I look at Clone Wars and there was this really beautiful escalation from start to finish in that series.
I mean the first year was good, but as it continued they literally made it feel like things were getting worse and worse and darker and darker. I mean when you look at the prison rescue episodes, or Umbria which was really dark. Or the one where they infiltrated the Slave Worlds. It just felt like the Galaxy was sliding out of control or more appropriately was being manipulated into darkness. We knew what was going to happen, but some of the arcs were like, I can totally see this happening.
With Rebels it was similar, it started very kid friendly, but by the end you felt that the hero's were in real trouble.
With Resistance, maybe its the lack of three epiosde arcs, or they they're just trying to do too many things that are cute, I don't know, but it doesn't resonate with me as much, I can't think of an episode that was like amazing.