Every Star Wars Live-Action Show, Ranked by Someone Who Somehow Watched Them All

From Andor to Obi-Wan and Ahsoka to Acolyte, here’s our ranking of all the Star Wars live-action shows, starting with the darkest side.

If you’re here, you’re either a Star Wars fan or someone who once dated one and is trying to understand what went wrong. Either way, welcome. The last five years have blessed us with more live-action Star Wars shows than we know what to do with, which is to say: too many.

We were promised prestige television, intricate worldbuilding, maybe a new lightsaber color or two. What we got instead was a vibe that can best be described as “the most expensive PowerPoint presentation ever made, starring Pedro Pascal and occasionally a puppet.”

To be clear, I love Star Wars. It’s shaped entire generations of people who now think yelling “this is the way” while doing absolutely nothing is worth sharing on social media. But not all of these shows are good. Some are actually amazing. Others most certainly aren’t. So we’re going to rank them! Why not? Our criteria is a healthy mix of personal opinion, vibes, critical consensus, audience reaction, cultural impact, whether the show works as a show (not just an extension of the Star Wars universe), and whether the show works…as an extension of the Star Wars universe.

Let’s begin with the worst one. No, not the fourth one in the timeline, that’s for the movies.

7. The Book of Boba Fett (2021-2022)

I cannot stress enough how badly this show missed the mark. They took friggin Boba Fett—a character whose entire appeal was being a mysterious, morally gray badass—and turned him into a well-meaning but exhausted middle manager who rides a space lizard and gives motivational speeches to teenagers.

You know what would’ve helped this show? Boba Fett being in it, or at least the version of him who’s interesting to watch. And maybe the point is that a show like this was never going to work conceptually. Which is sad considering they had the fortune of Temuera Morrison’s availability and some other great casting choices. Like bringing back Ming-Na Wen as the ruthless mercenary we met in The Mandalorian.

But weirdly enough the best episodes are the ones where Boba’s not even front and center. Yes, that’s right: halfway through, the show becomes a stealth season 2.5 of The Mandalorian and somehow even that didn’t manage to save it. Seriously, imagine if during this ranking, I suddenly veered off into the second half of an article reviewing Star Wars Outlaws. Sorry to get your hopes up.

Anyway, it’s a visually bland, structurally baffling, and tonally incoherent non-starter series, and if George Lucas had released this in 1999, people would’ve retroactively apologized for hating Jar Jar.

6. Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)

Ewan McGregor deserved better. We all did.

Because the Obi-Wan series had one job: deliver on the fantasy of Kenobi’s post-Revenge of the Sith years. What we got instead was a confused tone, choppy visuals, and long stretches of emotional weightlessness that somehow still felt like filler.

It does have some standout moments, though. Young Leia has some genuinely sharp writing, Vader manages to be Rogue One scary, and that finale lightsaber duel (while ultimately a canon-breaking head-scratcher) is still a finale lightsaber duel. And to be fair, lasers go burr. The problem? It’s like watching your favorite actor try to carry a plot while being slowly smothered by the ghost of franchise expectations.

You’ll likely finish this show and immediately forget 75% of it. But hey at least you made it to the end. Right?

5. The Acolyte (2024)

Here’s what happened: The Acolyte tried to ask big questions about the Jedi order, dogma, and religious identity. It cast women, people of color, and a literal Wookiee Jedi. It played with the genre and messed with the preconceived notions of the Force and what makes someone turn to the dark side. And the internet, predictably, lost its f****** mind.

The discourse drowned out the fact that The Acolyte was sincerely trying to do something different. Sure, the pacing was hacked to pieces and the tone sometimes slipped into “CW drama set on Coruscant.” But there was an honest-to-Yoda vision with these characters and the stakes driving them. There was one lightsaber fight in particular that might be the best we’ve seen since Revenge of the Sith.

It’s flawed and messy, but it swung for the fences, at least. And that gains at least a little of my respect. And yes, I consider it a minor tragedy that we’ll probably never see a shirtless Manny Jacinto Sith Lord ever again.

4. The Mandalorian

Oh, if it isn’t the show that “saved” Star Wars under Disney and then almost killed it again. Missed you.

Season 1 of The Mandalorian was a cultural event that did much to push Disney+ to the frontlines of the streaming wars and somehow make people at least partially forget The Rise of Skywalker happened. It was stylish and simple, but never shallow. It gave us Baby Yoda™, which for some people will sound more like a curse. Season 2 doubled down and delivered an emotionally satisfying arc, a springboard for a live-action Ahsoka series in the same timeline, and a fitting conclusion for the show…

…that was completely retconned in The Book of Boba Fett. Oops.

Still, that would’ve been mostly forgivable if not for the third season, which is where The Mandalorian started feeling less like a show and more like an open-world video game designed by Dave Filoni with way too many side quests. Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) essentially became a guest star in his own series, Grogu’s arc faced a random reset, and the show tried to juggle Mandalorian civil wars with…Jack Black and Lizzo.

Technically, it’s still watchable. And for all we know, the upcoming movie and potential fourth season could do a lot to course correct and maybe even give us a satisfying ending (again). But for the time being, the show is still a question mark of quality and proof that success often breeds bloat. Or as Yoda would put it: “The way, this is not.”

3. Ahsoka (2023)

Love it when a show requires me to do homework first.

Winning the bronze, Ahsoka is what happens when the nerds win. And I don’t mean that in a derogatory way for once. I mean it in the “this script assumes you’ve read six novels and memorized Filoni’s fanon Reddit posts from 2008” way.

It’s lore-heavy, solemn, and filled with enough Clone Wars flashbacks to make you wonder if Rosario Dawson is in a completely different show than the rest of the cast. And yet it works way more than it doesn’t.

Ahsoka is a slow burn, but it earns its final moments. Sabine and Ahsoka and Ezra all have chemistry carried over from Star Wars Rebels even if you (like me) never really got into that show. Thrawn is basically Space Elon Musk if he were actually competent. And Anakin (reprised by Hayden Christensen) gets a haunting, beautiful sendoff that somehow doesn’t ruin your childhood any further than it already has been.

Also, the late and great Ray Stevenson managed to squeeze in such a terrific performance here as one of the most fascinating “fallen Jedi” characters we’ve ever seen in the canon. To the point where I had to wonder if they secretly hired Timothy Zahn to exclusively write his character.

Also, it’s got lightsabers. A lot of lightsabers. You people love that sh**.

2. Skeleton Crew (2024)

This show should not have worked. It stars a bunch of kids, it was described as The Goonies in space, and Jude Law is there doing…something with the Force? We weren’t sure at first. But then it came out and…what’s this? Emotion? Character arcs? Coherent direction? A structure that builds to a finale without teasing ten more spinoffs and sequels and Happy Meal toys? (Those are still a thing, right?)

Skeleton Crew pulls off the impossible by being both charming and substantial without having to sacrifice the other. It’s the rare Star Wars exercise in tributing the ’80s and it fully earns the nostalgia it so casually calls back to. It lets kids be kids, and adults be emotionally damaged weirdos trying to do their very best. It’s the closest Star Wars has ever come to Pixar-type storytelling.

Also, it manages to avoid 900 cameos and still feel more Star Wars than so many of the other shows on this list, some of which had Luke, Leia, Old Ben, Boba, and a miniature Yoda. By contrast, Skeleton Crew mainly had Neel, and he flew circles around those jokers.

1. Andor (2022-2025)

AKA the Star Wars show that would win an Emmy even if you’d never heard of Star Wars before watching it.

There are two types of people in this world: those who think Andor is the best Star Wars story ever told, and people who haven’t seen it because they thought it was “the boring one without lightsabers.” And listen, I get it. When the show was first announced, I too said, “Ah yes, the beloved fan-favorite Cassian…wait, who?” But it turns out that not having to babysit legacy characters every five minutes frees you up to tell a story about fascism, hope, revolution, and bureaucracy that feels painfully, woefully relevant.

This show is basically The Wire in space. It’s Les Misérables if Inspector Javert wore a jumpsuit. And most importantly, it did the impossible: get me to watch Rogue One again. And funny enough, Diego Luna was incredible in that too all along. Who knew? Certainly not me.

Andor is what happens when you let grown-ups into the writer’s room and a budget that had to be some kind of Faustian bargain. It’s smart, it’s slow, and it’s better than most of the actual movies. If you still think it’s boring, congratulations: you still have a chance to watch the second episode.

You can check out Andor, Skeleton Crew, and these other Star Wars live-action shows on Disney+.

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Featured image designed by Jon Negroni with images courtesy of Disney and Star Wars.