Remember when "prequel" was a bad word? Something that would make you groan over how obvious it is that the concept is a cash grab. Something about going backwards can make the product feel more soulless than if they had just made a sequel to move the story forward, even if that forward momentum just led to more of the same. Especially in the world of films, prequels were almost always looked down upon. This is largely due to the initial response to both the Star Wars prequels and The Hobbit movies, both of which were highly anticipated and ultimately ended up disappointing fans and critics. For years prequels were left for straight-to-video bargain bins, like The Scorpion King sequels or any number of Disney prequels. Sometimes a good one would sneak in, but the glut of them gave them a pretty bad reputation. The '90s all the way up until the 2010s were not kind to the concept. That is until the era of peak TV.

It’s crazy to think just how beloved prequels people are now. Audiences have been craving them more and more. Just in the past couple months we had the finale of Better Call Saul and the series premieres of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, House of the Dragon, and Andor. You can’t stop the prequels! But why now? Why have we suddenly become so intrigued about the past of our favorite universes? The answer is actually pretty simple. It’s a change in format. But first, we have to establish some things.

Prequels vs. Sequels

andor-diego-luna-episode1
Image via Disney+
 

Let’s break something down real quick: what is the appeal of a story moving backwards instead of forward? Well, obviously the answer on why a story is appealing is going to differ from person to person, but more broadly speaking, both offer different kinds of stories. If it’s a sequel, the appeal is to see the further adventures of characters we already love or are familiar with. Or, if it’s a sequel that’s far-flung into the future, where the appeal is seeing how the events of the previous entry affected the world. The downside this brings is that it will give a story a larger chance of being more of the same. Because audiences will be expecting certain things they wouldn’t have otherwise.

RELATED: The Biggest Changes 'The Rings of Power' Made to 'The Lord of the Rings'

This doesn’t make sequels inherently creatively bankrupt, but it is a hard balancing act. If you lean too hard in playing the greatest hits, you’ll end up with forgettable entries like a bunch of the sequels to the original Halloween film. But if you stray too far from the path, it could put people off for being too much of a departure like Halloween III: Season of the Witch, the one that didn't have Michael Myers. Like Halloween III, these different takes can take off later and develop a cult following, but in the moment of release, can be very divisive.

For prequels the appeal is almost the opposite. The appeal isn’t so much to see your favorite characters again but to expand on the world. Going backwards like this makes it so that the story has to prove itself to the audience that it’s more than just backstory. When they are at their best, prequels will enhance the main entry in the franchise. Either through giving you more context or extra details. At their worst, they are forgettable and just become remembered as when the franchise jumped the shark. There are two main ways that this more negative outcome can be overcome, and some recent TV prequels have been showcasing these tactics rather well.

What Makes a Prequel “Good” in the First Place?

the-lord-of-the-rings-the-rings-of-power-episode-6-recap-social-featured
Image via Prime Video

Prequels have to find a way to make the audience not mind that they know where everything will eventually wind up. That could be one of the biggest hurdles a prequel has to jump over. Perhaps the most obvious way a sequel can prevent that is by setting the prequel so long before the first entry, that the first entry doesn’t matter one iota. This is the tactic that Rings of Power and House of the Dragon have gone with. The advantage this adds to those shows is that it allows the audience to more easily meet the show on its own terms instead of constantly associating with the Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies or Game of Thrones. The shows take the aesthetic and world of their core series and use it to tell an entirely new story. This also allows more creative opportunities behind the camera, because the creatives behind the show won’t be weighed down as much by expectations. Which is why it’s so much harder to take the other main tactic of prequels, which is to show the world through the lens of a side character leading up to the core entry.

The tactic is very difficult because if done poorly, it genuinely just comes across as a retread. But, that’s not always the case. Better Call Saul recently told the story of what happened to fan favorite Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) before, during, and after the events of Breaking Bad to give the audience a more complete perspective on who this comic relief character is as a person. Seemingly, this could’ve been just a retelling of Breaking Bad with a bit more of a comedic edge, but the show opted to go beyond that. Instead of resting on its laurels, the show built up a world around Saul with his own supporting cast that are all equally interesting and fleshed out as the characters on Breaking Bad. Not only that but when old characters do return, they return in ways that only makes things better. They haven’t quite become who they are in the show yet, but you see them become that person in a way that never feels force or contrived.

Andor is doing something very similar with Rogue One, a movie that didn’t have much depth with its characters due to it being a one-off action ensemble movie. Rogue One was never meant to be a character study, but since Andor is, it fills in the blanks that were previously weak points in Rogue One. Television allowed the opportunity to retroactively make that movie better.

So, Why Television?

house-of-the-dragon-8-emma-d-arcy
Image via HBO

The reason movie prequels don’t succeed that often is because they are under a time crunch. In a roughly two-hour time frame, there isn’t that much you can actually show. So, within that short period, they have to cram in introductions to this new state of the world, new characters, what the new conflict is, and how it relates to the conflict of the source material, and more. It’s asking a lot more than a sequel traditionally would because you need so much more set up.

TV, especially now in the streaming era where rules on runtime are less restrictive, there is time to get into all of that. Entire episodes can be spent on the psyche of just one character if the showrunners wanted to. Any loose threads from the source material, any underwritten characters, any unresolved plotline can all be mended in a television show prequel. In fact, thanks to how much time is allowed, characters can take on a new life and become beloved for an entirely different reason. There’s an entire generation at this point that think of Mads Mikkelson when someone mentions Hannibal Lechter instead of Anthony Hopkins.

A Surprisingly Good Example

A show that really does this well, while also showing how prequels can take on a whole different tone from the source, is surprisingly Young Sheldon. Now, to be perfectly frank, this author is not a fan of The Big Bang Theory, or its spin-off, and will avoid both of these shows if they can. So, now you know the following compliment is really coming from the heart.

Young Sheldon is a sitcom. But unlike the sitcom it stems from, it’s not nearly as formulaic. Young Sheldon is actually a lot more serious than Big Bang Theory, it’s shot and written to more accurately represent a family from the real world instead of the sitcom archetypes of the source. Not only does this help separate the show as being its own thing, it adds an extra layer of depth to The Big Bang Theory that never existed before. This slightly more serious and realistic tone shows just how Sheldon (Iain Armitage) did have a tough time as a child, especially how he was a bit of a social outcast. But as an adult in Big Bang Theory, Sheldon (Jim Parsons) is now in a much more lighthearted, lower-stake show. The subgenre switch shows that Sheldon’s life has improved, and it emphasizes that he’s in a happier and more fulfilling place in his life. It’s a very subtle way of passing along the message of “it gets better."

Prequels are a tough cookie to crack, but we still love to watch them anyway. In this current climate of every IP imaginable being milked to death for increasingly more niche streaming services, these prequels at least offer us a change of pace. Sometimes it’s just more satisfying to see how our favorite characters and stories came to be, instead of an unending amount of sequels of history repeating itself. And thanks to the medium of TV, these stories now have the space to grow and be told more effectively than in films.