Which is the Way to Do Franchise TV Shows: Star Wars or Marvel?

Recently Disney CEO Bob Iger was whining about how Marvel shows maybe watered down the Marvel brand and led to some disappointing results in theaters.  The implication being that they shouldn't have done so many TV series.  But maybe it's the type of TV series they're doing that is the problem.

Disney's two big properties--Marvel & Star Wars--both have a bunch of TV series on Disney+ now but they operate under two different philosophies.  Star Wars, which began series back in 2007 with The Clone Wars, operates mostly under the philosophy of using the shows to fill in holes in the timeline.  Clone Wars obviously filled in the time between Episodes II-III.  The Bad Batch, Rebels, Andor, and Obi-Wan Kenobi fill in time between Episodes III-IV.  The Mandalorian, Resistance, and Ahsoka fill in some time between Episodes VI-VII.  So basically Lucasfilm and then Disney has used the TV shows as a way to supplement the movies.

Starting in 2020 with WandaVision, Marvel has taken a different approach and used its TV shows to actively set up movies.  The upcoming The Marvels has one "Marvel" from WandaVision and another from the Ms. Marvel series in addition to the Captain Marvel from the movies.  Kang, the villain from Ant-Man 3, began in Loki and there's even a cookie scene in the movie relating to season 2 of that show.  The upcoming Captain America movie is spun out of Falcon & the Winter Soldier.  And so on.

The problem with this approach is it means to really know what's going on you have to watch the movies AND the TV shows on Disney+.  If you don't have Disney+ and don't watch those, then you might wonder why Wanda is suddenly evil in Dr. Strange 2.  Or who the hell are these two other "Marvels" in The Marvels?  Or when did Sam Wilson become Captain America?  

Crossovers have been a part of comics since the 1940s and since the 1980s the crossovers have gotten bigger to span entire universes--or sometimes multiverses.  So maybe that's why Kevin Feige and company thought it would work.  Plus with all their billion-dollar-making movies they probably thought they were bulletproof.  But what works for comics is maybe not working so well for TV.

I think the reason why is pretty simple:  a lot of the casual movie patrons aren't that invested in "the MCU."  They'll maybe go watch the movies, but asking them to watch a 6-9 episode Disney+ series ahead of time is like asking them to do homework  A lot of them probably aren't going to do it.

The Star Wars approach is more casual.  If you had never seen a single Star Wars TV show beforehand, you could have understood Episodes VII-IX, Rogue One, and Solo.  Of the three movies they recently announced one takes place thousands of years in the past and one focuses on Rey so you probably don't need to have watched any TV shows to understand those either.  The Dave Filoni project probably does lean on the characters from The Mandalorian and Ahsoka, so that would be the exception and it might be interesting to see how it performs vs the other two.

Since Paramount hasn't been able to get its shit together to do a Star Trek movie since 2016, they've kind of been doing both approaches with their shows.  Strange New Worlds fills in a gap between Enterprise and the Original Series.  Lower Decks and Prodigy fill in some gaps after Next Generation/DS9/Voyager.  Picard, though, was a direct sequel to Next Generation so you really needed to watch that first.  Discovery started as a prequel and then became a sequel.  But Prodigy has been canceled, Picard just wrapped, and Discovery is wrapping later this year or next year so that leaves only two gap-fillers.  There are calls for a sequel show to Picard but I don't know if they'll actually do it.

Which way is better?  Personally, I think TV is better when it tells stories that otherwise couldn't or wouldn't be told in movies.  That doesn't have to be prequels.  What was good about The Mandalorian for instance was it was in the same universe but focusing on a different part of that universe--at least in the first season.  Maybe Marvel's original TV approach was better in focusing on heroes who weren't really part of the MCU.  Or maybe they should focus on stories from the past like Agent Carter or future or something that hasn't really been covered much.  Or like What If? and MODOK do more shows that are in other universes so they aren't really affecting the MCU.

So how would you prefer your TV series?