Star Wars Rebels

Welcome to the first installment of “Living Pictures on the Small Screen,” a weekly column dedicated to animated programming on television. Cultural commentary inevitably comes with bias, and I wanted to create this column in appreciation of the people and shows that helped me overcome my own bias regarding animation.

When Disney purchased Lucasfilm and announced a new future for the Star Wars franchise, part of that future included shifting the animation wing of the company to the Disney XD channel. That meant, rather than moving the popular Clone Wars series from The Cartoon Network to XD, Disney would create a new series, Rebels, which is …