I think casual viewers like me label these sort of shows ‘periphery’ or similar. There’s a certain ‘non-essential-ness’ to it, almost like a video game side quest that you only need to complete to see some extra story. If it was great, important story… it would just be in the film / main game (so the subconscious presumption goes). I guess that’s what happens when you expand a universe to its content consuming limits. I love video games but I tire of the whole ‘collect all the things’ stuff that distracts from the core fun of the game, which is padding content or for completionists only.
I’ve never bothered with any of the animated Star Wars stuff for this reason. I’ve also never bothered with any of the Marvel TV shows, aside from Loki (which I thought was pretty good). I’d rather expand my consumption of a different sort of story altogether. I’m just not bothered, personally. Then, I never bother with B periphery Marvel films either… I really couldn’t care less about ‘Ant Man’ (….. I mean, Ant Man?!?).
That doesn’t mean that the expanded content can’t be good, but it needs to stand up on its own two feet. The only Star Wars TV shows to really accomplish this have been Andor (more political and slow burn) and Mando series 1 (world building and adventuring in short doses). Mando 2 was still fun. Unfortunately, Boba Fett, Obi Wan and Mando 3 really weren’t very good at all and I think that has damaged my perception of the brand slightly.
Despite watching the above shows, I still wouldn’t be able to tell you who Ashoka was by name.
So that leads me to browsing the thread to see if it’s going to be another Boba Fett / Mando 3, or something more like Andor. Personally, I don’t care how many other people are watching it… I’m just interested in discussion on the merits of the show.
Too early to tell from what I’ve read so far! But personally I thought that Andor only really came together in its latter half, after a lot of set up. The scenes with the Imperial investigation officers / office politics was, to my surprise, probably the most interesting Star Wars has been for a long time.