main one.

The Acolyte

There are times when a show is so stupidly bad that you wonder how it ever got made, and how anyone involved with it will ever work again (but work again they will), and that there wasn’t someone at any stage of the production who could have stopped it from ever getting released. Enter The Acolyte.

Try as I might, I can’t find a single redeemable thing about this show. It’s not badly written, it’s written as if by someone who has never even read a story before and has no idea how to structure a story or create characters. Nothing makes sense, people change their minds because the plot demands it, their motivations are not fixed, and there’s so much convenience and contrivance that anything can (and does) happen just to keep the story turning.

It’s a strong contender for last place, and the only reason it isn’t there is because it doesn’t ruin any legacy character, though a thankfully cancelled season two was gearing up for that. It still assassinates the Jedi, though, and is the least Star Wars of the Star Wars shows. In fact, it’s anti-Star Wars. It doesn’t understand anything about this galaxy, the rules of the world, or the morality of the Force. It justifies and glorifies evil. It’s all very weak, surface-level stuff, but it still elaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

The fact that Leslye Headland says it’s tragic that Qimir and Osha won’t get to go off any be evil shows just how devious and deviant this show is. If you want to spread those kind of ideas then go and make your own original show, but don’t try and hijack Star Wars to bring them in by the back door.

Tales of the Empire

The second of the ‘Tales Of’ series, this one follows Morgan Elsbeth and Barriss Offee and attempts to give them some kind of backstory. The real reason it’s so far down the list is that it’s a waste of time. The episodes about Morgan were boring; I really don’t need to know she invented the TIE Defender as she’s just a minor character and useful plot device from a couple of shows.

The segment about Barriss could have been good. She’s been hanging around since The Clone Wars, and was the reason Ahsoka left the Jedi, so I thought Filoni might do something interesting with her, possibly meeting up with her old friend, and either continuing their feud or else finding redemption. Sadly not.

What we got was a weak story about her joining the Inquisitors, and deciding she doesn’t want to be bad anymore or kill innocent people, even though her actions in TCW caused several innocent deaths. Why does she change her mind so quickly? We never find out. The other option of having her turn fully to the Dark Side as an Inquisitor, and possibly being sent to hunt down Ahsoka or her master Luminara, or having a meeting with Darth Vader, were completely avoided, giving a very weak, half-hearted close to her story.

Ahsoka

Ah, Ahsoka. I don’t think I’ve ever been so disappointed with how a show turned out. As someone who regards Star Wars: Rebels as the height of SW television, I thought a show made by Dave Filoni, featuring animated characters brought into live-action would be great. Sadly, it wasn’t.

I’m still not sure how it all went so wrong, but everything about this show fails. It’s tediously slow, the dialogue is terrible (worse than the prequels), the action is scratchy, Rosario Dawson is wooden, Thrawn is miscast and turned into a smug imbecile, the plot is obvious and contrived at the same time, the characters are weirdly lifeless, and it has no connection to the animated show in tone or style or characters.

It’s one of the few cases were I tried to convince myself “it’s not that bad” so as not to be so disappointed with it, focusing on the “wow” moments like the Clone Wars flashbacks. But on a rewatch, I realised there was no defence for just how bad this was. It’s almost embarrassing to think it’s getting a second season, when shows like Kenobi were rightly dropped.

It’s also a dreadful vague adaptation of Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn, and as such it desperately needs the involvement of the original trilogy characters, which hasn’t happened yet. And even if it did, what are the chances it would just be another opportunity taken to destroy their legacy?

Tales of the Underworld

The most recent of the three ‘Tales Of’ series, this one follows Cad Bane and Asajj Ventress in two separate arcs. The Ventress episodes are kind of OK and don’t really do much harm. They are more perfunctory if anything, showing her becoming a more heroic character after The Clone Wars and helping (yet another) Order 66 survivor to escape the Empire.

The Bane one is much worse, ruining the mystery of the character with weak backstory. It’s one of those dreadful Solo-style origin stories where we have to know where he got his hat and image from, and it turns out he just stole them all. Rather than being a cool character in his own right, with his own personality, he simply stole all his traits from his mentor, making him a cheap rip-off of someone else.

If they want to continue with these show, they really need to get serious about actually telling useful or important stories that expand on characters, rather than this paint-by-numbers approach.

The Book of Boba Fett

A much-maligned and rather pointless show. After being brought back from the dead for The Mandalorian, Boba Fett got his own show, and it’s probably the biggest stretch of the word to describe it as “ok”. I don’t hate it as much as a lot of fans, probably because I never really had much interest in the character. He was more just a cool-looking figure who hung around in the back of a few scenes and never really did much, and the appearances in the prequels didn’t change that, so having never read any of the EU comics or novels, I didn’t much care for him.

On the whole, BOBF is a rather silly show, as Boba “somehow” survives the Sarlaac and tries to set up a criminal empire, but doesn’t want to do crime, and hires a bunch of kids to be his enforces rather than getting actual skilled bounty hunters. He’s not cool anymore, but rather incompetent and easily pushed around by his enemies. Then there’s the fact that the show’s hijacked by The Mandalorian to quickly revise everything that happened at the end of season two, so as not to lose any of that money from Grogu merchandise, meaning the narrative is broken and Boba’s upstaged in his own show.

But as dumb entertainment it’s fine. There are a lot of fight scenes, cool monsters, and explosive action (and the slowest ever speeder chase).

Resistance

This is a show that’s been largely ignored or forgotten by Star Wars fans, even those who enjoy animation. It came along after Rebels, while the sequel trilogy was still being made, and is set in the same era, starting just before The Force Awakens. It’s an odd show, though, as it could really have gone some way to exploring more about this era and giving us the information the movies could be bothered to show, but instead it doesn’t add anything of value, being set on a small waystation in the middle of nowhere.

It feels like they were out of ideas after Rebels, having used the obvious story of another young Force-user being trained, so tried to do something different. It feels like it wasn’t fully worked out before it was shot though. The characters don’t go very deep, and there’s not much of an arc going on, just random unconnected episodes.

But it’s not irredeemable, and it looks pretty good, with a classic 2D animation style, instead of the usual computer generated style. Not exactly a hidden gem, but worth watching if you want more sequel-era content.

Tales of the Jedi

The first of the ‘Tales Of’ series that started back in 2022, and without a doubt the best one. It shows us a bit of Dooku’s past and his relationship with Qui Gon, how he became disillusioned with the Jedi and turned to Sidious for an answer to the galaxy’s problems. The other half features Ahsoka, and doesn’t really show much, except that she tried to hide her Force abilities after the war before Bail organa recruited her to the Fulcrum network.

Of course, the show does set a precedence for retconning other media, and doesn’t really tell us anything of importance, except that Dooku killed Yaddle after The Phantom Menace, but it doesn’t really spoil any other media while it’s at it.

Clone Wars

One of the first real interconnected series, released in the years between Episodes II and III, and giving a look at the intervening conflict. I’ll be honest, while a lot of fans love this show, I never really liked it much. The short runtimes, sometimes just a couple of minutes, means there’s few episodes that have much story or characters. They’re more just cool moments, a battle here, a lightsaber duel there, and the animation is very over-the-top, like the way Mace Windu takes on a whole army of battle droids by himself. If such things really happened then the Clone Wars would have ended in a week. It still has some good moments though, like OP Grievous, but it’s more focused on the visuals than the story.

Visions

Another oddity, Visions is an anthology series, telling isolated stores that are unconnected to the current Canon, which gives it room to do completely new and unconventional things. It’s a chance to show off different styles of animation, like stop motion, that aren’t usually used in Star Wars.

That being said, the fact it’s an anthology makes it difficult to judge as a whole series. Some are excellent stories, some aren’t. Same with the animation. Sometimes it’s beautiful Studio Ghibli-style, other times heavily stylized. There can be some repetition too, with most episodes focusing on Jedi survivors, or Force-sensitives discovering their power. But it still has some great moments, and episodes I’d be happy to see expanded upon.

The Bad Batch

Of the three main animated shows, this one is my least favourite. Set just at the end of the Clone Wars and afterwards, it follows the Bad Batch, a group of clones who all have defects that make them different from their millions of identical brothers, but also enhances their combat skills. As a result, they’re formed into an elite team. They go rogue after Order 66, as their inhibitor chips are also defective, and take care of Omega, a young girl who’s also their sister, and the only female clone.

It’s not a bad show, just not on the level of Rebels or TCW. There are a lot of episodes that really don’t go anywhere, and it feels like it’s stretched out too much to cover three whole seasons. On top of that clones can be a bit boring. They don’t really have much personality and don’t go through any big changes during the course of the show.

There’s a nice story here as they care for their younger sister, and it’s a very Star Wars-y setting, giving a look at the early days of the Empire, as the military changes from the clone army to the might of the Imperial military, but it doesn’t have either the scale of The Clone Wars nor the great character work of Rebels.

Skeleton Crew

If you’ve heard of this show at all, then you’ve probably heard it described as “Goonies is space”. It kind of is a bit like that. A group of kids find an abandoned spaceship and accidentally take off, jumping through hyperspace across the galaxy, and have to find a way back home. During their adventures they meet up with a pirate named Jod Na Nawood who offers to help them, but secretly has his own agenda.

It’s the kind of show that taps into all that ’80s nostalgia that became so strong after Stranger Things, and feels like something that should have been made years ago, when Star Wars first started with live-action TV. In fact, it feels like what might have been made in the 1980s, if the franchise had been able to make bigger budgeted shows (rather than those unwatchable Ewok movies). It’s got some charm to it; yes, the character work can be a bit perfunctory, and it’s not going to throw any curveballs at you, but it’s a fun, harmless adventure, with some heart.

I feel sorry for it, really, coming out when it did, and being almost completely ignored as a result. If it were released in 2019 it might have been a hit, but sadly it’s too late. After so many dreadful shows, including the preceding Acolyte, no one cares about Star Wars anymore, and despite being one of the better series, it was a complete flop.

Andor

There’s so much to say about this show. It’s probably the most well-received Star Wars show, at least critically. Sure, it doesn’t have the same viewing figures as The Mandalorian, but every critic and audience score is very high, so it must be good, right? Well…

The thing is, this is a good show, let’s just get that out of the way. If you came to this without any interest in Star Wars, you’d probably think it was good. It easily has some of the best writing, some of the best dialogue, and some of the best characters from the franchise on Disney+. Yes, it can get a bit boring at times, but it’s an excellent show on its own merits, and looks and sounds great (granted it did cost $600M for two seasons).

The problem is that it can’t be taken just on its own merits; it has to be judged as a Star Wars project, and as a result, it fails. It just doesn’t feel– or even look, stormtroopers and TIEs aside–like Star Wars. Despite all the insufferable videos about it being “Star Wars for grown ups”, it isn’t, and it misses the point of what the franchise is about–not to the extent of The Acolyte, maybe, but it still misses.

The view that a show like Andor is for adults just because it features “mature” content is actually an adolescent notion. Those contents alone don’t make a show mature, and can in fact go in completely the opposite direction to make it peurile (hello, Zack Snyder). Andor goes further, though, refusing to have any heroes and not understanding the morality that guides a galaxy far, far away.

Once again, it feels like Tony Gilroy wanted the popularity of Star Wars to put out his ideas, but didn’t want the restrictions of sticking to that world’s rules. As a sci-fi show in its own right, Andor has some interesting ideas at work, but I can’t get behind the idea that this is telling the story that will culminate in Luke Skywalker saving his father from the Dark Side. It’s a good show, sure, but not good Star Wars.

The Mandalorian

The first live-action Star Wars show to arrive on the brand new Disney+ back in 2019, it was a hopeful show, giving a look at what was promised for the future of the franchise, with high production values and enjoyable episodes full of action and adventure. It’s the kind of show you’d always expect from SW, about a bounty hunter traveling around the galaxy looking for work. Of course, it might not have become so big if it wasn’t for the merchandising opportunity of Grogu, whose popularity exceeds the show.

It’s all good fun, at least for the first couple of seasons. The problems are really there from the start if you look back. There’s not enough character in Din Djarin, and whenever they try to add something it doesn’t work. He’s just a cool looking guy in shiny armour. As for Grogu, the fact he’ll take a half-century to grow up doesn’t help much for the future of his character.

It was with season three where it all fell apart. After spending all of the second season getting Din to remove his helmet and let Grogu go off to train with Luke, all of that is immediately scrapped, because Pedro Pascal get fed up with the show, and the studio was desperate not to lose Grogu. So nothing changes, and we get eight meandering episodes about Din taking a bath on Mandalore so he can never take off his helmet again.

I really think this show has run its course. The first two seasons were a lot of fun, but the chance to make it grow into something bigger has passed. Filoni has moved on the Ahsoka, and I don’t know how successful the upcoming movie will be. With a bit more planning, I think it could have been something special, but it refused to move forward an inch, so has stopped dead, and I doubt it will ever start again.

The Clone Wars

In 2008, this series (preceded by a movie everyone forgot) changed Star Wars forever. It was the first show to be directly connected to the movies, continuing the character stories from the prequels and centered on Anakin, Obi Wan and Padme during the conflict, filling in the gaps and greatly expanding the lore.

It’s much more comprehensive and cohesive than previous shows, and you can see it improve throughout its original six-season run, with better animation and more complex writing. It set the marker for every series that followed, and its animation style has become standard for the franchise, while many characters have crossed over into live action or appeared in the movies.

As it’s not a linear series, some parts are better than others. It skips around in the timeline, and in tone: there will be episodes devoted to action-packed battles, then arcs about political intrigue, or random comedy episodes featuring Jar Jar (some of the best, obviously). It’s not a bad way to do it, considering all the different elements of the war there are to explore, but it does mean some parts are a lot better than others, and there are some arcs I’ve never rewatched.

On the whole though it’s all solid, and has given me some of my favourite moments, characters, and has set up all the shows that followed.

Star Wars Rebels

Without a doubt this is the best show that’s ever been made in the Star Wars universe. I think a lot of people overlook it because it’s animated and “for kids”, and unlike The Clone Wars, it doesn’t feature the big characters like Anakin and Obi-Wan. But genuinely it deserves a chance.

The story being told here is very much in-keeping with Star Wars. It’s about heroes and villains, failure, learning, suffering, sacrifice, and doing the right thing no matter how difficult or dangerous that is.

Yes it has problems. There are times when it can be too cartoonish, especially with its villains, and I would have liked it to have been bolder with some storylines. But it’s still extremely well-made. It doesn’t waste a moment, even with the episodes that diverge from the main storyline, they don’t come across as filler and are used to set up later events or else focus on character development.

I could go into great detail about how good this show is and what it gets so right. I have problems with a lot of what Dave Filoni has made recently, but whether it’s because it was his first solo project, or because he’s a one-shot deal, I don’t know, but this really is an excellent show that deserves more recognition within the fandom. if you’ve never seen it, give it a watch.

*I’ve not included Droids or Ewoks on this list, because I haven’t seen the entire series.