Star Wars: Rebels Was So Good, Even the Producer Is Amazed

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost eight years since Star Wars: Rebels wrapped up. This show might’ve felt like just another animated series at first, but it actually ended up being a pretty huge deal for the franchise—and not just because it was “Disney’s first Star Wars.” Now, with a little distance from the chaos, executive producer Henry Gilroy has been opening up about what it was really like making Rebels during a time when Disney was still figuring out what to do with George Lucas’s galaxy.

So What Was It Like to Actually Make 'Rebels'?

Gilroy recently stopped by the Pod of Rebellion podcast and got honest about the inside process. The big takeaway? Making Clone Wars and making Rebels were two very different beasts—mainly thanks to who was calling the shots.

Back when they did The Clone Wars, things were neat and simple: they just had to keep George Lucas happy. If George liked something, he might throw in his own ideas, but basically, his word was law. As Gilroy put it:

'When you’re working on Clone Wars, you have one boss. You only have to please one guy, really. And that’s George Lucas. That’s completely different from working with Disney on Rebels. There’s the committees. So, not only are you getting notes from Lucasfilm’s story group about what they’re doing for future movies, but you’re also getting notes from the Disney team. That’s the Disney executives. You’re also getting notes from BS&P, what we’re allowed to do and what we’re not allowed to do. Then you also have the studio, the Disney studio as a whole. Besides the Disney Channel. So, you go from pleasing one guy to now there’s five different entities... When you get notes back on a script, they’re color-coded. Red is for this person, blue is for this, green is for this. So, it’s a lot of things that you’re having to juggle. So, I’m always amazed by how good the series turned out, but a lot of it had to do with us just standing our ground and the trust that was earned during Clone Wars.'

Yeah, sounds like a real party. All those famously chill Disney committees and their multicolored notes—nothing can go wrong there! Add in the Lucasfilm story group (making sure everything lines up with future movies), the Disney execs, the studio higher-ups, and the standard-issue Broadcast Standards & Practices folks, and you’ve got a grand total of five different ‘bosses’ to wrangle. According to Gilroy, just keeping things moving was a victory in itself, and sometimes they had to flat-out stand their ground to get what they wanted into the show.

Rebels Was Cheaper Than You Think

Here’s a weird one. You’d expect Rebels—a Disney show—to have a massive budget. Not so. Gilroy says the budget for Rebels was actually smaller than what George Lucas was spending on Clone Wars. And just to make it messier: Lucas’s willingness to spend (and spend big) is part of why Disney pulled the plug on Clone Wars in the first place. The series got cancelled after they figured its licensing window was over and it was no longer a good investment. But then fans freaked out, causing Netflix to pick up another season.

'I think, even in the cancellation of Clone Wars… [The studio was like,] Oh, we have enough episodes, it’s served its licensing life, we’re probably not gonna be able to milk more– and it’s expensive. And then, of course, when it got canceled, people were freaking out, which is why Netflix was like, Oh, it’s worth it to us to do another season.'

The moral of the story? You can be Disney, king of all purse strings, and still find yourself pinching pennies on a Star Wars cartoon—especially if George Lucas previously set the bar at 'whatever it takes, let’s just make it big.'

Disney's Notes: Annoying, but Sometimes Useful

Getting endless notes from multiple departments sounds like a recipe for disaster. But—strange as it sounds—it wasn’t all bad. Part of what Disney and Lucasfilm were trying to do was make sure Rebels fit in with the new movies, for the sake of continuity. Sure, it meant more ‘helpful suggestions’ than any showrunner wants, but sometimes it worked out.

• Remember that crossguard lightsaber in Rebels Season 2? That was only possible (without spoiling anything) because The Force Awakens trailer had already dropped it into the franchise.
• Saw Gerrera (who nerds know pops up in Rogue One) showed up in Rebels too, building bridges between animation and live-action.

In other words, the old Star Wars expanded universe never had this level of corporate oversight... but it also never had such tight connections between TV and film, either.

Why Rebels Ended Up So Important

At the time, Rebels felt like a decent animated show, but not necessarily a cornerstone of this new Star Wars era. Fast forward to now and, weirdly, it’s the backbone for a lot of Disney’s Star Wars content. Just check out how these pieces line up:

The Mandalorian? Pulled in Zeb Orrelios from Rebels for a bigger role in the upcoming movie. Ahsoka? Hera Syndulla, Sabine Wren, and Ezra Bridger all made the jump to live action. And if you’re wondering why Grand Admiral Thrawn is suddenly the next ‘big bad’ of the Star Wars universe (after being non-canon until Rebels), well, thank Dave Filoni and Henry Gilroy for that. Lars Mikkelsen, the voice actor from the animated show, is even coming back to play him in live action. So if you used to skip the cartoons, this is probably exactly the wrong time to start bragging about that.

Changing of the Guard

Honestly, things are still a little messy at Disney and Lucasfilm, both on the corporate and creative side. Disney recently said no to a Ben Solo origin project from Adam Driver and Steven Soderbergh (which, yes, sounds wild they’d reject that). And they’re now trying to relaunch the Star Wars movies with a Mandalorian and Grogu film, based on the TV show. There’s definitely a sense that the wheels are in motion, but nobody’s quite sure where this ship is headed next.

On top of all that, the recent leadership shuffle means former Parks boss Josh D'Amaro is now steering Disney's whole ship, and there’s a new office dynamic over at Lucasfilm with Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan sharing the CEO gig after Kathleen Kennedy's marathon 14-year run.

In other words: a lot has changed since Rebels ambushed Disney XD in 2014. But if you really want to understand where Star Wars is going, you kinda have to look back at all the stuff Disney did to drag Rebels across the finish line—and how that somehow turned a committee-driven kids cartoon into the foundation of their entire franchise strategy.