It’s now been ten years since Star Wars Rebels first premiered on Disney XD. As one of the first major projects to debut as part of Disney’s revamped Star Wars timeline, it’s safe to say the series ushered in a whole new era for Star Wars. And even a decade later, it remains one of the best examples of how to expand and enrich the Skywalker Saga.
To celebrate this anniversary, let’s take a look back at the game-changing storylines and new ideas that helped Rebels reinvigorate Star Wars at a pivotal time for the franchise. Warning: this article contains full spoilers for Star Wars Rebels! Rebels may be a followup to Star Wars: The Clone Wars, but it quickly proved to be a very different beast. Not only is the series set during the period between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, it’s one that maintains its focus on a single, core cast, rather than repeatedly jumping from one batch of characters to the next.
That allowed fans to really settle in and get to know the Spectres and become invested in their guerilla war against the Empire. If there’s any one character whose arc really ties the series together, it’s Kanan Jarrus (voiced by Freddie Prinze, Jr.).
Kanan is introduced as a former Jedi Padawan who escaped the wrath of Order 66 and has been surviving on the fringes of the galaxy ever since. Though Kanan never completed his own Jedi training, he finds himself unwittingly becoming a mentor to young Ezra Bridger (Taylor Gray), an orphan who shows strong potent.