Hi! Thank you for the kind words, I’m glad you’re enjoying the blog! And I love doing “where to start” posts! Keep in mind that a lot depends on what you happen to like (if you’re more of an OT fan or a PT fan or an ST fan, if you like certain characters more than others, etc.) but I think the basic places to start when moving on from the movies are:- The Clone Wars TV show. As you’ve said, you’re already watching this one but it’s still my #1 recommendation, because it sets up so much of the galaxy and the way things operate in the Republic and is just really good. Finish this one first, as it introduces you to so much you’ll need down the road–a lot of the Jedi characters that will then break your heart when you watch Order 66 happening in Revenge of the Sith, getting invested in Ahsoka Tano and her role in Anakin’s life, getting more time spent with characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Padme Amidala, some trippy arcs like the Mortis arc that are fascinating for Force Woo, and a lot of stuff will come up in other shows, comics, and books!- Star Wars Rebels TV show. While it’s about an entirely new group of characters, it has a lot of recurring familiar characters–like James Earl Jones reprises his role in voicing Darth Vader, you learn the fate of Ahsoka Tano here, you get to see some of the clones again, you get a look at what it’s like for Jedi under the thumb of the Empire, you’re introduced to the Inquisitors, you get to see the politics of the Rebellion as the show goes along, you get a better look at Mandalore, etc. This is another show that will help form the foundations of other stuff.- Star Wars Battlefront II game. You can play it or just watch a movie version of it on YouTube. Yeah, the game got a lot of crap for the shit EA tried to pull with it, but it’s turned into a really great piece of media and the story itself is absolutely fantastic and will only take about 2 hours to get through, but a) it’s a great story with great characters (I LOVE IDEN VERSIO SO MUCH) and b) it does a great job at showing a lot of what happened after Return of the Jedi but before the Empire truly gave up. This establishes a lot of the final fight stuff, like the Battle of Jakku and its importance (aka, that’s all those ships that Rey is scavenging at the beginning of The Force Awakens) and what Operation Cinder is and the epilogue helps lead into what the First Order is.- The Star Wars titular comic + Darth Vader volume 1 (by Kieron Gillen) comics. These two are meant to be read concurrently, so I recommend them together, and they do an absolutely incredible job of filling out the space between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. They’re telling fantastic stories (including some really powerful stuff about Vader finding out the name of the Death Star pilot is Skywalker) while also giving some really great insights into the characters, adding depth to the story of the movies, and made me fall in love with the characters all over again. This Vader tends to be a little more mysterious, Gillen liked keeping the mystique to him (which appeals more to some, so if that’s your jam, read these first!), the feeling is very much in tune with the original trilogy in that sense. Same for the heroes, they feel very OT!- Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith by Charles Soule comics. You can read the Vader comics in either order, but I generally like suggesting this one to go second (release order is always good, imo) despite that this is my favorite of the comics. Set not long after Revenge of the Sith, this is a comic about Darth Vader adjusting to his new life and about the bigger, overarching story of the psychological look at a character who cannot admit what he’s done wrong. On the surface, it’s about him hunting down Jedi and trying to raise his wife from the dead, but in the macro sense, it’s about this guy who cannot admit that he had other choices, even when the Force is literally throwing those other paths in his face. Great Vader content for him being powerful and terrifying, while also being an absolute human disaster garbage bag.- Age of the Republic comics by Jodie Houser. If you like the prequels at all, these comics are stellar. There are eight of them, four for the main heroes, four for the main villains, and they’re a single issue each, where there’s a short look into their lives at various points, all which illustrate really thoughtful things about the characters, whether through their actions or even sometimes comparisons with other issues in the series. (ie, reading the Obi-Wan one and Jango Fett one really highlighted how each of them dealt with this young person they were taking care of.) They were just REALLY GOOD STORIES, too.- Star Wars Adventures by IDW Comics. These are cuter stories and set all across various eras, from the PT to the OT to the ST to occasionally other areas, but they’re always just absolutely CHARMING. They’re pure delight to read, they tend to focus on moments that are just really fun, so it’s easy to think of it as a kids’ comic, but instead I think they work best at showing some of the more hopeful moments of Star Wars without being too fluffy.- Poe Dameron by Charles Soule comics. These are SO GOOD, they really add so much to Poe’s character and they also do a great job of fleshing out that time between the New Republic still working to stabilize itself and when we know the First Order is coming. But mostly it just really makes you like Poe as a character, it captures his sense of charm and swagger while giving him an actual character arc, as he learns to be a leader.- Kanan: The Last Padawan comics. You need to see Rebels first (or at least the first two seasons, enough to make you care about Kanan as a character) but then this is a gorgeous, beautifully told story. It’s half about the current days with his new found family the Ghost crew (the cast of Rebels) and half about his history as a Padawan in the Jedi Order, how he was apprenticed to Depa Billaba, how he watched her die, how he had to live in the galaxy that wanted him dead just for being born the way he was, how he was being hunted for it, and how he survived. It’s really, really good!- Forces of Destiny animated shorts. You can find them all on Disney’s YouTube channel, they’re these 2-3 minute long stories about the women of the galaxy far, far away (with occasional appearances by others) and they’re pretty light-hearted fare, they’re meant to impart messages to kids or just be bite-sized content, but they’re pretty wonderful and it’s nice to see the women of SW get some attention.- From a Certain Point of View book. For the 40th Anniversary of A New Hope they put out an anthology of short stories, telling the various points of view of different side characters and adding depth to everything that was going on. Not all of them are super great, you can feel free to skip ones if you’re getting bored, but there are some MUST READ ones, especially the Qui-Gon, Yoda, and Obi-Wan ones. And the Admiral Motti story had me in absolute tears from cry-laughing while reading it.- Bloodline by Claudia Gray book. It’s a really good Leia story, but it’s also a book that does a lot to cover what’s going on with the New Republic still struggling to establish itself, why Leia isn’t part of it by TFA, and more on how the First Order came to be and why people stuck their heads in the sand about it.- Thrawn by Timothy Zahn book. While there’s some dissonance between Zahn’s version of the character and the character from Rebels, I think you can make them fit together, and this book really is one of the best of canon material. It’s fun and zips right along and introduces some new characters and sets up some really interesting backstories and just fleshes out the Imperial stuff and gives us Eli Vanto. ALL THINGS I LOVED.FINALLY: The above is aimed at a general list of things that I thin pretty much anyone would enjoy, it’s meant to cover most of the bases as best I can, but if you have a favorite era or a favorite character, feel free to run straight to anything that involves them. There’s a lot of good Legends stuff (as always it’s hard not to recommend the Revenge of the Sith novelization or Wild Space, but that’d just muddle the line between canon and Legends), but I’m sticking with canon right now because it’s easier and there’s so much good stuff and it’s less confusing that way.All the comics are available on Comixology (and there’s never been a comic I hated by any means, though, admittedly some of the mini series can be kind of bland, anything that ran for at least 20 issues is a good bet, and most of the comics are THE BEST of the supplementary material), and if you don’t mind waiting a couple of months for Disney+ (or Googling for streaming sites) the animated properties are all really worth watching. Sometimes they take a bit to get going, but I’ve fallen in love with every single one.These might not end up being your favorites (some of my favorites–like the Aftermath books or the Join the Resistance books–are ones that I wouldn’t put on a list for new-to-supplementary-material fans, because they’re a little too distanced from established characters) but they’re great places to start getting a feel for whether or not you like this kind of thing! :D
