The Force is strong with this one: Like out of carbonite, Lucasfilm and Disney are reviving the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars that was abruptly cancelled in 2013, with creator and writer-director Dave Filoni stunning the audience at Comic-Con 2018 in San Diego with the announcement that the show will return.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars will be back in 2019 with 12 new episodes that will become available on Disney's new as yet unnamed video-on-demand streaming service.
"It's an anniversary - it's 10 years," Dave Filoni told the audience who waited with breathless anticipation as he continued: "And you guys deserve something for being so great - a present, if you will. We got together and thought, 'If there is one thing we could give you, what would it be?'"
His announcement at the panel discussion about the show's 10th anniversary was met by standing applause.
The beloved animation series that won several Emmy Awards came to an abrupt end after 5 seasons on Turner's Cartoon Network after it started in 2008.
It will now seamlessly resume where the unresolved storylines left off with the same characters like Ahsoka Tano, Captain Rex, Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, the same voice actors and at the same time period in that galaxy far, far away, set between the period of Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.
"I honestly didn't think we would ever have the opportunity to return to The Clone Wars," said Dave Filoni.
"Thanks to the relentless fan support and the team behind Disney's direct-to-consumer streaming service, we will now get to tell more of those stories. We feel a tremendous responsibility to make something that lives up to the legacy that George Lucas created with the original series, and I think our team, many of whom worked on the show from the beginning, has risen to the challenge."
A new Star Wars: The Clone Wars teaser trailer was released at Comic-Con.
The teaser trailer starts with various members of the Clone army talking and then text saying: "A war left unfinished ... until now." At the end of the trailer Ahsoka Tano, the then-padawan learner of Jedi Anakin Skywalker appears. She says to him through a hologram: "Hello master, it's been awhile."
