With “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” final season coming to a close, it’s hard not to love what came out of it. However, as a cynic, it’s hard for me not to ruin something good, so here it goes.
“The Clone Wars” made the prequel films better than they were ever justified to be. The recent movies are controversial, but what isn’t, is how bad the prequels were. It has added depth to characters and events, and it’s all helped by the fact that we all know what’s coming.
Yet, here is where the show did something a bit different. We all wanted to see Order 66, but who would have thought it would totally change the context of it, going from random lackluster plot devices to a tragic orchestration of evil.
Before getting to that point, the season develops the two main characters throughout most of the season. Favorite characters clone Captain Rex and a Jedi named Ahsoka are this seasons’ main protagonists. There are three arks, each starring one character each, and the last arc brings them together.
Starting with the first, it centers around the introduction of the Bad Batch or Clone Force 99, the latter is a loving reference to a dead character. They join Rex, and their mission is to find battle plans and recover a lost comrade and friend of Rex.
It ends with them finding the character, but due to his time in captivity, and due to what was done to him, he departed with the bad batch, feeling he belongs with those outcasts more. The bad batch are clones with useful but odd mutations.
Echo was basically turned into a human CPU, so he never felt the same, leaving Rex for a family he belonged with. It’s a solemn moment, a quiet understanding of respect and love. It also starts to show Rex’s reserves about the Clone Wars, his lost brothers, and the length of the war. Then it cuts to a picture of characters, with about ¾ of them having died throughout the show.
It’s a solid arc, and it relinks us to a character that isn’t lost and there’s plenty of mileage in. The main crux is the character they save, Echo, who is more plot device than character. Moreover he sort of just leaves at the end, which is saddening. It makes you feel for Rex, who is getting increasingly isolated.
The second arc follows Ahsoka through the slums of the galaxy, where she meets two characters, sisters. They run some adventures, get into trouble with a gang, build a starship, try to sell drugs, then they lose the drugs while outrunning a space cartel.
If you think that sounds a bit pointless that’s because it pretty much was. I had a hard time remembering it.
This is mainly because of the Martez sisters. They were generic sisters who seem more or less like inserts for the audience. It wouldn’t be a problem if like Fives, they played the McGuffin, but they play central roles.
These characters are not important, and they barely characterized the bad batch. There’s the quiet commander, cocky sniper, know-it-all technician, and a lovable brute. They weren’t the focus, Rex was.
However this arc did do somethings right. It was cool to see the everyday lives of galactic citizens and their views of the Jedi. It forced Ahsoka to confront a truth about the Jedi and their neglect of the galaxy.
The last arc was the saddest, and possibly what made the prequels better than they deserve to be.
It starts with a reunion between Anakin, Rex and Ahsoka, and in an act of love, her former clone battalion painted their helmets orange as a tribute to her. It’s one of those scenes that changes how you view other scenes in other movies.
After that starts the siege of Mandalore, the mission is to capture a sith called Darth Maul. There is a beautifully done duel between Maul and Ahsoka, and they captured Maul. Not long after the fight, Order 66, the order to kill all Jedi was issued.
Now it’s important to know, the clones are being controlled by chips that assume their body functions making them literal flesh droids. So the oranged helmeted troopers from an episode ago are now desperately trying to kill Ahsoka.
The scene began with John Williams “Order 66” playing, and Rex trying to hold himself back, then shoots and barely misses her. Rex tells her to find some record in a brief moment before being knocked out.
Ahsoka learns about the chips mentioned earlier, basically serving as a refresher for the audience, but it could be seen as a handwave for the less familiar.
Throughout the chase, there are scenes that almost hurt because of how good the voice acting is. At one point, a friend of Rex held him by gunpoint, and Rex tried to talk around his programming. You could hear the struggle in the friend’s voice, but the programming took over, and they began fighting again.
Thousands of helmets held up by rifles over the graves of fallen clones, this episode is called “Victory and Death.” The reason it makes the prequels better is because it humanized the clones.
Why would men who follow you into battle and die alongside you just suddenly turn around and shoot you? It was cheap evil for the sake of evil. But “The Clone Wars” changed that to a more tragic, “I’m trapped in my own body,” trope over the evil for evil’s sake trope. It adds this sense of overwhelming sadness to a scene that is far more beautifully shot, contextually sad, and meaningful than the overblown and over-produced movies of recent.
Who won in the end? The clones and Jedi were just two flavors of child soldiers, one a slave army and one of the indoctrinated monks. The republic was the true evil, but both sides were just useful idiots, and the true winner was Emperor Palpatine.
These little hints of grey pull you in, and you understand why a character has to take on action over another. It’s more human than the soulless clones from the movies.
It’s a fantastic show, and it’s worth to be caught up for sure, and even people with just a decent understanding of “Star Wars” will find something to like here.
It has some flab, but the lows aren’t rock bottom while the highs are like mountain peaks.