Rebels might be the most important and influential series in all of Star Wars storytelling right now

If you have never watched Star Wars Rebels, there’s still time to fix that.

All four seasons of the animated series are available on Disney+, and you’ll get to see one of the best Star Wars shows ever made with some truly lovable and compelling characters. That’s good enough in its own right, but there’s also no more important series to watch if you want to best understand the current era of Star Wars storytelling in the Mandoverse.

The upcoming Ahsoka series really does seem like it’s created as the long-awaited sequel series to Rebels. At the end of the series, Ezra Bridger and Grand Admiral Thrawn are taken away into the unknown regions somewhere, and in the epilogue, set sometime after Return of the Jedi, Sabine Wren and Ahsoka Tano head off in search of Ezra. That seems to be the main plot of the upcoming live-action show, which will star Ahsoka Tano and Sabine Wren, but will also be the live-action introduction of Ezra Bridger – and almost certainly will also introduce Thrawn too. Two other members of the main Rebels cast, Hera Syndulla and Chopper, are already confirmed to be appearing, and another, Zeb, just showed up in The Mandalorian. Plus, earlier in this season of The Mandalorian, we got a glimpse at purrgil in hyperspace, which first appeared in Rebels.

Going beyond that main cast, though, the series also takes a deeper dive into Mandalorian culture during the era of the Empire. Sabine Wren is a member of Clan Wren but was banished by her people during the Emipre’s rule, but she comes into possession of the darksaber. She trains with it and fights with it, eventually handing it off to Bo-Katan Kryze in the latter’s attempt to reunite Mandalore. With Bo-Katan rising to the status of co-lead in The Mandalorian season three, Rebels fills in more of her story too.

We could say the same about Ahsoka Tano, another character who will be the lead of a live-action series who, though not one of the main cast of Rebels, still plays a key role in a few episodes. Fans wanting more of her backstory will want to check out this series as well.

In other words, Rebels gives fans a look at Ahsoka, Bo-Katan, Mandalorians and their culture, how the Mandalorians interacted with the Empire’s rule, the darksaber, Thrawn, Sabine, Zeb, and the rest of the Rebels cast that will be returning. Truly, there’s no other story that comes close to that level of direct influence on this series. It’s already being felt in The Mandalorian, but it will become almost essential for Ahsoka.

Rebels is worth watching for these reasons, then, but also simply because it’s a great series. The Mandalorian will be wrapping up in a few weeks, and then there will be some time in-between the finale of that show and the premiere of Ahsoka. If you’re looking for a series to watch in the meantime, you couldn’t pick a better one than Rebels.