On June 16, 2013, Star Wars animation quietly crossed a line. That was the night Star Wars: The Clone Wars won the Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Special Class Animation, after years of being treated by some people as the “extra” Star Wars thing. The side project. The cartoon. The show for kids while the “real” saga lived in the movies. Then it won. And suddenly that argument looked a lot weaker. The Clone Wars Had Already Earned Respect By 2013, anyone actually watching The Clone Wars knew what the show had become. It was no longer just filling gaps between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. It was expanding Anakin’s fall, turning Ahsoka Tano into one of the most important characters in modern Star Wars, making the clones feel like actual people, and giving the prequel era more emotional weight than the films ever had time to…
