Ready for your next nerdy dose of Star Wars awesomeness? Lucasfilm Animation and Disney have put together an all-new animated adventure that takes place 14 years after the Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (the third and final prequel in the Star Wars saga) and five years before Star Wars: A New Hope (the original movie that came out in 1977).
If you have an Apple ID, you can check out the first regular episode of the series right now on iTunes for free. How’s that for a deal?
Check out the extended trailer for the Star Wars: Rebels series below.
Star Wars: Rebels premiered as a 44-minute movie-style episode, “Spark of Rebellion,” last week on the Disney XD channel. The show will air on Mondays at 9:00 pm starting this coming Monday, October 13, 2014. The first season will contain 16 episodes and will have new characters like Freddie Prinze, Jr.’s Kanan Jarrus, a renegade Jedi who survived the purge of Order 66 (the purge of all Jedi shown in Revenge of the Sith). He uses a blaster and hides his true Jedi nature to keep the Empire from finding and killing him.
The series will follow a motley group of rebels who get together on a freighter called the Ghost, and some episodes will focus on the origins of the groups that eventually form the Rebel Alliance.
This is a fantastic lead-in to Star Wars VII, coming next year in December, as well as a really cool canonical fill-in of all the history between the major film releases. We’re stoked to get a look at this new set of animated films, which are inspired by original Ralph McQuarrie designs, and look pretty similar in style to the Clone Wars designs from the past few years.
You can grab the first 22-minute animated episode, “Droids in Distress” on iTunes right now for free.
