5 Stars Wars movies and shows to rewatch if you're enjoying Star Wars Outlaws

The latest Star Wars game is out now, and it brings players to the seedier parts of the galaxy as they bargain with the enforcers of Jabba the Hutt, the spies of Crimson Dawn and more. Made by Massive Entertainment and Assassin's Creed developer Ubisoft, Star Wars Outlaws is the first Star Wars game to be released since Electronic Arts' 10-year exclusivity contract expired. There's been a lot of pressure to see how it performs, and so far the reviews have been mixed.

But damn it, I'm playing this game right now and I'm having a blast with it. You play as Kay Vess, a budding scoundrel who's out to make a name for herself amongst the various gangs vying for power in the Outer Rim. She's got a little merqaal buddy named Nix, who can do everything from destroying alarms and stealing from unsuspecting guards to taking part in cute foodie minigames and spying on your opponents during a tight round of the card game Sabbac. All the while, Kay's reputation rises and falls with the various cartels as she sets out on the heist of a lifetime.

Something I didn't expect out of Outlaws is just how much it would make me want to revisit some of the other Star Wars movies and shows — and not the ones you might expect. Outlaws is set between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, but it has ties to other media all across the Star Wars franchise. If you've been playing Star Wars Outlaws, consider giving these five other Star Wars things a watch to deepen your experience:

1. Solo: A Star Wars Story

Solo: A Star Wars Story is infamous in the Star Wars movie canon as the flop which made Lucasfilm and Disney re-evaluate their whole strategy for releasing Star Wars movies. It starred Alden Ehrenreich as young Han Solo, Donald Glover as his sometimes-friend-sometimes-rival Lando Calrissian and Game of Thrones veteran Emilia Clarke as Han's love interest Q'ira. The movie is all about Han taking his first steps into the wider criminal underworld as he skips out on his home planet of Corellia and falls into a team of hardened mercenaries, not unlike Kay Vess in Outlaws.

The thing that makes Solo so worth a watch is that in many ways, it's almost a predecessor to Outlaws tonally. Factions like the Pyke Syndicate and Crimson Dawn make appearances; in the case of the latter, we get a lot of important information that's still relevant for the video game, like how Q'ira ended up becoming one of the leaders of the gang. There are plenty of aliens and easter eggs that are relevant to the game too — Han and Lando even play Sabacc!

Solo got a bad wrap when it came out, but honesty after rewatching it I was shocked at how well it held up. It's an entertaining, light movie that has a lot more good than bad, and definitely worth a couple of hours if you want to immerse yourself in the criminal underworld of the galaxy.

2. The Last Jedi

Next up, The Last Jedi, another very controversial entry in the Star Wars mythos. I rewatched The Last Jedi shortly after Solo, and I've gotta say, the thing that surprised me most is that if Solo held up better than I expected, The Last Jedi held up worse. But I'm not here to dispute whether it's good or not: I'm here to tell you that there is one very important tie-in to Star Wars Outlaws in this movie that makes it pretty much required viewing.

That would be Canto Bight, the casino city that serves as the capital of the planet Cantonica. Partway through The Last Jedi, Finn (John Boyega) and Rose (Kelly Marie Tran) go to find a master codebreaker there to help them infiltrate a First Order starcruiser before it can catch their Resistance allies. Of all the locations in The Last Jedi, Canto Bight most oozes with personality. It provides an important bit of worldbuilding, since it's a haunt for the weapons manufacturers who are enabling the First Order. Canto Bight also happens to be the hometown of Kay Vess, and features prominently in the opening hours of Star Wars Outlaws.

Canto Bight doesn't appears in a whole lot of Star Wars media, but it's an important location in Outlaws. If you want to learn more about it, you'll want to revisit The Last Jedi. And if you're feeling really ambitious, there's also a location in the game which is relevant to The Last Jedi's sequel, The Rise of Skywalker, as well. Talking about that one involves giving out too many spoilers, but suffice to say if could be worth a watch as well.

3. The Book of Boba Fett

That's right, we're going down the list of controversial Star Wars movies and shows today, because Kay Vess is an outlaw and reviews mean nothing to her. The Book of Boba Fett was the follow-up to the Disney+ series The Mandalorian, and in many ways its biggest problem was that it was too afraid to truly leave that other show behind and do its own thing. However, Boba Fett has plenty of good stuff in it, not the least of which are the performances from leads Temuera Morrison (Boba Fett) and Ming-Na Wen (Fennec Shand).

The Book of Boba Fett is all about the criminal underworld on Tatooine, which is perhaps the most iconic Star Wars planet of all and a major location in Outlaws. The entire show is about Boba Fett climbing his way out of the Sarlacc pit where he seemingly died in Return of the Jedi, and then taking over the enterprise of his previous employer, Jabba the Hutt. The primary antagonist of the series is Pyke Syndicate, another key player in Outlaws that doesn't take kindly to Boba Fett's claim on Tatooine.

If you've already seen The Book of Boba Fett once, I'd recommend skipping around to whatever episodes you feel like watching rather than a straight series rewatch. The episodes with the Mandalorian and Grogu are probably the least important to watch in terms of their relevance to Star Wars Outlaws. But all Boba's wrangling with the criminal elements on Tatooine are a great companion to the video game.

4. Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Our next Star Wars show is a dense one. Star Wars: The Clone Wars is an animated series which ran for seven seasons and follows the adventures of Anakin Skywalker, his apprentice Ahsoka Tano, and Obi-Wan Kenobi during the war that led up to Revenge of the Sith. The Clone Wars is a pretty huge series, and I'd by no means recommend you watch the entire thing...unless you're really gunning to and having a good time with it, in which case have at you!

But as relates to Outlaws, there are a few important elements of The Clone Wars that are worth visiting. Since it takes place much earlier in Star Wars history than anything else on this list, it has several important origin stories. It's in The Clone Wars where we learn how the Pyke Syndicate first rose to power, as well as how Darth Maul took over Crimson Dawn in the years before Solo. A lot of that material crops up in season 5 and beyond, but really, any episode of The Clone Wars you watch is worth the time.

5. The original Star Wars trilogy

Is it any surprise we ended up here? Of course I'm going to recommend you rewatch the original Star Wars trilogy if you're enjoying Outlaws! It all comes back to these three movies: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. It's no surprise that Outlaws features plenty of nods and references to them, from outfits which look similar to iconic ones from the movies to characters and locations which were central to the story. I don't want to talk too much about specifics for the sake of spoilers, but yeah, obviously you're gonna want to rewatch these movies if you're enjoying Outlaws.

Beyond all the tie-ins and easter eggs, the original Star Wars movies are actually the most relevant to Outlaws in terms of the timline. Since the game is set sometime after the start of The Empire Strikes Back but before Return of the Jedi, the particular version of the Star Wars universe you'll be visiting is the same one from these films. Stormtroopers abound, people on the street talk about how the Rebel Alliance blew up the first Death Star, and whispers of the Empire's pernicious hunt for anyone seeking to undermine them run rampant.

All that's not even mentioning things like the Mos Eisley Cantina or Jabba the Hutt, or any of the other criminal elements that appear in the movie. The Hutts are one of the main factions you can side with in Outlaws, and Jabba is still very much the ruler at this point in time. There's no shortage of reasons to revisit the original Star Wars trilogy if you're having a good time aboard the Trailblazer with Kay and Nix.

And so ends our roundup. Have you been enjoying Star Wars Outlaws? Are there shows or movies you'd recommend to accompany it that we missed? Let us know in the comments!

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