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Star Wars: The Clone Wars
I finished marathoning Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Netflix (five full seasons and an incomplete sixth one – because by the time of the sixth season, Disney was buying LucasFilm and promptly cancelled the show) and am consequently in a curious mood, somewhere between narratively satisfied (Ashoka’s arc!) and despondent - no more Clone Wars, and yes, I know Ashoka is also an occasional guest star on Rebels, but this is as good a place as any to explain why as opposed to Disney, Abrams and most of the fandom I’m not interested in more of the set up that makes the OT, and now the new movie, i.e. brave rebels versus evil Empire.
Because, you see: one of the things I dig about the Prequels is that they don’t do that and go for a far more interesting (to me) and difficult emotional scenario. The Evil Empire in the OT is, well, evil. Unrelentingly so. The rebels are good, fighting for freedom, their cause is completely right, no question about it, and everyone on their side is good. The Empire is also OTHER, consisting of faceless stormtroopers, some bureaucrafts played by British actors, a faceless cyborg in black whose human face (in both senses) we don’t see until the trilogy is nearly over, and an evil witch king who looks like a grotesque walking corpse. What the Empire, Vader/Anakin revelation notwithstanding, most definitely is not is something related to the audience, or what the audience reality could turn into.
Meanwhile, the Republic of the Prequel era? Is not conquered by the Empire, as fans pre- prequels probably assumed. Instead, it over the course of three movies becomes the Empire. And not just because Anakin Skywalker turns in the third movie. (If he had died instead, it still would have happened.) Because of inherent flaws of its leaders, skilled manipulation that ensures that because of an ongoing (self produced) war, more and more rights are abandoned and the militarized state becomes the status quo. I don’t know about you, but that sounds awfully familiar to me.
Palpatine in the Prequels manipulates Padme into getting him into power in the first movie (having created a win-win situation by organizing the invasion of his home planet, Naboo: if Padme dies a martyr, he gets the sympathy vote and becomes chancellor, if she wins and repells the invastion, he also gets the sympathy vote), manipulates the senate into voting him emergency powers and the Jedi into leading his new army for him in the second, and is well into getting rid of the rest of democracy before the Jedi (and some of the Senate) finally try to do something against him in the third. All of this isn’t just possible because he’s clever and patient, but because the Jedi Order, while well intentioned in principle, in practice has become remote and unable to cope with a rapidly changing world. The council literally lives in ivory towers and is increasingly practicing double standards. In the first movie, it’s confidently declared that slavery doesn’t exist in the Republic (as opposed to the Rim worlds, like Tatooine), but in the second, the Clone Army which was literally bought and paid for is accepted as a convenient solution to an emergency situation. (I’ll get to how The Clone Wars series treats this.) Obi-Wan is told by Lama Su that the Clones were not only created to be an army (i.e. canon fodder) but were genetically modified to be obedient. (I recently did a rewatch with fellow prequel lover thalia_seawood, and the phrase even is “they’ll obey any order”.) They are also clearly sentient beings. (Cody in the third movie is presented as an individual who has his own relationship with Obi-Wan.) This isn’t just a Trojan horse situation, this is the Jedi enabling the future murderous attack against them by falling short of their own ethics because it’s more convenient in a war situation. Again, this is awfully familiar and resonates with me.
Don’t get me wrong: the prequels are still drenched in fairy tale tropes and definitely don’t employ sophisticated political world building, nor does the series The Clone Wars, where most planets have Kings or otherwise aristocratically titled rulers while sending US style senators to the Galactic Senate who elect a Chancellor. But still: a set up where there is no “good” side of a war because both sides are led by manipulative bastards (who are in cahoots to boot) using the war situation to profit and get rid of any possible opposition works for me in a way the black and white Us Versus Them/Brave Rebels Versus Evil Empire situation does not; Anakin is a literal expression of the idea of turning into the monster you thought you were fighting, but he’s far from the only one to whom this happens in the prequel era.
After this lengthy preamble: of course, The Clone Wars provides its share of boo-hiss, uniformly bad Separatist villains which can easily compete in one dimensionality with the Imperials (or for that matter the First Order). It’s not until the third season that we meet well intentioned Separatist leaders (political, not military). However, Chancellor Palpatine is a regular and an ongoing reminder that the Republic is led by the most evil overlord of them all who keeps orchestrating a galactic wide war. And the question of how the Jedi can in any sense still claim to be Peacekeepers when they are part of one of the armies conducting said war is raised by more and more characters through the show.
Not to give you the wrong impression: this isn’t Battlestar Galactica. But for a show aimed at a younger/family audience, it tackles amazingly dark themes at times. And not just by the implication of the premise: since it’s set between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, most of the cast is doomed by movie plot. Most, but not all.
While I appreciate the fleshing out /giving personality to the Jedi we see otherwise in mostly silent roles through the prequels (Luminara Unduli, Plo Koon, Adi Gallia, etc., almost all, as I mentioned in an earlier post, non-humans, which pleases the alien lover in me), the standout narrative arcs to me were those given to the Clones on the one hand and Ashoka Tano on the other.
We follow a couple of Clones through the seasons – most of all Captain Rex, but also Fives, Jesse, Hardcase, Tups – and meet the occasional one arc/one episode Clone, of of whom share the same voice and face but still develop individual personalities and friendships, both among each other and in Rex’ case with Anakin and Ashoka. Even if you somehow managed to block out the existence of Order 66 from Revenge of the Sith, i.e. the command that will make the Clones (because they were created this way) get into total obedience to Palpatine mode, turn against the Jedi and kill them, this becomes gut wrenching when in the brief season 6 the conditioning kicks in too early in one of them, leading to another Clone investigating and making a horrible discovery that dooms him as well (but could be responsible for saving some of the others from having to follow their conditioning, because Order 66 turns out to be in a brain-implanted chip that can be removed in a dangerous operation).
Long before that, mid-show, you have the Umbara arc where a trope familiar from war movies and –shows is used: the bloodthirsty commanding officer who gets more and more of the foot soldiers killed and treats everyone as disposable canon fodder until the honorable soldier, hitherto a by-the-rules guy, decides that in order to put an end to this slaughter, he has to kill his superior officer. In this case, the officer in question is a Jedi general named Krell and the honorable soldier is Rex. If I have one complaint about the arc, it’s that I think it pulls its punches a little in its last episode with the reveal that Krell, having come to the conclusion that the Jedi can’t win this war, intends to defect to Dooku and has orchestrated the slaughter of his own men deliberately (as opposed to having seen it as an acceptable prize for victory). If Krell had remained presented as a lethal glory hound whose disdain for the Clones hails from the fact they are Clones (he addresses them by their numbers, not their self-chosen names) and literally Republic property (the original army may have been commissioned by Dooku using Sifo-Dyas, but it’s a plot point that the longer the war keeps going, the more money the Republic spends on commissioning new clones from Geonosis, and not just a dark Jedi like Krell but a good one like Adi Gallia at one point says consequently, the Clones are “technically” Republic property), it would have made an even better story, imo of course.
Anyway, all the Clones get conditioned with “good soldiers follow orders” on Geonosis, but Rex through the course of the series gets confronted with situations where this doesn’t work and/or where his own judgment is called for instead; early on when he comes across a deserter who has founded a family, and near the end of the show through the fates of two of his “brothers” due to the Order 66 investigation; what fanfic I’ve read assumes (presumably due to new Rebels canon, since, like Ashoka, he supposedly is an occasional guest star in this series?) that he got the chip removing operation made just in time before Revenge of the Sith. He’s the most prominent but by far not the only likeable one of the Clone characters, and long before I finished the show, I mourned their eventual fate in the Empire as much as anyone else’s. There is a pathos about the Clones who were created to fight and live only a few years, and who nonetheless try to make those years count, which echoes a bit of another sci fi classic from the early 80s for me, i.e. the Replicants in Blade Runner.
Speaking of doomed characters brought to life beyond being ciphers, Bail Organa definitely counts. He and Padme get some massive political plot lines in s3 and s4, where we see them work as Senators, doing their best to stop the Republic from losing more and more of its good traits (one of the issues they bring up is that because of the escalating military budget – and need to buy ever more Clones – nearly every social benefit, schools, libraries, food for the poor has been cut – again, sounds familiar?) and having intermittent successes only to be defeated behind the scenes by Palpatine in the next round. Despite Palpatine as the overall victor in politics, this is still very satisfying to watch, since it not only shows both them (Padme and Bail Organa) as competent politicians who aren’t discouraged but keep up the struggle) but gives them a good comradely working relationship and friendship that explains why Bail is willing to raise Padme’s daughter. (Yes, of course he’ll love Leia for Leia later, but the original taking of the baby being more motivated by friendship with her mother is something I very much like.)
On the villain front, I was vaguely familiar with Assaj Ventress from the cartoons and here she starts as Dooku’s Evil McEvil one dimensional henchwoman as well, but ca. late season 3, early s4 she actually gets good character development and not an redemption arc (there’s no sense of her repenting anything she did), but an becomes an independent person arc as she falls out with Dooku over Palpatine’s Sith paranoia (remember, only two at a time are allowed) and after an unsuccessful revenge plot goes through a villainous quest to find herself, at the end of which she has arrived in antivillain/antihero territory that includes temporary team-ups with Obi-Wan and Ashoka in emergency situations. This was a most pleasant surprise. (Why should “evil villain goes grey” be reserved for male characters in the Galaxy Far, Far Away?) Before that, Obi-Wan and Ventress have a lot of foe yay through the seasons, and have arguably the best villain/hero banter in their duels. Nor is Assaj Ventress the only recurring female villain; there’s also bounty hunter Aurra Sing (competent, smart and ruthless bounty hunter), which brings me to the fact that I couldn’t care less about Boba Fett in the OT (seriously, I don’t get his cult appeal there; he has only one line of dialogue and otherwise just stands around and fights a little), but felt sorry for the kid in Attack of the Clones, and downright interested in what The Clone Wars do when they bring him back. Because we see him go from a child who wants to avenge his father but otherwise has scruples taking innocent lives to a youth ready to do anything, and it happens across the space of several seasons; the Boba who has ended up with Aurra Sing as his mentor early on still has to be persuaded into endangering the other clones, the one who has a run in with Ventress late in the show has no such problems whatsoever. And while this is due to Boba and circumstances, some of this is also due to the way Mace Windu, after Boba’s futile revenge quest, basically reacts to “you killed my father and destroyed my life” with “tough, get used to it” as opposed to, say, try and help the kid. (I’m not expecting him to apologize for killing Jango, who was trying to kill him at the time, but Mace Windu certainly wins for “Jedi with the most damaging self righteous attitude and zero practical compassion” from Phantom Menace onwards.)
The most prominent bounty hunter in The Clone Wars is Cade Bane, who is basically Clint Eastwood’s persona from the Sergio Leone years, but my favourite non-Force Sensitive bad guy is Hondo the Pirate, who is Treasure Island John Silver, hiding his ruthlessness hinter a genial manner, double crossing people all the time not for ideology but cash, verbose and pragmatically teaming up with either Jedi or Sith depending on his situation when necessary. He also at one point manages to have Obi-Wan, Anakin and Dooku as hostages for maximum profit, which makes for great hilarity and bickering (though also for Dooku having it in for Hondo thereafter). As befits a Treasure Island Silver avatar, Hondo makes it out of the Clone Wars alive.
All this contributes to endearing the show to me. But really, the heart of it, if you have to narrow it down, to me is Ashoka Tano’s story, and the Anakin and Ashoka relationship. Ashoka gets introduced in the pre series Clone Wars movie as a mouthy, impulsive 13 years old whom Yoda decides to give to Anakin, of all the people, as his padawan; this may have been Yoda’s sense of humor (if Obi-Wan had come up with the idea, I’d suspect un-Jedi-like wish for payback) or Yoda’s wisdom, because it works out surprisingly well. Anakin (only just a Knight at the start) and Ashoka both grow up in the war and via each other. After marathoning the show, I washed their earliest episode at the start of s1 again and thought: they are so YOUNG here. And yes, Anakin never completely matures before he falls, but he does grow through the show (both in the good and bad sense), and being responsible for Ashoka, who shares his own impulsiveness, greatly helps. She’s 17 by the end, they’re just a few years apart, and so it’s not a substitute parent/child relationship as much as it’s a brother/sister one; the teasing each other (complete with nicknames) goes with being there for each other both in battle and emotionally. Ashoka gets mentored by other characters on the show as well – Ploo Kon, Padme (whom she plays bodyguard for during one of Padme’s best political arcs), Luminara, even Jocasta Nu briefly - , but the relationship with Anakin is her deepest one. I both love it and it breaks my heart.
Now obviously, Ashoka isn’t around in Revenge of the Sith. The show’s writers found a way to explain this without killing her off and in a way that gives her growing up arc through the show a stunning conclusion. Ashoka through the fifth season is in situations where she’s not the apprentice but the mentor (of various other characters), and where she’s confronted with loss and whether or not to put her own judgment above orders. Not, as a younger Ashoka would have, out of impulsiveness but after thinking it over. In earlier seasons, she’s seen the flaws of various authorities exposed. The last storyarc of the fifth season, though, highlights the flaws of the Jedi and the Republic itself as Ashoka gets framed, abandoned by the order (save Anakin) and nearly killed until Anakin can prove her innocence. But that doesn’t change that the entire Jedi Council was ready to write her off (not just on a whim, in all fairness, but due to pressure by Palpatine and Tarkin to prove a Jedi seemingly guilty of multiple homicide isn’t above the law), or that the true culprit was none other than her best friend whose own belief in the order had been destroyed. This leads to Ashoka ending the fifth and last completed season by deciding not to return to the Jedi Order, and to walk away from the Jedi instead. Which, btw, the show parallels a bit with Ventress walking away from the Sith. There’s also a parallel/contrast to Anakin: as mentioned, they’re similarly impulsive and authority-defying (Obi-Wan can’t resist commenting at one point he enjoys watching Anakin giving a “do not as I do but as I say” lesson), and at this point in canon feel alienated from the Jedi Order. But Ashoka won’t turn her anger and growing disillusionment into murderous rage; she manages to keep true to her ideals, which in turn also shows that Anakin’s fall isn’t inevitable or just a result of the mixture of Palpatine’s manipulation and the Jedi Order’s mistakes, but his own responsibility. This being said: having watched The Clone Wars, it’s impossible not to conclude that losing Ashoka and the way it happens contributes to Anakin “attachment is my middle name” Skywalker going dark side. Which, however, isn’t the point of this plot. As Ashoka says, her decision isn’t about Anakin, it’s about herself, and it’s one that refuses the either/or fallacy that so disastrously many other characters believe in. Her growing up is complete.
The farewell scene is so good that I’m linking it here, because showcases The Clone Wars at its best: the way the art and voice work is so good that you can see changing facial expressions and emotions, and the emotional pay off for five years of development.
In conclusion: this show, you must watch. There is no try.
Because, you see: one of the things I dig about the Prequels is that they don’t do that and go for a far more interesting (to me) and difficult emotional scenario. The Evil Empire in the OT is, well, evil. Unrelentingly so. The rebels are good, fighting for freedom, their cause is completely right, no question about it, and everyone on their side is good. The Empire is also OTHER, consisting of faceless stormtroopers, some bureaucrafts played by British actors, a faceless cyborg in black whose human face (in both senses) we don’t see until the trilogy is nearly over, and an evil witch king who looks like a grotesque walking corpse. What the Empire, Vader/Anakin revelation notwithstanding, most definitely is not is something related to the audience, or what the audience reality could turn into.
Meanwhile, the Republic of the Prequel era? Is not conquered by the Empire, as fans pre- prequels probably assumed. Instead, it over the course of three movies becomes the Empire. And not just because Anakin Skywalker turns in the third movie. (If he had died instead, it still would have happened.) Because of inherent flaws of its leaders, skilled manipulation that ensures that because of an ongoing (self produced) war, more and more rights are abandoned and the militarized state becomes the status quo. I don’t know about you, but that sounds awfully familiar to me.
Palpatine in the Prequels manipulates Padme into getting him into power in the first movie (having created a win-win situation by organizing the invasion of his home planet, Naboo: if Padme dies a martyr, he gets the sympathy vote and becomes chancellor, if she wins and repells the invastion, he also gets the sympathy vote), manipulates the senate into voting him emergency powers and the Jedi into leading his new army for him in the second, and is well into getting rid of the rest of democracy before the Jedi (and some of the Senate) finally try to do something against him in the third. All of this isn’t just possible because he’s clever and patient, but because the Jedi Order, while well intentioned in principle, in practice has become remote and unable to cope with a rapidly changing world. The council literally lives in ivory towers and is increasingly practicing double standards. In the first movie, it’s confidently declared that slavery doesn’t exist in the Republic (as opposed to the Rim worlds, like Tatooine), but in the second, the Clone Army which was literally bought and paid for is accepted as a convenient solution to an emergency situation. (I’ll get to how The Clone Wars series treats this.) Obi-Wan is told by Lama Su that the Clones were not only created to be an army (i.e. canon fodder) but were genetically modified to be obedient. (I recently did a rewatch with fellow prequel lover thalia_seawood, and the phrase even is “they’ll obey any order”.) They are also clearly sentient beings. (Cody in the third movie is presented as an individual who has his own relationship with Obi-Wan.) This isn’t just a Trojan horse situation, this is the Jedi enabling the future murderous attack against them by falling short of their own ethics because it’s more convenient in a war situation. Again, this is awfully familiar and resonates with me.
Don’t get me wrong: the prequels are still drenched in fairy tale tropes and definitely don’t employ sophisticated political world building, nor does the series The Clone Wars, where most planets have Kings or otherwise aristocratically titled rulers while sending US style senators to the Galactic Senate who elect a Chancellor. But still: a set up where there is no “good” side of a war because both sides are led by manipulative bastards (who are in cahoots to boot) using the war situation to profit and get rid of any possible opposition works for me in a way the black and white Us Versus Them/Brave Rebels Versus Evil Empire situation does not; Anakin is a literal expression of the idea of turning into the monster you thought you were fighting, but he’s far from the only one to whom this happens in the prequel era.
After this lengthy preamble: of course, The Clone Wars provides its share of boo-hiss, uniformly bad Separatist villains which can easily compete in one dimensionality with the Imperials (or for that matter the First Order). It’s not until the third season that we meet well intentioned Separatist leaders (political, not military). However, Chancellor Palpatine is a regular and an ongoing reminder that the Republic is led by the most evil overlord of them all who keeps orchestrating a galactic wide war. And the question of how the Jedi can in any sense still claim to be Peacekeepers when they are part of one of the armies conducting said war is raised by more and more characters through the show.
Not to give you the wrong impression: this isn’t Battlestar Galactica. But for a show aimed at a younger/family audience, it tackles amazingly dark themes at times. And not just by the implication of the premise: since it’s set between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, most of the cast is doomed by movie plot. Most, but not all.
While I appreciate the fleshing out /giving personality to the Jedi we see otherwise in mostly silent roles through the prequels (Luminara Unduli, Plo Koon, Adi Gallia, etc., almost all, as I mentioned in an earlier post, non-humans, which pleases the alien lover in me), the standout narrative arcs to me were those given to the Clones on the one hand and Ashoka Tano on the other.
We follow a couple of Clones through the seasons – most of all Captain Rex, but also Fives, Jesse, Hardcase, Tups – and meet the occasional one arc/one episode Clone, of of whom share the same voice and face but still develop individual personalities and friendships, both among each other and in Rex’ case with Anakin and Ashoka. Even if you somehow managed to block out the existence of Order 66 from Revenge of the Sith, i.e. the command that will make the Clones (because they were created this way) get into total obedience to Palpatine mode, turn against the Jedi and kill them, this becomes gut wrenching when in the brief season 6 the conditioning kicks in too early in one of them, leading to another Clone investigating and making a horrible discovery that dooms him as well (but could be responsible for saving some of the others from having to follow their conditioning, because Order 66 turns out to be in a brain-implanted chip that can be removed in a dangerous operation).
Long before that, mid-show, you have the Umbara arc where a trope familiar from war movies and –shows is used: the bloodthirsty commanding officer who gets more and more of the foot soldiers killed and treats everyone as disposable canon fodder until the honorable soldier, hitherto a by-the-rules guy, decides that in order to put an end to this slaughter, he has to kill his superior officer. In this case, the officer in question is a Jedi general named Krell and the honorable soldier is Rex. If I have one complaint about the arc, it’s that I think it pulls its punches a little in its last episode with the reveal that Krell, having come to the conclusion that the Jedi can’t win this war, intends to defect to Dooku and has orchestrated the slaughter of his own men deliberately (as opposed to having seen it as an acceptable prize for victory). If Krell had remained presented as a lethal glory hound whose disdain for the Clones hails from the fact they are Clones (he addresses them by their numbers, not their self-chosen names) and literally Republic property (the original army may have been commissioned by Dooku using Sifo-Dyas, but it’s a plot point that the longer the war keeps going, the more money the Republic spends on commissioning new clones from Geonosis, and not just a dark Jedi like Krell but a good one like Adi Gallia at one point says consequently, the Clones are “technically” Republic property), it would have made an even better story, imo of course.
Anyway, all the Clones get conditioned with “good soldiers follow orders” on Geonosis, but Rex through the course of the series gets confronted with situations where this doesn’t work and/or where his own judgment is called for instead; early on when he comes across a deserter who has founded a family, and near the end of the show through the fates of two of his “brothers” due to the Order 66 investigation; what fanfic I’ve read assumes (presumably due to new Rebels canon, since, like Ashoka, he supposedly is an occasional guest star in this series?) that he got the chip removing operation made just in time before Revenge of the Sith. He’s the most prominent but by far not the only likeable one of the Clone characters, and long before I finished the show, I mourned their eventual fate in the Empire as much as anyone else’s. There is a pathos about the Clones who were created to fight and live only a few years, and who nonetheless try to make those years count, which echoes a bit of another sci fi classic from the early 80s for me, i.e. the Replicants in Blade Runner.
Speaking of doomed characters brought to life beyond being ciphers, Bail Organa definitely counts. He and Padme get some massive political plot lines in s3 and s4, where we see them work as Senators, doing their best to stop the Republic from losing more and more of its good traits (one of the issues they bring up is that because of the escalating military budget – and need to buy ever more Clones – nearly every social benefit, schools, libraries, food for the poor has been cut – again, sounds familiar?) and having intermittent successes only to be defeated behind the scenes by Palpatine in the next round. Despite Palpatine as the overall victor in politics, this is still very satisfying to watch, since it not only shows both them (Padme and Bail Organa) as competent politicians who aren’t discouraged but keep up the struggle) but gives them a good comradely working relationship and friendship that explains why Bail is willing to raise Padme’s daughter. (Yes, of course he’ll love Leia for Leia later, but the original taking of the baby being more motivated by friendship with her mother is something I very much like.)
On the villain front, I was vaguely familiar with Assaj Ventress from the cartoons and here she starts as Dooku’s Evil McEvil one dimensional henchwoman as well, but ca. late season 3, early s4 she actually gets good character development and not an redemption arc (there’s no sense of her repenting anything she did), but an becomes an independent person arc as she falls out with Dooku over Palpatine’s Sith paranoia (remember, only two at a time are allowed) and after an unsuccessful revenge plot goes through a villainous quest to find herself, at the end of which she has arrived in antivillain/antihero territory that includes temporary team-ups with Obi-Wan and Ashoka in emergency situations. This was a most pleasant surprise. (Why should “evil villain goes grey” be reserved for male characters in the Galaxy Far, Far Away?) Before that, Obi-Wan and Ventress have a lot of foe yay through the seasons, and have arguably the best villain/hero banter in their duels. Nor is Assaj Ventress the only recurring female villain; there’s also bounty hunter Aurra Sing (competent, smart and ruthless bounty hunter), which brings me to the fact that I couldn’t care less about Boba Fett in the OT (seriously, I don’t get his cult appeal there; he has only one line of dialogue and otherwise just stands around and fights a little), but felt sorry for the kid in Attack of the Clones, and downright interested in what The Clone Wars do when they bring him back. Because we see him go from a child who wants to avenge his father but otherwise has scruples taking innocent lives to a youth ready to do anything, and it happens across the space of several seasons; the Boba who has ended up with Aurra Sing as his mentor early on still has to be persuaded into endangering the other clones, the one who has a run in with Ventress late in the show has no such problems whatsoever. And while this is due to Boba and circumstances, some of this is also due to the way Mace Windu, after Boba’s futile revenge quest, basically reacts to “you killed my father and destroyed my life” with “tough, get used to it” as opposed to, say, try and help the kid. (I’m not expecting him to apologize for killing Jango, who was trying to kill him at the time, but Mace Windu certainly wins for “Jedi with the most damaging self righteous attitude and zero practical compassion” from Phantom Menace onwards.)
The most prominent bounty hunter in The Clone Wars is Cade Bane, who is basically Clint Eastwood’s persona from the Sergio Leone years, but my favourite non-Force Sensitive bad guy is Hondo the Pirate, who is Treasure Island John Silver, hiding his ruthlessness hinter a genial manner, double crossing people all the time not for ideology but cash, verbose and pragmatically teaming up with either Jedi or Sith depending on his situation when necessary. He also at one point manages to have Obi-Wan, Anakin and Dooku as hostages for maximum profit, which makes for great hilarity and bickering (though also for Dooku having it in for Hondo thereafter). As befits a Treasure Island Silver avatar, Hondo makes it out of the Clone Wars alive.
All this contributes to endearing the show to me. But really, the heart of it, if you have to narrow it down, to me is Ashoka Tano’s story, and the Anakin and Ashoka relationship. Ashoka gets introduced in the pre series Clone Wars movie as a mouthy, impulsive 13 years old whom Yoda decides to give to Anakin, of all the people, as his padawan; this may have been Yoda’s sense of humor (if Obi-Wan had come up with the idea, I’d suspect un-Jedi-like wish for payback) or Yoda’s wisdom, because it works out surprisingly well. Anakin (only just a Knight at the start) and Ashoka both grow up in the war and via each other. After marathoning the show, I washed their earliest episode at the start of s1 again and thought: they are so YOUNG here. And yes, Anakin never completely matures before he falls, but he does grow through the show (both in the good and bad sense), and being responsible for Ashoka, who shares his own impulsiveness, greatly helps. She’s 17 by the end, they’re just a few years apart, and so it’s not a substitute parent/child relationship as much as it’s a brother/sister one; the teasing each other (complete with nicknames) goes with being there for each other both in battle and emotionally. Ashoka gets mentored by other characters on the show as well – Ploo Kon, Padme (whom she plays bodyguard for during one of Padme’s best political arcs), Luminara, even Jocasta Nu briefly - , but the relationship with Anakin is her deepest one. I both love it and it breaks my heart.
Now obviously, Ashoka isn’t around in Revenge of the Sith. The show’s writers found a way to explain this without killing her off and in a way that gives her growing up arc through the show a stunning conclusion. Ashoka through the fifth season is in situations where she’s not the apprentice but the mentor (of various other characters), and where she’s confronted with loss and whether or not to put her own judgment above orders. Not, as a younger Ashoka would have, out of impulsiveness but after thinking it over. In earlier seasons, she’s seen the flaws of various authorities exposed. The last storyarc of the fifth season, though, highlights the flaws of the Jedi and the Republic itself as Ashoka gets framed, abandoned by the order (save Anakin) and nearly killed until Anakin can prove her innocence. But that doesn’t change that the entire Jedi Council was ready to write her off (not just on a whim, in all fairness, but due to pressure by Palpatine and Tarkin to prove a Jedi seemingly guilty of multiple homicide isn’t above the law), or that the true culprit was none other than her best friend whose own belief in the order had been destroyed. This leads to Ashoka ending the fifth and last completed season by deciding not to return to the Jedi Order, and to walk away from the Jedi instead. Which, btw, the show parallels a bit with Ventress walking away from the Sith. There’s also a parallel/contrast to Anakin: as mentioned, they’re similarly impulsive and authority-defying (Obi-Wan can’t resist commenting at one point he enjoys watching Anakin giving a “do not as I do but as I say” lesson), and at this point in canon feel alienated from the Jedi Order. But Ashoka won’t turn her anger and growing disillusionment into murderous rage; she manages to keep true to her ideals, which in turn also shows that Anakin’s fall isn’t inevitable or just a result of the mixture of Palpatine’s manipulation and the Jedi Order’s mistakes, but his own responsibility. This being said: having watched The Clone Wars, it’s impossible not to conclude that losing Ashoka and the way it happens contributes to Anakin “attachment is my middle name” Skywalker going dark side. Which, however, isn’t the point of this plot. As Ashoka says, her decision isn’t about Anakin, it’s about herself, and it’s one that refuses the either/or fallacy that so disastrously many other characters believe in. Her growing up is complete.
The farewell scene is so good that I’m linking it here, because showcases The Clone Wars at its best: the way the art and voice work is so good that you can see changing facial expressions and emotions, and the emotional pay off for five years of development.
In conclusion: this show, you must watch. There is no try.
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I also really liked that it fleshed out Bail, and especially, Padme, who got to shine in episodes away from Anakin and their relationship.
Also agree on the Jedi being complicit in their own fall, without taking any responsibility for it away from either Anakin or Palpatine. Ahsoka walking away was both satisfying and heartbreaking. I also liked seeing Obi-Wan's doubts when he meets up with Satine again, and I wish he'd told that story to Anakin. I did like how fleshed out Anakin and Obi-Wan's relationship feels in the show, though I'm still sad we never got to see Anakin's early training.
I agree about the Krell arc - I didn't like that he was suddenly turned to the dark side and teaming up with Dooku - I wanted him to just be that much of an asshole about clones and winning.
Ugh, I ended up loving this show a lot, and I'm so glad more people are watching it.
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re: Obi-Wan and Satine, I was prepared for her dying because of the name, but I was unprepared for how much her own character she was. Much as I was amused by her "the collection of half truths known as Obi-Wan Kenobi" dig (not that I don't love Obi-Wan, but, well, it's true, from a certain point of view...), I think my favourite scenes with her were the ones with Padme and/or Ashoka, which cemented her standing as an important political figure, not solely in the show in relation with Obi-Wan.
Re: Ashoka walking away - leaving aside novels and comics etc., and going by on screen canon only, I think Ashoka is the first Jedi who leaves the Jedi order not to become a dark sider, or because they've lost their principles.
Anakin's early training: I read a few of Jude Watson's Jedi Quest novels, but they didn't ruly satisfy me. Otoh
I agree about the Krell arc - I didn't like that he was suddenly turned to the dark side and teaming up with Dooku - I wanted him to just be that much of an asshole about clones and winning.
Yes, that. They could have finished the arc with him utterly convinced of his own righteousness, though I suppose "he wanted to join forces with Dooku" made it easier for Rex and Dogma in the aftermath to justify killing him, whereas "we shot him because he got so many of us killed" might have led to endless investigations and all clones involved grounded for months, and the writers wanted Rex available for the next adventures.
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"So it was with the Republic at its height. Like the greatest of trees, able to withstand any external attack, the Republic rotted from within though the danger was not visible from the outside.
Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to reunite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic.
Once secure in office he declared himself Emperor, shutting himself away from the populace. Soon he was controlled by the very assistants and boot-lickers he had appointed to high office and the cries of the people for justice did not reach his ears.
Having exterminated through treachery and deception the Jedi Knights, guardians of justice in the galaxy, the Imperial governors and bureaucrats prepared to institute a reign of terror among the disheartened worlds of the galaxy. Many used the imperial forces and the name of the increasingly isolated Emperor to further their own personal ambitions."
Whether that was originally intended to be what "actually happened" or if it was always intended that Palpatine was really behind it, and was hiding the extent of his involvement isn't clear, I don't think - though someone who knows more about the history of these things may do.
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And yes, I agree ESB puts the kibosh on the idea that he's some kind of puppet ruler.
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I really loved that despite the limitations of being a cartoon for kids, they managed to tell a really complex and, sometimes surprisingly dark story. I'm not a fan of the prequels but I do love the world building there, how lush and complex it all was and TCW just brought it into clearer focus.
But most of all I love Ahsoka and Anakin's relationship, and I also believe that if none of Ahsoka's trial happened, I don't think Anakin would have fallen. Its significant that Anakin fell when Obi-wan wasn't even around. And, gah that scene where Ahsoka walks away still breaks my heart!
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The one time Palpatine overplays his hand before the reveal in RotS is when he tells Anakin they need to leave Obi-Wan behind on Griveous' ship in order to save themselves, and Anakin refuses, saving Obi-Wan instead, so naturally Palpatine waits till Obi-Wan is far away before making his big pitch later. If Ahsoka had still been with Anakin at that point, undoubedly Palpatine would have arranged a spectacularly unpleasant fate for her, because he wouldn't have risked having a Jedi Anakin is emotionally tied to anywhere near him.
(BTW, I noticed Palpatine doesn't talk to Ashoka throughout the Clone Wars series, other than in general addresses and "leave us, child" (in one scene where she and Anakin show up to report about a mission). He probably saw her as an impediment early on, and if he didn't create the situation with Barriss, he took full advantage for it by making Tarkin her judge.