Dave Filoni’s 2008 animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars covered most of the famous conflict over the course of seven epic seasons, but it doesn’t quite fit into the Star Wars Legends continuity. Legends, formerly known as the Expanded Universe, was the original Star Wars timeline, with a plethora of comics, novels, video games, and even television shows continuing and enriching the character and story arcs seen in the original and prequel trilogies. The Legends continuity has been around since 1977 and thus has a fair share of continuity issues that were, for the most part, fixed via retcons, thanks to continuity-conscious creators. Unfortunately, the most amount of continuity errors and the ones with the biggest ramifications in Legends came from 2008’s The Clone Wars.
From 2002 to 2007, the Legends-era Clone Wars multimedia project thoroughly depicted the entire Clone Wars era over multiple mediums, including the 2003 animated series Star Wars: Clone Wars Genndy Tartakovsky. Lucasfilm returned to the era in 2008 with the computer-animated series The Clone Wars, which, despite its positive reception, created numerous glaring continuity issues, most of which couldn’t be fixed with retcons. In April of 2014, following Disney’s 2012 acquisition of Lucasfilm, what was once the official Star Wars canon became an alternate continuity instead. The Expanded Universe was rebranded as Legends and the only content that would remain in the new Canon going forward were the original six saga films and 2008’s The Clone Wars.
Though a deservedly beloved TV series, The Clone Wars regularly ignored the Legends continuity in large and small ways. Some of the biggest continuity snarls were the drastically new origins for Asajj Ventress (no longer a Rattataki, but now a Witch of Dathomir) and Barriss Offee (who was once a kind-hearted Jedi Healer and the same age as Anakin Skywalker but became a far younger character who betrays and murders Jedi and Clones alike). The series also retconned Darth Maul’s origins and had him survive being bisected by Obi-Wan in Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. Many of the changes were suggested by George Lucas himself, who, for better or worse, has a long history of ignoring continuity in the franchise.
Attempts were made in Legends to make The Clone Wars fit into the continuity, such as lore from the Mortis trilogy being the basis of the villain Abeloth in the Fate of the Jedi novels, but ultimately the series is not compatible with the timeline. The biggest continuity problems it created can’t be fixed without heavy-handed retcons that render entire properties apocryphal. Because of this, the 2008 series should belong to Canon only. Instead of, for instance, trying to make the two drastically different versions of Barriss Offee fit into the same universe, it makes more sense to assume that the Barriss who betrayed the Jedi is exclusive to Canon.
The original Clone Wars multimedia project covered the era completely in the Star Wars Legends timeline, but The Clone Wars fits perfectly into canon, which uses only the 2008 series to depict the war. During its original run, it was clear the The Clone Wars was ushering in a major continuity revamp, making it even more fitting to consider it part of Canon only. Trying to reconcile the two properties as being in the same continuity does a disservice to both, but having each represent a different timeline’s account of the Clone Wars-era allows them to be viewed without continuity issues ruining their enjoyment. Because of this, the original multimedia project is better off as the Legends version of the era, while Star Wars: The Clone Wars belongs only to Canon.
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