And you don’t even really need to watch “The Clone Wars” (well, at least 10/15 episodes to understand it better). I have finished my “Rebels” season 1 run, it’s very good, even the weak episodes deliver something to the characters or the universe. It’s a ANH reboot, but a clever one (not a lazy “JJ Galaxy” thing I couldn’t care less about, with once great characters now old and useless, so old and so useless…), that links PT and OT naturally.
We’re going to have to agree to disagree on TFA, but as far as Rebels and The Clone Wars go, I definitely think SWR is the better show, but its connections with TCW are a necessary part of why I think it does such a good job of unifying everything. I never felt like there was any disconnect at all between the PT and TCW; those always blended well to my mind. So now when SWR - a show that looks and feels more like the OT than the PT - lifts stuff from TCW, that creates a bridge across the huge tonal and aesthetic gap between the live action trilogies. Having Rex and Ahsoka and Hondo coming in and out of the story in a believable way while people like Lando and Leia are doing the same does wonders to make it feel like one big timeline rather than two separate eras. Bringing Matt Lanter in as Anakin alongside James Earl Jones as Vader did a lot for me to legitimize the idea that OT Vader and PT Anakin are the same character, as well. Until that finale, that was something that I accepted intellectually but that never actually felt true on a gut level.