The Greatest Opening Scene In Star Wars TV History Remains Undisputed
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Published Mar 14, 2026, 6:30 AM EDT
Sean is a senior writer for ScreenRant and has been writing about new TV releases since December 2023. He has received multiple advance screenings of popular shows and ideated his own coverage read by hundreds of thousands of readers.
Sean is a self-published author of a Western novel. Sean has also written award-winning opinion pieces related to local politics while getting his Bachelor's degree in journalism.
Out of all the Star Wars shows, Star Wars Rebels undoubtedly has the best introduction. The various Star Wars shows all have differing approaches to the start of their series. Some shows, like Star Wars: The Clone Wars, got off to very rough starts, while others, like The Acolyte, had tremendous openings that petered out by the end of the season. Very few Star Wars shows have intros that perfectly convey what the show is about.
Star Wars Rebels Has The Perfect Intro Scene
The first scene of the premiere of Star Wars Rebels was such a perfect introduction to the series that Star Wars has never topped it since. In the show's opening moments, an Imperial Star Destroyer descends over Lothal and Ezra Bridger, and we're introduced to the protagonist of Rebels as he lures some Imperial officers away from a jogan fruit vendor, only to rob the vendor and run away. He then meets the crew of the Ghost, and Rebels gets fully underway.
There's so much to love about that first scene of Rebels. Right off the bat, it establishes that Ezra isn't a classic perfectly good protagonist. He's a street rat, a poor kid who is willing to do whatever it takes to survive, even if that means putting himself in the way of the Empire. It also immediately establishes how important Lothal is going to be to Rebels as the centerpiece of Ezra's life and the focal point of the Ghost's resistance efforts.
Rebels' opening scene is also just a good scene in general. It provides a snappy and efficient introduction to the main characters, the main conflict, and the main setting of the show. It also wastes no time in getting into an exciting chase scene, highlighting Ezra's unorthodox methods and cocky attitude, and even leaving room for some humorous moments. It perfectly set the tone for what Rebels would grow to become.
Though It Was Perfect, Rebels' Intro On Disney+ Isn't The Same
That first scene of Star Wars Rebels is nearly perfect, but it's not possible to watch on streaming anymore. When Rebels first made its transition from Disney XD to ABC, the show's premiere episode got an additional scene featuring the Grand Inquisitor receiving orders from Darth Vader to hunt down "children of the Force." That new scene even had a vocal cameo from James Earl Jones reprising his role as Vader.
The only problem with that added scene was that Disney tacked it onto the front of Rebels' premiere episode. As cool as the new conversation between the Grand Inquisitor and Darth Vader was, it completely shifted the show's introduction to new viewers. Now, instead of very succinctly and efficiently introducing viewers to Ezra, Lothal, and the crew of the Ghost, the premiere starts with Vader and the Grand Inquisitor.
Vader's orders to the Grand Inquisitor completely break the pacing of Rebels' premiere. The Grand Inquisitor doesn't even show up again until episode 5, and there's no real context for him being part of the premiere. The whole additional scene just doesn't fit. More importantly, it draws the attention away from Ezra and the problems afflicting Lothal and onto the Empire and the Inquisitors' search for Force-sensitive children.
What's even worse is that the ABC version of the premiere, with the added scene of Darth Vader and the Grand Inquisitor, is the version that was added to Disney+. Unless you were lucky enough to watch it as it premiered on Disney+, your first impression of Rebels is of a show focused on the Grand Inquisitor hunting down Kanan and Ezra, not of a sprawling tale of rebellion centering around a showboating kid and his home planet.
Andor & The Mandalorian Also Had Great Intros
The premiere of Star Wars Rebels, as it was before ABC's added scene, is so good that few other Star Wars shows can compare. The only two Star Wars intros that even come close to working as well as Rebels are in Andor and The Mandalorian. Even those acclaimed shows have their own problems with their premieres, however, and Rebels still manages to surpass them.
The intro of Andor is really special. It features Cassian searching for his sister on the corporate world Morlana One when he's accosted by two guards and ends up killing them in a rainy alley. It's a brilliant way to set the darker, more serious tone of the show, especially with how visceral the blaster bolts are and how unceremoniously Cassian kills the guards, and it works almost flawlessly.
There were some problems with the show's intro, however, and Andor's somewhat slow pacing at the start is chief among them. Though it's a nearly perfect show, Andor took a second to get started, and some viewers lost interest in Cassian very quickly. It also doesn't do much to introduce the rest of the Rebellion at large, especially considering how inconsequential Cassian's sister proved to be by the end of Andor.
After over a decade, one of Star Wars Rebels' largest plot holes is finally fixed thanks to this official answer that has to do with Jar Jar Binks.
The Mandalorian's introduction is also somewhat iconic. The premiere of the series saw Din Djarin arrest the Mythrol on an icy planet and deliver that famous line "I can bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold," before narrowly escaping a giant Ravinak lurking under the ice. It was a great introduction to Din's stone-cold style of bounty hunting, but it, too, fell flat in some ways.
As an introduction, the premiere of The Mandalorian doesn't do a great job of setting the stage for what's to come. The intro is frankly a rather generic moment of bounty hunting that doesn't introduce a notable location, doesn't provide insight into the Children of the Watch's culture, and doesn't do anything to set the stage for Grogu's arrival. In terms of how well it prepared the way for what would follow, the intro of Star Wars Rebels far outperforms The Mandalorian.
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