In 2015, Star Wars changed forever with The Force Awakens, which rebooted the franchise under Disney’s control, launched a new trilogy, and introduced a fresh set of characters who represented the future of Star Wars (at least, at the time). But what a certain type of fan may tell you is that the most important moment in modern Star Wars came one year earlier. That’s because the year 2014 saw the launch of an animated series that quietly turned Dave Filoni into the most important person at Lucasfilm and introduced a cast of characters with way more longevity than Rey, Finn, or Kylo Ren.
On October 3, 2014, the Disney Channel dropped the two-part premiere of Star Wars Rebels, “Spark of Rebellion,” which hit Disney XD two days later. If you didn’t have traditional cable or a costly internet subscription to Disney XD there’s close to zero chance you watched the debut of Rebels in realtime. At this moment, nobody cared about Ezra Bridger, Sabine Wren, Hera, Chopper, Kanan, or Zeb. Yet, the current landscape of Star Wars is influenced by Rebels, perhaps more than any other aspect of preexisting Star Wars media.
