After eight episodes, The Clone Wars finally is in the place where many presumed it would start. Let’s get going.
You can change who you are, but you cannot run from yourself
1. Ahsoka’s dangerous gambit
This episode sees Ahsoka acting selflessly and taking a real risk in allowing Rafa and Trace a chance to escape with no strings attached. Obviously, Ahsoka’s Jedi talents are a huge advantage over the Pikes, but she’s one person and the Pikes control a city. Even though she has her skills, the sheer number disadvantage she’s facing is nearly insurmountable if things go south.
The frustrating part about this sequence is how easy it is for Ahsoka to escape her cell. I understand that she would have more difficulty breaking out three people than just one, but as you watch her do this, it’s frustrating to know that they could’ve escaped very easily, even easier than they did in last week’s episode.
2. Speaking of last episode…
Aside from giving the context of Trace and Rafa’s family situation and the introduction of the Mandalorians, last episode was totally useless. Both of those details could’ve easily been included the week before, which would have freed the show to do a standalone episode focused on a less important character. Each season had a few seemingly one-shot episodes, so it would’ve been carrying on with the show’s preexisting structure. But instead, we got an episode which quite literally ended where it began, and did precious little of import.
This arc has been good, but that episode helped push it to a place where it felt overlong and redundant. For such a short season, that shouldn’t be the case.
3. Maul!
For the first time outside of Solo, we hear the name Crimson Dawn in relation to Maul’s criminal empire, and we see the former Sith Lord for the first time this season. This continues this arc’s connecting various pieces of Star Wars together, and setting up the pieces not just for the final arc of the season, but to help make sense of the post-Prequels pre-Original Trilogy timeline. With Solo‘s relatively disappointing box office performance, it seems like this may be one of the last mentions of Crimson Dawn as well, which would be a real shame. Hopefully, the rumored Young Lando series would touch on them a little bit, but we shall see.
4. “What I want a Jedi to be”
Jedis are space cops, right? And because they’re space cops, we can easily project a lot of the traits/strengths/weaknesses of police forces onto them. Rafa tells Ahsoka that she represents Jedi the way she wants them to be, which is a refrain you hear a lot from various communities about their police officers. That the officers represent the force well, whereas others disrespect the uniform, or don’t live up the ideal of what a police officer should be.
Now, the Martez sisters have every reason to be disillusioned by the Jedi, after their parents were essentially collateral damage to the Jedi doing their job, but there’s a lot of power in what Rafa says. She basically tells Ahsoka that she can be a force for good inside the Jedi Order, representing the true values, instead of leaving them. I’m sure this isn’t the first time Ahsoka has heard this argument played out in her head, but that doesn’t make it less compelling.
But this also makes us look at the Jedi that we know in this time period and ask ourselves, are they representing the Jedi principles? Do you get a sense of the Jedi ideals from their behavior? Sadly, most of them are not that way at all, so Rafa’s statement takes on even more power: you were one of the ‘good’ ones (another problematic statement, but we’re going to need to move on).
But more than her words being powerful, her actions speak even louder. Even though she couches it in a ‘I want her to owe me’ language, Rafa takes an even larger risk than Ahsoka to attempt to rescue her. She is clearly inspired by a Jedi, and changes her life to be more like her. For an avowed hater of the Jedi, this is quite the turnaround.
Continued below5. Setting up what I thought the season would be
All of the pieces are now on the table: Maul, Mandlore, Death Watch, Ahsoka, the Jedi. It seems like the final arc will, in fact, be the long discussed fall of Mandalore. It also looks to be the reunion we’ve been waiting for of Ahsoka and Anakin, at least holographically (as seen in the first teaser for the new season). But we are also getting the Ahsoka/Maul showdown that is sort of referenced in the season 2 finale of Rebels, or at least that finale now has a little more weight to it, since we will see an additional encounter between Ahsoka and Maul.
Each of the first two arcs have been good arcs of The Clone Wars, but I’m ready for the show to reach its highest heights, and this arc seems primed to let it do just that. See ya next week.
