What Is a Prequel? 10 Prequels That Work on Their Own

A prequel is a story set before a story you already know, but made after it. Rogue One ends minutes before A New Hope begins. Better Call Saul shows how Jimmy McGill became the lawyer Walter White hires in Breaking Bad.

That gives every prequel the same problem. You already know how it ends. This guide covers what a prequel is, how it differs from a sequel, the odd words in between, and 10 prequels that work even when you know the ending. For the other direction, read what is a sequel.

What is a Prequel?

A prequel is a work whose story comes before the story of an earlier work. That is close to the Merriam-Webster prequel definition, and it covers novels, plays, films and TV.

In film, a prequel usually goes back to show how a character, a place or a conflict began. The Hobbit shows how Bilbo found the Ring. X-Men: First Class shows how Professor X and Magneto became enemies.

Prequel Meaning: Before or After?

Does prequel mean before or after? Both, and that is the source of the confusion. The story is set before. The film comes out after. The word joins “pre”, meaning before, to “sequel”.

Where the Word Comes From

“Prequel” is older than most people guess. Merriam-Webster dates its first known use to 1922. The science fiction editor Anthony Boucher used it in 1958 to describe a James Blish novel set before an earlier Blish book.

Film audiences met the word later. Butch and Sundance: The Early Days (1979), a prequel to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, is often credited with bringing it into everyday use.

Prequel vs Sequel

A prequel goes back. A sequel goes forward. Both come out after the original.

	Prequel	Sequel
Where the story is set	Before the original	After the original
When it is released	After the original	After the original
What the audience already knows	The ending	The beginning
Star Wars example	The Phantom Menace (1999)	The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Some films are both. The Godfather Part II (1974) follows Michael Corleone after the first film and cuts back to his father Vito’s childhood, from 1901 on. It is a sequel and a prequel in one, and it is number 1 on our list of sequels better than the original.

Interquel, Midquel and Sidequel

These three words are informal, but film writers use them to describe stories that fit between or beside other stories.

Interquel

An interquel is set between two stories that already exist. Rogue One (2016) sits between Revenge of the Sith (2005) and A New Hope (1977), so it is an interquel and a prequel at once.

Midquel

A midquel fills a gap during an existing story. The Lion King 1½ (2004) retells The Lion King from Timon and Pumbaa’s side, with scenes from before and after the first film too.

Sidequel

A sidequel runs alongside another story with different characters. The Bourne Legacy (2012) opens during the events of The Bourne Ultimatum, then carries on past them.

Why Filmmakers Make Prequels

Studios like prequels because the world already exists and the audience already cares. For a writer, a prequel changes how the story works.

• The ending is known. The tension moves from what happens to how it happens. This is dramatic irony: the audience knows something the characters do not.
• Backstory becomes the story. A line of history in the original becomes a whole plot. Our guide to the power of backstory covers how to build one.
• Foreshadowing runs backwards. The prequel plants clues the original already paid off. See how that works in our foreshadowing examples.
• Characters get a before and after. A villain can become human, and a hero can start out as someone else. That is character development seen from the far end.

Every prequel starts with a spoiler.

You know Anakin becomes Darth Vader. You know Jimmy McGill becomes Saul Goodman. So a prequel cannot run on “will they make it?” It has to run on “what will it cost?”

That is where weak prequels go wrong. They spend their running time explaining things nobody asked about, like where a name came from or how a scar happened.

The good ones ask a harder question. Who was this person, and what did they lose?

10 Prequels That Work on Their Own

These 10 prequels, nine prequel movies and one TV series, count down to the one that works best without the original. Each has a “Watch it first?” line, because that is the question most people ask.

10) The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

The Hobbit is a prequel on screen only. On the page, it came first.

• Prequel to: The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001 to 2003)
• Set: Decades before The Fellowship of the Ring
• Watch it first? Yes. The story was written for children and starts from zero.
• What to steal: Let a small character carry a big world.

J.R.R. Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937 and The Lord of the Rings in 1954 and 1955. Peter Jackson filmed them the other way round, back in New Zealand where he shot The Lord of the Rings.

The best scene shows the prequel’s trick in one room. Bilbo meets Gollum in the dark and plays a game of riddles for his life. He leaves with a ring. Everyone watching knows what that ring is. Bilbo does not.

It ranks last because one short novel was stretched into three long films, and you feel it.

9) Star Wars: Episode I, The Phantom Menace (1999)

The Phantom Menace shows the prequel problem at its clearest, and its best scenes show the fix.

• Prequel to: Star Wars (1977), now called A New Hope
• Set: 32 years before A New Hope
• Watch it first? Only if you are watching the saga in story order. The 1977 film is the better start.
• What to steal: Give the audience one set piece that needs no history.

George Lucas came back 16 years after Return of the Jedi to show how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. The trouble is that everyone already knew he would. Every scene with nine-year-old Anakin carries that weight.

The parts that work need no history at all. The podrace, and the Duel of the Fates where Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan fight Darth Maul, play just as well if you have never seen a Star Wars film.

Here’s the trailer for The Phantom Menace.

8) Prometheus (2012)

Prometheus is a prequel that tried hard not to be one.

• Prequel to: Alien (1979)
• Set: 2089 to 2093
• Watch it first? Yes. It asks its own questions and only hints at Alien.
• What to steal: Link back to the original through one image, not a checklist.

Ridley Scott went back to his own film 33 years later. Before release, he called Alien the “jumping-off point” and said fans would find strands of its DNA, but that the new film had its own story.

That DNA shows up in one room. The crew finds a giant pilot’s chair, the same design Alien’s crew found on a dead ship. The rest of Prometheus is about something bigger: who made humans, and why.

Its questions are bigger than its answers, but that is a better problem than having no questions of its own.

7) X-Men: First Class (2011)

X-Men: First Class turns a friendship everyone knew would end into the whole film.

• Prequel to: X-Men (2000)
• Set: Mainly 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis
• Watch it first? Yes. It plays as a stand-alone 1960s spy film.
• What to steal: Tie your prequel to a real event the audience already knows.

Matthew Vaughn set the young Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr against the Cuban missile crisis. Real history gave the film a clock. You know the world did not end in October 1962, but you do not know what these two had to do with it.

The payoff comes on a beach in Cuba. A deflected bullet hits Charles, Erik holds him, and the friendship breaks. In X-Men (2000), they are old men playing chess as enemies. The prequel shows you what broke.

6) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Temple of Doom is the prequel most people never notice.

• Prequel to: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
• Set: 1935, a year before Raiders
• Watch it first? Yes. Nothing in it depends on Raiders.
• What to steal: A prequel does not have to announce itself.

The film opens in a Shanghai nightclub in 1935. The club is called Obi Wan, a nod to Lucas’s other series. Lucas set the story a year before Raiders so the villains would not be Nazis again.

There is no Marion, no Ark and no hint of what comes next. It is a prequel only by the calendar, which proves how little a prequel needs to borrow.

5) Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

Furiosa runs straight into Fury Road, and you can still watch it first.

• Prequel to: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
• Set: A 15-year span that ends where Fury Road begins
• Watch it first? Yes. Then watch Fury Road straight after.
• What to steal: Give a side character from the original a whole life.

In Fury Road, Furiosa gets a few lines of history. She was taken from the Green Place as a child. George Miller built a whole film from those lines, with Anya Taylor-Joy in the role Charlize Theron played.

Miller has said the story covers 15 years and “runs straight into” Fury Road. Immortan Joe, the Citadel and the War Rig all return, so the world is familiar, but Furiosa’s story is new.

Miller’s earlier sequel, Mad Max 2, is on our list of sequels better than the original.

4) Pearl (2022)

Pearl was shot back to back with the film it comes before.

• Prequel to: X (2022)
• Set: 1918. X is set in 1979
• Watch it first? Yes. Pearl works alone, and X plays better after it.
• What to steal: Shoot your prequel on the same sets while you still have them.

Ti West made X and Pearl in New Zealand, one after the other, and Mia Goth co-wrote Pearl with him. In X, Goth plays the young lead and, under heavy makeup, the old woman who lives on the farm. In Pearl, she plays that woman 61 years earlier.

The farmhouse and barn are the same. That is the cheapest prequel trick there is: the set is already built.

It ends on a long, forced smile that plays under the credits. You will not forget it.

3) Wicked (2024)

Wicked tells the witch’s side of a story first published in 1900.

• Prequel to: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900 novel) and The Wizard of Oz (1939)
• Set: Before Dorothy arrives in Oz
• Watch it first? Yes. Most viewers know Oz already, and the film relies on that.
• What to steal: Tell the villain’s story from before the audience met her.

Jon M. Chu’s film adapts Act One of the stage musical, which is based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel. It follows Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande) at Shiz University, before either becomes the witch Dorothy meets.

Every scene carries dramatic irony. You know the green girl will be called wicked. The film makes you watch how a reputation gets built.

The second film, Wicked: For Good (2025), adapts Act Two. It overlaps Dorothy’s arrival in Oz, so the second half is partly a sidequel.

2) Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Rogue One ends where A New Hope begins, almost to the minute.

• Prequel to: Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)
• Set: Just before A New Hope, which also makes it an interquel after Revenge of the Sith
• Watch it first? Yes. It is a strong way into the 1977 film.
• What to steal: Build your prequel from one line in the original.

A New Hope’s opening crawl mentions rebel spies who stole the plans to the Death Star. Gareth Edwards’ film is about those spies. A whole film grew out of one sentence.

Because Jyn Erso’s team never appears in A New Hope, the audience does not know who survives. That is a freedom most prequels never get.

The last scene hands the plans to Princess Leia on her ship, the Tantive IV, moments before the first shot of A New Hope. Darth Vader’s attack in the corridor comes just before it.

1) Better Call Saul (2015 to 2022)

Better Call Saul is the best proof that a prequel can match the original.

• Prequel to: Breaking Bad (2008 to 2013)
• Set: Mainly 2002 to 2004, with black and white scenes set in 2010, after Breaking Bad
• Watch it first? Yes. It stands alone, though Breaking Bad fans get more from the final seasons.
• What to steal: Make the audience dread a change they know is coming.

It is the only TV series on this list, and it takes the top spot because it solves the prequel problem better than any film. Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould took Saul Goodman, a comic side character, and asked who he was before. The answer is Jimmy McGill, a small-time lawyer who wants his brother’s respect.

Over six seasons and 63 episodes, you watch Jimmy become Saul. It is one of TV’s great character arcs, and a tragic one, because you know where it ends.

The show also runs forward. Its black and white scenes follow Saul, now hiding as “Gene”, after Breaking Bad. Like The Godfather Part II, it is a prequel and a sequel in one. Both shows were shot in Albuquerque (here is where Breaking Bad was filmed).

It earned 53 Emmy nominations without a single win, the record for any series.

Writing a prequel of your own? Study Rogue One before anything else on this list.

Better Call Saul had six seasons to earn its ending. Rogue One had two hours and one sentence from an opening crawl.

Look at how little it borrows. Vader gets two scenes. The rest is new people with a job to do.

That is the model for a short film too. Find one line in the original that nobody explained, and build outward from it.

What Order to Watch Prequels In

Do you watch a prequel first? For a first watch, most fan guides say release order. You meet the story the way the first audience did, and the twists land as planned. The Empire Strikes Back reveal hits harder if you have not already seen Anakin’s whole life. Even StarWars.com will not pick one: its advice is that whichever order you choose is right.

A simple rule works for most series:

• First watch: release order.
• Rewatch: story order, to see how the prequel changes the original.
• Stand-alone prequels: Temple of Doom, Pearl and Rogue One work fine either way.

FAQs About Prequels

The Final Cut on Prequels

A prequel is set before and made after, and that gap is its whole challenge. The audience walks in knowing the ending.

The prequels on this list give you something to care about besides the ending: a new team, like Rogue One, or a man you know will fall, like Jimmy McGill.

Here is the test: if a prequel works when you watch it first, it is a good prequel. Temple of Doom, Pearl, Rogue One and Better Call Saul all pass it.

Planning your own? Start with a film treatment, give your lead the kind of flaw that makes memorable characters, and read our screenwriting guide. For the other direction, see what is a sequel and the 10 sequels that beat their originals.