Prequels sometimes get a bad rap, partly because the viewer knows how things will turn out in the long run. However, I've been watching 'Better Call Saul' and forgot that one of the central characters isn't in 'Breaking Bad', so I went through the usual surprise when they were written out.
It occurs to me that the prequel idea could be refreshed if a series is written which merely appears to be a prequel. It's never explicitly described as such and has precursors of the situation and some of the same characters. For perhaps half of a season, it jogs along as if it's working towards the series it's assumed to lead into. Then it starts to stretch things a little - major events start to occur which become increasingly hard to reconcile with what happens in the other series. Finally, something utterly devastating happens, like the death of the character who is central to the series, and the series enters a parallel timeline with these alterations until it ends up overlapping with the time of the later series and things play out very differently.-- nineteenthly, May 30 2022 I like the idea, but in the limit people generally call this a "reboot".-- Loris, May 30 2022 It's supposed to be deceptive in the way a reboot isn't. Thanks.-- nineteenthly, May 30 2022 Okay. Yes.
This reminds me of the "dream season" of Dallas. Apparently they killed off a popular character and ratings plummeted. So they retconned the entire season as the dream of another character. It's deceptive from the other end, and by accident - but it feels like it's in the same family of ideas.
I'm not sure if you don't actively push it as a prequel the audience won't just consider it as a reboot on some level, which would spoil it a little.-- Loris, May 30 2022 +-- pashute, May 30 2022 So, Star Wars 1-3...-- RayfordSteele, May 31 2022 Oh yes, that's a good point [Loris]. Oddly, the most difficult bit of doing this would probably be how to trail it. It could be a bit like 'Alien Nation' 's movie trailer where the voiceover says "but there's something about them we don't know", thereby playing on the audience's preconceptions about aliens and then subverting them in the film, but as to the details, dunno, have to think about that a lot.-- nineteenthly, May 31 2022 I think the most difficult thing, if you wanted to do it this way, would be to gradually move away from the presumed conclusion without the audience realising. A straightforward break is jarring and will have people wtfing left, right and centre. Instead, I thinks, the right way to do this is to (a) not make it clear in the marketing that this is a prequel (b) drop hints that it is a prequel through the first couple of episodes so that by episode three everyone is pretty sure (ideally, smugly so) that it is a prequel and then (c) very gently turn away from the prequel-trajectory in a way that causes unease or confusion, edging towards the point of penny-droppage over the back half of the "season".-- calum, Jun 01 2022 I think maybe you'd run for some time completely in sync, then introduce a few deliberate but subtle continuity errors... just enough to get the obsessive fanboys riled up. You apologise for these mistakes. Maybe you have a writer fired as a scapegoat (they're in on it, of course.) Then very gradually over time these build up, and you again apologise and claim that you have to maintain consistency within the series.
Right up to the series finale, everything is still apparently on track, but then you go full Inglourious Basterds, and completely break continuity. It should be obvious in retrospect that all the continuity errors were clues.-- Loris, Jun 02 2022 random, halfbakery