According to an article on Io9 a whole bunch of old Star Wars content will be coming to Disney+ next month, including the animated short from The Holiday Special that introduced Boba Fett. They will also be adding the Ewoks movies, the Ewoks animated series, and the Gendy Tartakovsky Clone Wars micro-series. This is great news, I've been wanting to watch and rewatch all of these for along time now, but I hadn't expected to to actually add them to Disney+. Since they're adding the Ewoks show, then hopefully that means they'll eventually add the Droids show too. Oh, and just to clarify, they're only adding the animated short, not the whole Holiday Special.
I have some of the Droids episodes on DVD, but I haven't seen Ewoks since they first aired. So, this will be the first official release of that Boba Fett cartoon since the original airing of the Holiday Special.
I'll definitely be checking out the Clone Wars micro series, I've thought that it looked good from the clips I've seen, but I've never been able to watch the whole thing. I've seen the animated short when I watched the Holiday special so I probably won't rewatch it, and I'll avoid the Ewoks stuff, but its cool to see more things come to Disney+.
I’m disappointed we won’t get a high quality version of Bea Arthur as the Cantina matron. Sigh. Maybe in 2022!
Finally. It's long overdue. It deserves more recognition. It was the show that first brought Asajj Ventress to the screen.
Honestly, I think the only thing that would theoretically disqualify it from canon is literally just the last two or three lines of dialogue that connect what was going on with Anakin & Obi-Wan with the events on Coruscant. If one just assumes the majority of SWCW season 1 takes place between AotC & TCW, and bulk of SWCW season 2 takes place somewhere in seasons 6 & 7 of TCW while Ahoka was out of the picture, it actually works surprisingly well. Hell, the TCW finale even mentioned Shaak Ti being sent to protect Palpatine (yes, I know that was from the movie too before it was cut.) One of the benefits of both of these shows being largely anthological is that the precise chronology is actually quite flexible.
Holiday Special would make a "nice" holiday drop. It's kind of funny, the special used to get slagged for everything but the Boba cartoon but recently I've started seeing a lot of posts and comments praising this part.
You know I'm a little surprised that Disney haven't gone for a reboot of the old Ewoks cartoon. Seems perfectly suited to their brand, has a broad demographic appeal, and the merchandise & park synergy opportunities seem self evident.
Fan bases are fickle things. The SW club I was a part of completely passed over the Tartakovsky and Clone Wars material. A lot of members were not interested. Now Clone Wars is the high point of SW or some nonsense like that.
I like to imagine that the first two seasons and the first episode of season 3 (when Anakin was officially knighted) of Tartakovsky's Clone Wars are still "canon" since I can't think of anything in them that contradicts the current continuity too much*, and provide introductions to Ventress and Grievous. * Ventress' origin might not entirely line up anymore, but it's been years since I watched the cartoon so I can't remember for sure.
I just picked a part of the special. I could have said Art Carney or Jefferson Starship or Hamill's terrible makeup or Fischer's drugged out gaze and it would have had the same effect. For me, the Holiday Special is a "so bad its good" viewing. I still think LFL needs to not forget about parts of their history. This includes all the various releases of the films and the Holiday Special. Never gonna happen. But I think they should release it all.
Speaking of SWCW being (almost) canon compatible, look who Aphra is set to meet... I think it's a safe bet most of the broad strokes of it are true, albeit filtered through a very hyperbolic, stylised lens. For example, both versions of the Mon Cala arc *happened*, those are just different tellings with different focuses. But yeah, the knighting ceremony, Anakin & Padme swapping droids, Dooku taking Ventress as an apprentice/assassin, and her first encounter with Anakin and/or Obi-Wan also must have happened, one way or another. That's not a fanbase being fickle, that's a fanbase previously made up of mostly middle aged men getting supplemented by a generation of new fans, who then age to the point where they get to be heard too. I promise you, most of those that passed over that stuff back then, probably haven't changed their opinions...probably ever.
Ahh, I follow you, I probably would've picked up on it if you had mentioned something else but I had recently seen comments of people with fondness for the Bea Arthur part. One thing that is different for this generation is that they have easy access to decent looking copies of the specials. Time was back in the day of tape trading that you could barely make out what was on the screen in most copies. That and being able to access specific parts without having to sit and sift through the whole thing. As for me I do have some nostalgia for the old Droids cartoon which is on Youtube but I wouldn't mind seeing a nice cleaned up transfer.
I think that's mostly ironic fondness, in a camp "so eyeball-meltingly awful it's entertaining" kinda way. Nothing about the Holiday Special is good. It's all bad. Even the cartoon is only just barely tolerable, and that's the best bit.
For the record, I personally don't find it entertaining. Some people however are cringe masochists. I try not to judge, or kink shame...