After years of hiatus, we finally got the ending that The Clone Wars deserved. It’s been a rough ride in those last several episodes, moving through the parts of the story that match up with Revenge of the Sith. But it’s a fitting end to a show that has always been about one thing above all others: Making the Star Wars prequels make sense.
[Spoiler for the series finale of Star Wars: The Clone Wars]
While the events of the finale arc were alluded to in flashback in E. K. Johnston’s novel Ahsoka, The Clone Wars takes the time to show (and vaguely retcon) these events, bringing the story to a close as the final chapter of the Star Wars prequels ends. What we get is a far more emotional punch than Episodes I-III were capable of delivering on because we have more story backing it up—which was always the goal of The Clone Wars as a series, offering context to a trilogy of films that gave utterly no supportive reasoning as to why anything was happening.
When Order 66 is executed in Revenge of the Sith, it’s sad because we’re told the Jedi are good guys, and we see them die all at once. The closest the film comes to driving that emotional resonance home is seeing Yoda nearly collapse under the pain of all that death hitting him at once. Outside of that, we’re removed, and the choice seems almost deliberate—we need to stick with Anakin Skywalker despite what he’s done, for the rest of the film. If we’re too attached, we might not want to finish the journey with him.
The Clone Wars has the upper hand where this is concerned because, at its heart, it has always been a story about Ahsoka Tano.
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One of the greatest retcons in Star Wars history, the creation of Ahsoka Tano and her subsequent development over multiple stories has been an immeasurable gift to the Star Wars universe. The audience was allowed to watch Ahsoka grow up in realtime at the start, and seeing her morph from an (understandably) irritating teen into one of the greatest Force-wielders the galaxy has ever known has been an all-time highlight of the entire saga thus far. Being with her during the issuing of Order 66 was the only way to humanize these events and highlight the true cost of what Palpatine did. Not just to the Jedi, or even to the galaxy at large, but to the disposable army he created to fight and die for the Republic, the ones he used as his own personal squad of executioners.
With that in mind, we can only view the end of The Clone Wars as precisely what it leaves to us—a correction of everything that didn’t land as it needed to in Revenge of the Sith.
Think about it: This four-part finale begins with Anakin Skywalker grandstanding on a battlefield, there to aid his mentor and best friend Obi-Wan Kenobi. It has all the hallmarks of the opening of Episode III, but with a marked difference—we can see clearly that Anakin is thriving in this wartime environment, has grown accustomed to it. Obi-Wan, on the other hand, is exhausted and ready for all of it to be over. His seemingly endless well of sarcasm comes close to running dry. He can’t keep up the facade any longer, the fight is leaving him. This is a large part of why he will lose Anakin in the end; Obi-Wan has nothing left to give. He may handle himself with enough finesse to convince everyone else otherwise, but he’s running on fumes, and no one is available to pick up the slack.
The failures of the Jedi are abundantly clear in these episodes. Mace Windu dismisses Ahsoka outright, refusing to let her in on their plans because she’s left the Order. Both Yoda and Obi-Wan know that Ahsoka wants to tell Anakin something, and they want her to speak with him, knowing that she is one of the only people who could possibly get through to him as things fall apart. But Ahsoka isn’t willing to do their dirty work for them, and for good reason; she no longer trusts the Jedi Order herself—that’s why she left. The Jedi lost their greatest asset in preventing Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side the moment they alienated Ahsoka Tano. We can see all the cracks in their reasoning, and how it’s going to destroy them. It’s hard to feel bad for the Jedi when the hubris is so perfectly displayed to us.
Instead of a faceless army, we have clone troopers that we’ve spent seasons alongside, particularly Rex. The troops lent to Ahsoka for the Siege of Mandalore are only permitted because of some crafty finagling on Anakin’s part to give his former pupil the resources she needs, and the clones honor her by painting their helmets to look like her facial markings. This means that when Order 66 comes through many of the clones facing Ahsoka down, trying to kill her, are wearing her mark. Between that and Rex’s visible struggle not to hurt her, we’re reminded that the clones are people, not photocopied cogs in a massive machine. And even then, Ahsoka goes one better—throughout their fight on the carrier, as the ship is crashing into a moon, she’s trying her hardest not to hurt them. She tells Rex that they are not responsible for what was programmed into them in childhood, and refuses to mow these men down indiscriminately. And when they’re gone, she and Rex bury them with all the dignity they are owed.
Instead of a flimsy one-and-done second tier villain, this finale gives us Darth Maul, who (due to his revival in the Clone Wars series) has all the gravitas of a good Shakespearean tragic hero. Revenge of the Sith makes the mistake of dispatching Count Dooku before he can do anything interesting, and then we’re stuck with General Grievous, who doesn’t really add much by way of dramatic tension. He’s just got a bunch of arms and some experience menacing people. With Maul we again have added history, but more importantly, we have someone who can actually piece together what is happening as the Emperor makes his play. Maul knows parts of the plan, and actually wants to stop it—but no one is listening. His efforts to bring Ahsoka over to his side are more unnerving for the fact that he has a decent argument in his favor… and for the fact that the only reason Ahsoka hesitates is because she believes Maul is wrong about Anakin’s destiny.
When he isn’t.
But perhaps most important of all, the final frames of The Clone Wars are haunting in a way that the prequels could never manage. Instead of Vader coming to life like Frankenstein’s monster, crying “Nooooo” into the echoing darkness, we see the Sith Lord emerge into silence on a plain of snow. There are troopers and droids milling around, but they don’t seem to take note of him. He finds the graveyard of clones that Ahsoka and Rex left behind. He locates one of Ahsoka’s lightsabers, half of the set that he fixed up and returned to her out of love. He looks up into the sky. He says nothing, and no one speaks to him.
We don’t know what Vader is feeling. We can’t. That is the real tragedy of being Darth Vader—anonymity of emotion, of pain, of thought, unto the end. The Clone Wars brings that across effortlessly in mere moments of screen time. It hurts because it’s supposed to hurt. It stings even more because we don’t get to see what happened to Anakin. We know, but we don’t witness it. He’s just gone, and this monstrous spectre has taken his place.
Forever.
This is what Episode III was supposed to feel like, every step of the way. We had to wait fifteen years to get something with the resonance we deserved, but at least it all came out in the wash. The rise of the Empire finally feels like the devastating loss it was always meant to evoke, and the arrival of Darth Vader heralds nothing but emptiness. We finally watch Vader walk away, and those helmets painted to look like his former Padawan’s visage take on a new meaning; he is reflected in the visor, growing ever smaller while some semblance of Ahsoka’s face—and a symbol of that terrible war—watches him go.
The Clone Wars understood the tragedy of its premise better than practically any other piece of Star Wars media ever has. It knew exactly where it was headed and how to communicate that end with maximum operatic effect. But more importantly, the show understood that Star Wars is primarily a lesson in visual storytelling. That was George Lucas’s forte, an aspect that The Clone Wars elevated with every season it was on the air. The soundtrack provides the atmosphere, the scripts provide detail and texture, but when Star Wars is done right—all it takes is a frame.
It’s going to be hard to let go of one of the greatest Star Wars stories ever told.
Emmet Asher-Perrin is going to rewatch that four-part finale over again because they’re not quite ready for it to be over. You can bug them on Twitter, and read more of their work here and elsewhere.
How is the creation of Ahsoka Tano a retcon?
@1: Because she was not in the movies, books or original Clone Wars cartoon. The Clone Wars was the first mention of Anakin having a Padawan.
@2: But that’s not a retcon. A retcon would be if the “movies, books, or original cartoon” specifically stated that Anakin DID NOT have a Padawan. If they had, something contradicting that fact, that continuity, would be a retcon. Ahsoka springing into existence doesn’t contradict anything; it’s just filling in more of Anakin’s backstory.
Just a note: plain of snow not plane of snow.
Otherwise beautiful writing. I’ve always said the most important thing about The Clone Wars was that it turned Anakin’s fall from a Farce into Tragedy. You couldn’t care after the trilogy but you can now.
THAT is storytelling.
@@.-@: Updated, thanks!
I’m convinced that there’s now a generation growing up that thinks of Star Wars as an animated TV franchise with occasional live-action movie (and now streaming TV) installments. And they’re better off for it. Ongoing series can flesh out a universe so much more richly, and the medium shouldn’t matter. I never got into Resistance, but Rebels was often excellent, and The Clone Wars far surpasses the movies it was based on.
And of course Ahsoka is one of the best SW characters ever because of the journey she got to go through. TCW needed a character like her, someone who could grow and change over the series in a way the movie leads couldn’t. Same for the Clone Troopers — the show’s creators made a smart decision when they chose to make the title of the show mean something and actually focus on the clones rather than just having them be plot devices and cannon fodder. (Well, they were still cannon fodder, but the show explored what it was like for the cannon fodder.)
@3/Morbus Iff: “Retcon” is short for “retroactive continuity,” not “contradiction.” People misuse it to mean something that contradicts or alters past storytelling, but the original meaning of the word is something newly established that is consistent with past continuity even though it wasn’t established before. For instance, The Wrath of Khan revealing that Kirk had secretly been a father the whole time was a retcon. Nobody ever said he wasn’t a father, but he hadn’t been written that way before. A retcon can recontextualize what we thought we knew, or reveal that someone was lying or keeping a secret, but ideally it’s still consistent with everything that came before.
Morbus: No, she’s totally a retcon, which stands for “retroactive continuity.” Ahsoka was retroactively inserted into the continuity of Star Wars, which had no indication of her existence prior to the Clone Wars movie.
I’ve taken advantage of the lockdown to binge both Clone Wars and Rebels. I joked on Facebook that I got to watch Ahsoka go from annoying to awesome in just a month, rather than the years it took everyone who watched the show in real time. And last Friday, having caught up to real-time on CW, and in anticipation of the last two episodes of same, I rewatched Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, to see how it all fit.
And Em is 100% correct. CW makes those two movies better, because it has the emotional heft that those movies utterly failed to capture. The TV show also fixed the poor script choices and the odd plot meanderings, plus it gave us a much better Anakin in Matt Lanter’s voice than Hayden Christiansen’s full self. (I don’t blame Christiansen, though. I mean, he’s terrible in these two movies, but so are Samuel L. Jackson and Natalie Portman. George Lucas-directed films are where good actors often go to flounder.)
One particular retcon I appreciated was the establishment of a control chip in the clones that forced them to obey Order 66. The clone armies of the two movies were automatons with Temuera Morrison’s face and voice, with no personality and no indication that they had any ability to think. CW made them people, even with their weird upbringing and bred soldiering. And by doing that, and by having them all suborned to Order 66 by the Sith, it made them even more tragic.
Just a great conclusion.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Probably the best retcon in popular fiction were the two Chris Claremont pulled off in 1982 in Uncanny X-Men: making Magneto a holocaust survivor, and giving him and Xavier a friendship that was later sundered. The X-Men were created in 1963, and there was no hint of either of those things in the 20 years prior to issues #150 and 162 that established those two things. They’re such an integral part of Xavier and Magneto now (it’s been the spine of all seven X-Men movies, for one thing) that it’s hard to credit that it wasn’t always part of their dynamic.
And yet, it’s a retcon. As is Ahsoka. And thank goodness. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
As someone who actually saw the pilot movie in theatres, and how awful it was, the incredible overall quality of The Clone Wars was one of the greatest surprises to come out of the Star Wars franchise, ever.
Haven‘t really watched Clone Wars until now, but was curious about the finale and how it leads into ROTS. The four-parter was absolutely stellar.
Those three droids… weep
@8/retcons: But doesn’t that make nearly every small new detail in the entire Clone Wars a retcon? Obi-Wan’s love interest who dies! Maul having spider legs and going batshit crazy in a cave! Ventress! Anakin being friends with Rex! Anakin having a ham sandwich! Yoda learning how to be a Force Ghost from four mystical sister thingies! Since all those stories or characters were never mentioned or told in any other form, are all those retcons too? What, then, is the difference between new details being added to a backstory vs. details *deliberately adjusting, ignoring, or contradicting established fact*? That’s the core conceit of a retcon, I thought – not the creation of something *new*, but the manipulation of something *existing*.
@9/Magneto+Xavier: And here, perhaps, is the rub: just how much “existing” is being modified? I agree these are retcons because they’re largely insular to a single character: “I survived the Holocaust”, “Surprise! That dude is my brother!” (But then, was the whole Luke/Vader reveal in Episode 5 a “retcon” of Episode 4? How is that different from just “continuing the story and timeline” and bam, big reveal!).
If Star Wars wasn’t full of retcons, I wouldn’t recognize it as Star Wars.
@7: Somehow I missed your comment while seeing @8’s. Fair enough.
Ignore my @12.
Actually, Yoda learning how to be a Force Ghost isn’t really a retcon, as that was expanding on a line of dialogue toward the end of Revenge of the Sith when Yoda told Obi-Wan he would show him how to be one. (Having the four mystical sister thingies being involved was a retcon, as Yoda only mentioned Qui-Gon in ROTS.)
But to some extent yes, some more than others — certainly Obi-Wan’s past love interest is, especially given that the only time he discussed such in the movies was to say that it was bad.
And Magneto/Xavier was radically changing what existed, because Magneto and Xavier had been enemies for 20 years’ worth of comics and that never ever came up, not even once.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@12/Morbus Iff: “But doesn’t that make nearly every small new detail in the entire Clone Wars a retcon?”
Yes, it does, because the entire prequel era is a retcon. It is continuity established retroactively. That’s all the word means — continuity filled in after the fact.
“What, then, is the difference between new details being added to a backstory vs. details *deliberately adjusting, ignoring, or contradicting established fact*? That’s the core conceit of a retcon, I thought – not the creation of something *new*, but the manipulation of something *existing*.”
No, that’s how fans tend to interpret the word, but in the purest, most literal sense, it is exactly what it says — retroactive continuity. Not discontinuity. Ideally a retcon should not contradict or ignore what came before. It can redefine its meaning, reveal secrets about it that were hidden before and alter our understanding of the facts (e.g. Vader being Luke’s father and Leia his sister), but it should still be consistent with what came before, which is why “continuity” is part of the phrase.
After all, that’s the entire purpose of continuity as a storytelling device — to create the illusion of a consistent universe, one that has a steady existence rather than just being made up as the writer goes. So if you go back and reveal something that wasn’t established before, the way to make that change plausible is to use continuity, to make the new information feel continuous with the old, and thus create the convincing illusion that it was always true even though we didn’t know it. So if there’s an obvious discrepancy or contradiction, then that breaks the illusion and makes the reveal less convincing. So that’s not the way it’s supposed to be done.
I think we can all agree that “retcon” has, for the most, changed definitions to one that retroactively changes what came before, rather than supplementing it. It’s far from the only word to ever evolve from it’s original meaning.
@17/Austin: I will concede that the meaning of “retcon” has broadened in popular usage, but there’s no sense in claiming that somehow excludes the original definition. I mean, a lot of dictionaries concede that “literally” can be used as a figurative intensifier, but that doesn’t mean it never actually means “literally” anymore, just that it can mean something else alongside its formal definition.
OP: My apology for sidetracking the conversation.
To riff on “The Clone Wars has the upper hand where this is concerned because, at its heart, it has always been a story about Ahsoka Tano”, Dave Filoni has said, most recently in the Season 7 “Clone Wars Download” series on YouTube, that the Clone Wars has been about telling Ahsoka’s _and Rex’s_ story, and damn if I didn’t tear up a few times in relation to their scenes together in this four-parter. Rex has always been near and dear to me: my youngest daughter always called him “Pointy Ears” (because of his helmet markings) when she saw him on TV, and when my son (whom we named Anakin) was born three years ago, his birth present to her was a Captain Rex action figure. One which still sits on her dresser today.
__BEGIN_ASIDE__: Ah! In rereading, I think I figured out why I was confused about the use of “retcon” here: the OP seems to use both the original definition of retcon as well as the fan-based broadening. The post starts with “While the events of the finale arc were alluded to in flashback in E. K. Johnston’s novel Ahsoka, The Clone Wars takes the time to show (and vaguely retcon) these events“, which I read as the fan-based broadening of “vaguely contradicts the novel” (because they do, but I too see them being “vaguely” explainable). And then, shortly after, the post appears to switch context: “One of the greatest retcons in Star Wars history, the creation of Ahsoka Tano” which @krad and @ChristopherLBennett establish as the original, literal, definition. __END_ASIDE__
I came for comments on the show and got a MLA/APA battle over the term retcon. Whatever it was, that was incredibly well done, especially after I was losing faith as Ashoka ran around with the sisters. that image of Ashoka before the helmets is one of the greatest images in Star Wars. my kids were crying watching this happen. this doesn’t make up for Rise of the Skywalker but it (along with Taika Waititi) gives me hope for the future.
I’ve seen a lot of folks doubtful about the Martez episodes, some even describing them as “filler”. For me, though, those episodes reinforce Ahsoka’s decision to leave the Jedi Order and not return (their handling of the Martez’ parents). It re-establishes the hubris of the Jedi, their mythical “what’d they ever do for us?” nature (even on the same planet but just a few hundred levels down), and their elitism (eventually tying everything together with Windu’s “citizen” dick-move, which literally ruins everything).
Can we take a moment away from the grammatical debate to note just how visually stunning some of the shots at the end were? I’d buy big, expensive, prints of some of those. Some of the strongest visual imagery in Star Wars, any Star Wars.
@23: Or the music in the last two episodes?! Sooo good…
Okay, so how does the final version of the Siege of Mandalore differ from the flashbacks in the Ahsoka novel? I’ve read the novel, but it was a while ago, so I don’t recall the details.
@25: See Ahsoka_(novel)#Differences_with_The_Clone_Wars:_Season_Seven for the most detailed, easily available, writeup. It covers Darth Maul’s capture (and subsequent escape), the coloring of Ahsoka’s lightsaber blades, and exactly where Maul, Rex, and Ahsoka were when Order 66 occurs.
@26/Morbus Iff: I see, thanks. Just as I thought, that whole “even the tie-ins are canon now” policy is no more true now than it was with the old EU. Of course, even canon can be rewritten (e.g. Leia having memories of her mother, or Obi-Wan not recognizing R2-D2).
Out of all the fiction I’ve read/watched/played, Ahsoka may be the character of whom my opinion has most drastically changed. I couldn’t stand her in the earlier seasons of TCW. She was annoying, and felt like an unnecessary addition to me. Fast forward to her last appearance before leaving the Jedi Order in the show’s original run, and she had become one of my favorite characters in the Star Wars universe. An opinion that has only been strengthened by her novel, her role in Rebels, and these final CW episodes. I do agree that the Martez sisters arc was underwhelming for me, but I understand its purpose. It was to reinforce her doubts about the Jedi by being shown how ordinary people view them, and for Ahsoka to reaffirm her own worldview of what it meant to be a true Jedi at heart, if not in name as part of the official order. I just think we could have gotten that in few episodes. But that’s why I love Star Wars so much, even in its low points, there is something to appreciate, and no matter how low my estimation of certain installments has been, I know that there is always room for more stories in this universe. One part may fail to impress, but the next thing may be among the best we’ve ever gotten. There’s always something to look forward to.
@27/ChristopherLBennett: Yeah, it’s a little dicey. There’s a coy response: namely, that it’s all “from a certain point of view” (i.e., the original trilogy quote that has since been codified into Importance via things like the From A Certain Point of View short story collection: “What I told you was true, from a certain point of view. [Y]ou’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”)
I wish it hadn’t occurred in the first place though.
@29/Morbus Iff: It’s the prerogative of storytellers to revise their stories. Every finished story is the result of a lengthy process of trial, error, rethinking, and revision anyway, so it’s natural that any ongoing series of stories will undergo changes as it goes. All human endeavor is about striving to improve, or should be. We shouldn’t begrudge authors and artists the opportunity to do the same.
Heck, when I set out as a writer, it was always my intention to maintain the most perfect continuity that I could. But when it came time to expand my first published story into the novel Arachne’s Crime (whose Kickstarter campaign is currently underway), I realized the story had errors and problems I couldn’t leave uncorrected, so I gave myself permission to change whatever had to be changed, as long as I kept as much as possible intact and stayed consistent with every other published work in that universe. I think of the original story as a less accurate account of the same canonical events.
When the phrase “retroactive continuity” was invented, it was Roy Thomas writing a comic book called All-Star Squadron, in which he told us new stories about the Golden Age DC heroes during WWII, that fit in and around the stories about them that were actually published at the time. So yes, everything in The Clone Wars is retcon in exactly that sense.
Morbus Iff:
I for one am convinced that it absolutely was — that everything Ben told Luke in Ep 4 was the whole truth at the time he said it, and that Lucas changed the timeline out from under him.
Yeah, let’s just pause for a second and acknowledge that Star Wars has perhaps the most celebrated retcon in cinema history. “No, I am your father.” I don’t care what Lucas might say. There’s no way that was the original plan. Vader was just a simple evil thug before he wasn’t. They had to add some new layer to make it interesting, and it worked.
(Of course, Star Wars also has one of the worst retcons in cinema history — Luke and Leia suddenly being brother and sister! Ewww! — but let’s focus on the positive).
Marvelous ending. I agree with all the great stuff about Ahsoka.
The Clone Wars series also raises the whole set of movies by making Palpatine a better villain. Consider his position as a young Sith: It’s just him, an apprentice, and the fact that the Jedi think there are no more Sith vs ten thousand Jedi Knights and a unified Republic. He is able to use the fault lines in Republic society to pry it apart, but the Jedi are a tougher nut to crack. His whole plan will fall apart if people sit down and start talking, and that’s what the Jedi Order is best at. He needs the Jedi to react, not think.
He knows that the Jedi feel it when they kill people, so he needs an enemy they can fight guilt free: battle droids. That’s not enough, though: you can just picture Mace Windu and Yoda skipping the entire war by figuring out who is at the top of the droid pyramid, and stopping them. He needs the Jedi thinking small, so he makes for them the perfect Jedi trap: an army of brave, selfless, heroic living clones. When a clone dies, the Jedi feel it. No matter how committed to peace, each Jedi can only watch so many of these hero clones die for them before they want to help. The result: the Jedi become generals, leading their clone armies against a horde of droids to save the innocents of the galaxy, never looking past the next battle.
Then there’s the attraction of using one’s abilities to the full limit. Jedi spend their youth learning all of these crazy flips, lightsaber tricks, force pushes, and mind tricks to one day… take up a life of quiet contemplation? Enter the war: The young adult generation of Jedi, starting with Anakin, suddenly have a reason to do all of these awesome things in the service of something loud and flashy. They mourn the ones who don’t survive, but Anakin and Ahsoka and the other young Jedi are clearly having a blast. So are we, the audience, watching them. Obi-wan represents the youngest of the older generation: he’s carried along by Anakin’s enthusiasm sometimes, but he clearly expects things to one day go back to normal. He doesn’t get it that for Anakin, this is normal. Yoda knows war does not make one great. Obi-wan thinks it can, for a while. Anakin wonders why, as a great warrior, he isn’t on the Jedi Council.
(I think that really, Lucas just wanted bad guys who could die by the truckload without being rated R, hence the droids, and didn’t want to have to deal with the real cost of soldiers fighting a war, hence the clones. But that’s the great thing about stories: I can choose to care what the author thinks is the story, or not.)
The prequels always had this story of Palpatine buried under some seriously mediocre movies, I’m very glad The Clone Wars team gave us a story to match the backstory.
@27: The “even the tie-ins are canon” policy is much more true than it was for the EU. This is one of the few exceptions — the Ahsoka novel was written when nobody thought these Clone Wars stories would ever be made, so it was allowed to contradict them. Once the Clone Wars was renewed, the policy of “if George worked on the story it’s canon” meant these episodes overwrote parts of Ahsoka. In general all of the stories are still canon, unlike the EU, though there are occasional mistakes. Nothing like the three different missions to capture the Death Star plans in the EU.
That Wookieepedia page exaggerates the contradictions, anyway. The end of the Clone Wars cuts away from Rex and Ahsoka still on the moon, for instance; there’s nothing to say she doesn’t turn to him three seconds later and say “Okay, Rex, we need to put your armor on one of these bodies.”
@8.krad: It’s a good thing you had such a project to follow through during the Current Unpleasantness – mind you, for those who don’t want to give up quite so much of their time to STAR WARS but still want to upgrade their REVENGE OF THE SITH experience I can heartily recommend the novelisation by Mr Matthew Stover.
I’m quite convinced it should be used to teach classes on how a novelisation can improve on the original film and improve the experience of watching it.
p.s. I’ve only seen bits and pieces of the series myself, but what I’ve seen definitely backs up the expressions of Admiration.
@34/jere7my: “This is one of the few exceptions — the Ahsoka novel was written when nobody thought these Clone Wars stories would ever be made, so it was allowed to contradict them. Once the Clone Wars was renewed, the policy of “if George worked on the story it’s canon” meant these episodes overwrote parts of Ahsoka.”
No, I doubt that’s the reason. I think the version in Ahsoka was probably accurately based on the scripts or story outlines for this 4-parter as they existed at the time, but once they went back and actually made it, they revised the story, because you always revise stories throughout the process. You don’t just write one version of a story, carve it in stone, and never change it. You constantly revise and refine and rethink, notice things you didn’t notice before, have epiphanies that are a dozen times better than what you initially planned, etc. It was inevitable that when they revisited this storyline after years — years in which they made several movies and TV series and added a lot to the Star Wars tapestry, as well as growing in experience — they would rewrite the story to incorporate those new ideas and insights. Filoni has spoken in interviews about how his experience on The Mandalorian led him to do things differently in these episodes than he would’ve done originally.
After all, all three main characters — Ahsoka, Rex, and Maul — had a lot more added to their characterizations and life stories in Rebels than they’d had at the time the Siege episodes were originally written. So surely their material here would’ve been revised based on those new understandings, to foreshadow things we saw in their later life or to avoid duplicating scenes from Rebels too closely or whatever. Also to incorporate new ideas about the Mandalorians that have been established in later shows, perhaps. Not to mention that there are some TCW plotlines that they decided not to make, like the one about Maul running the crime syndicate that was done as a comic instead. Since that story wouldn’t have been part of the show, maybe they reworked some of Maul’s material to incorporate character beats from it, for the benefit of viewers who hadn’t read the comic.
@37: You are welcome to doubt whatever you like, but I’ve spoken to Lucasfilm Story Group members who have explained why the Ahsoka novel was an exception.
@38/jere7my: Okay, then, if you say so. Odd that the novel would change anything in the flashbacks, though, given how brief and peripheral they were.
As I understand it (this is less well-confirmed) Johnston was asked not to include anything from the Clone Wars for just this reason, but because the series was considered dead they let the flashbacks slide. I don’t think she had access to the scripts.
This was a beautiful ending to a series that got more and more powerful the deeper we went into it. As the series went on, it got deeper, and darker, and for me, more compelling. And the writers did a heck of a good job writing a story where a lot of the big moments had already appeared in other places. We know Maul escaped, and we know his final fate, so that was off the table in this episode. The relationship of Anakin and Ahsoka is central to the Clone Wars, but their final confrontation, where she realizes that Anakin has become Darth Vader, had already been shown. What we got was a focus on the bond between Ahsoka and Rex. And her compassion for the clones, even as she realized they were programmed to kill her. This, in a lot of ways, was the last stand of the clones; when we see Vader (in a scene I assume is years later), he is accompanied by storm troopers, not clones.
We got to see Sith and Jedi at the peak of their powers; Maul tearing the ship apart from within, and then Ahsoka and Rex’s thrilling last stand. That was a sequence that will stay with me for years. No one should have been able to survive that crash, but they did.
What I really appreciate in hindsight, and with Rise of Skywalker behind us, is how Filoni’s series really highlight what Star Wars means to the people who ‘don’t matter’. The movies are basically about one extremely dysfunctional family’s psychodrama writ large on the galaxy; people like the clones are just there to be pulverized as punctuation marks in those stories. The Clone Wars doesn’t just bring them to life; it makes a persuasive argument for why their stories needed to be told. All those ships and planets getting blown up in a star war have a cost.
Maul and Ahsoka are perfect foils for this, the apprentices who were left behind. Bringing Maul back could have been totally pointless, but instead he gives us the perspective of somebody who knows that the main plot has discarded him. There is a strong line now showing how they both handle this in very different ways–and while I’m still on the fence about The Mandalorian, it will be interesting to see where it goes with this.
Too much hate for Revenge of the Sith in this article. The Clone Wars had 120+ episodes to as layers and layers to flesh out the clones, Anakin, Obi-wan & Ahsoka. There was so much action and plot in Revenge that the first act was enough to show us the bond between Anakin & Obi-Wan. I love Revenge. I love the Clone Wars. On their own they are great pieces of Star Wars media. Together, they form an never before seen masterpiece.
I loved the 4-part finale too. The two eps before with the Martez sisters were enjoyable if not as great as the finale. But they needed to have SOMEthing with Ahsoka in it to kind of explain what she was doing between leaving the Jedi Order and the finale.
One question I have – this may not be the right place for it, but there’s enough Star Wars experts on this thread that I think it will get answered: Do we know when/why the Empire switched from using clones to using stormtroopers?
@45/KalvinKingsley: Wookieepedia just says the cloning operation was shut down after the Empire was formed. There doesn’t seem to be an explanation why. I would guess, though, that it’s a matter of the Empire caring less about individual rights than the Republic did. The Republic wouldn’t have been able to build a large enough army with volunteers alone, but the Empire would’ve had no problem conscripting people by force, or using propaganda to manipulate them into volunteering. And it would cheaper to conscript existing people than to pay the Kaminoans to create a whole bunch of new people.
Plus, maybe Palpatine wanted to reserve the cloning tech for his own personal use?
@46: As I seem to recall, that was the explanation given in the Legends continuity; no point in wasting years growing clones from scratch when the Empire had billions of human lives available to shanghai into being Stormtroopers. Also, considering the sheer amount of territory the Empire governed, most of which needed to an iron fist to keep in the fold, I doubt the Kaminoans could meet that demand even if they wanted to. And that’s not even getting into the fact that ten million soldiers to fight a galactic war is an unrealistically small number in the first place…
@47/Devin Smith: Never been a lot of realism in Star Wars. The galaxy tends to be functionally a lot smaller than it realistically would be, much as each planet is much more monolithic in climate, culture, etc. than it should be.
Besides, one Jedi can do the work of hundreds of soldiers, pretty much. And I’d think you could achieve a lot with starships that would obviate the need for massive numbers of ground troops. As Obi-Wan said, holding the high ground counts for a lot.
Sometimes I’ve wondered if the Empire realized it didn’t have the ships and manpower to maintain its overall power in the long run, so early on it invested heavily in terror weapons like Death Stars to keep the appearance of total power going. Hey, real-world fascists love their posturing fear tactics and insane security boondoggles, too. Ahem.
@48: Eh, not really. Yes, a single Jedi can probably take down hundreds of enemy soldiers in battle, but that’s not the same as doing the work of hundreds of people. A single individual, no matter how talented or powerful, can’t man checkpoints and conduct patrols and perform recon and ferry supplies and rapidly respond to crises all on their lonesome; you need strength of numbers to accomplish all these varying tasks. Moreover, it’s far easier to train, deploy and replace ordinary soldiers than you can Jedi, losing one of the latter is much more difficult to recover from.
Next, bombardment by starships is not a subtle instrument, and is only strategically viable when you don’t particularly care for what you’re flattening. In situations where there’s a significant civilian presence, valuable resources or vital infrastructure, it can actually cause more harm than good. It’s a situation that shows up a lot in Warhammer 40,000; just because the Imperium can launch Exterminatus attacks doesn’t mean it always will, as a world’s resources, production capabilities and general strategic importance mean that sending in the Imperial Guard is the more effective option long-term. And that’s assuming you know where the enemy’s forces are, and you can counter any defenses or air-starship weapons they might possess (a la Hoth), or even have the starships to commit to such a role, etc.
Finally, there’s no real substitute for boots on the ground, no matter how powerful your technology is, and the use of air power (or space power in this case) is no silver bullet. One of the many reasons why America’s conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan became such quagmires is the assumption that simply bombing the unholy feth out of everything was enough, and therefore both countries could be conquered and occupied with minimal deployment of ground forces. The end result were two well-entrenched and committed insurgencies that ended up costing far more lives in the long run. At the end of the day, you can have tanks run it over, planes bomb it and artillery shell it, but if you actually want to hold a piece of ground, you need infantry in place to plant the proverbial flag.
@49: Yeah, that’s the Tarkin Doctrine in a nutshell: keep the galaxy in a state of terror to maintain order, preferably with imposing superweapons. That’s one of the things that makes Thrawn both a great strategist and a great antagonist; he solves problems not by brute forcing the matter, but by creatively applying solutions using limited resources. Oh, if only Disney had adapted the Thrawn Trilogy as opposed to the nonsense we got…
@50
Indeed. Looking back at the entirety of Star Wars now, I wish we’d gotten more Tarkin officer baddies taking center stage and fewer Sith baddies. But hey, there’s still The Mandalorian.
@50/Devin Smith: “A single individual, no matter how talented or powerful, can’t man checkpoints and conduct patrols and perform recon and ferry supplies and rapidly respond to crises all on their lonesome; you need strength of numbers to accomplish all these varying tasks.”
Isn’t that where droids come in, though? The Republic didn’t use them as combat troops, but they certainly used plenty of droids in other capacities.
(And really, it’s one of the enduring oddities of the Clone Wars that it was the bad guys who used drones in combat rather than sacrificing lives, and the nominal good guys who created an entire race of sentient living beings to throw away as cannon fodder. You’d think it would’ve been the other way around. Growing up and hearing the name “Clone Wars,” I always figured that wars were fought over the issue of cloning, maybe to end the practice or liberate an enslaved clone race. So the way it ultimately turned out was bizarre.)
“Next, bombardment by starships is not a subtle instrument, and is only strategically viable when you don’t particularly care for what you’re flattening.”
Of course, but I was thinking the threat alone could be enough, at least to reduce the size of the ground force you’d need.
“One of the many reasons why America’s conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan became such quagmires is the assumption that simply bombing the unholy feth out of everything was enough, and therefore both countries could be conquered and occupied with minimal deployment of ground forces. The end result were two well-entrenched and committed insurgencies that ended up costing far more lives in the long run.”
Insurgency is only something you have to worry about if a sizeable percentage of the locals don’t want you there. The Republic would’ve mostly been liberating worlds from Separatist occupiers, I’d think. A lot of the time, they’d free a population, accept their thanks, and maybe leave behind some consultants and engineers to help them rebuild (like how my grandfather helped Italian towns set up post-occupation governments in WWII). I’m not sure how many hardcore Separatist worlds they actually occupied. I’m not sure Palpatine would’ve wanted to give them the means to occupy that many.
@44 I’m with you there, I loved Clone Wars, and I think bashing RotS while celebrating it’s finale is totally unnecessary.
Sigh, well at least I have the PrequelMemes subreddit.
@52 – Same here. I grew up thinking the Clone Wars was a series of wars fought over the concept of cloning. The fact that Yoda dubbed it the Clone Wars because one side had clones makes no sense, IMO.
Of course, Lucas just used “The Clone War” as something that happened in the past in Star Wars in 1977 because it sounded science fictiony.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Well shucks. I have to admit that as a mostly casual Star Wars fan I’ve had no interesting in watching the Clone Wars…until now. Thanks!
The Legends timeline and 2003 Clone Wars give far better perspective to the prequels. and they actually fit the movie timeline.
Since the new season came out I’ve been waiting for some discussion here (although of course now I’m nearly a week late in finally commenting).
Apologies for the length, there’s a bunch of stuff I’ve been wanting to discuss!
I wish we could have done more of an episode by episode (or arc by arc) series but ah well. As it turns out it’s really the final episodes I have a lot of thoughts on. I’d already seen the Bad Batch arc when they had released the story reels years ago so for me it wasn’t new. It’s important for developing the clones further, and the connections they have with each other, but that’s all I have to say on that.
Ahsoka’s arc with the Martez sisters and the Pykes didn’t totally do it for me, only because I found the relationship between the sisters to be fairly dysfunctional, and when Ahsoka leaves them, nothing really has changed there. Ahsoka got to have the moral high ground but I’m not really sure it was enough for Trace to really get out of Rafa’s clutches (nor did it seem to me like Rafa really learned her lesson). Although obviously there were some pretty important developments, it hit on some themes on how the Jedi are failing the populace or how they are generally percieved, and of course it’s what got Ashoka pulled into the Siege of Mandalore.
(As for that I still have so many questions! Ursa Wren was Bo-Katan’s companion, but it still begs all these questions like what happened to her and how the Darksaber got into Moff Gideon’s hands…)
But as for Ahsoka, and as for the main thrust of this piece. This might color my general reaction to things and where I disagree with some of your interpretations – I never felt that the prequels needed to be put into perspective. I adore Revenge of the Sith as it is, and while I think Attack of the Clones has its flaws, especially as it regards Anakin and Padme, I still ultimately enjoyed it. The Revenge of the Sith novelization also helped already do a lot for that (which, btw, did I catch a reference to that in your post with the ‘forever’ line :) ) But I DID feel that resonance in Episode III, and the realization of what Anakin had become. I sobbed at the end of that movie. I didn’t need Clone Wars for that – although it of course adds even MORE gravitas to some of the things we are seeing. (I really agree with @44 and @53 here – we can talk about how great the Clone Wars is without bashing the prequels and Revenge specifically.)
I think you are right about Clone Wars ultimately being Ahsoka’s story, which in a way probably colors some of my feeling to the show (especially initially) because it wasn’t a story I felt really needed to be told. I wanted to see more development of the relationship between Anakin and Obi-Wan, and between Anakin and Padme (which IS one of the main failures of the prequels). And I don’t think we needed Anakin to have had all this baggage around Ahsoka to explain his fall either.
This is not to say that it’s not a story that shouldn’t be told; just that it wasn’t something that I felt scratched any particular itch. On some of the other SW-based channels I follow there’s definitely a large contingent of younger fans that are incredibly invested in it and for them it really is something that resonates. I love their enthusiasm, and I’m happy about their happiness. I just never got as sucked into it.
I really love what Clone Wars has done for the clones though – exploring their humanity and the way the Republic and Jedi have compromised themselves by using them as a disposable, expendable fighting force I think is really powerful. The scene where Ahsoka salutes Rex and tells him she is glad he exists for his own sake (right before the shit hit the fan) honestly teared me up. Of all the things the Jedi/New Republic have messed up on, I really feel the Clone Army is the most morally bankrupt. (In the old EU there was a series of novels by Karen Traviss that were among my favorite of all the EU novels that did something similar, although most of her work establishing Mandalore culture/history ended up swept under the rug.)
Like most people, Ahsoka did grow on me quite a bit throughout the series, although I have to admit there are still a few things that really niggle on me, along with her continued presence in Rebels, and then in Rise of Skywalker (which, I’ll be honest, I squealed in the theater when I saw her name in the credits – although if non-Jedi Ahsoka can be a Force voice THEN SO CAN CHIRRUT, harumph), but with Dave Filoni hinting she’s still alive, and now she’s going to be in The Mandalorian…she’s become this character of utmost importance of all aspects in the timeline and the narrative always seems to position her as the one who is the most powerful, the best fighter, wiser than all the other Jedi, always right, etc. In fact, I thought some of the epsides with the Martez sisters were important in pointing out that while she definitely has the right heart, sometimes her idealism is a bit out of touch and she doesn’t always have the answers.
I think one of the most interesting potential themes from the prequels is looking at how the Jedi became manipulated, how they lost their way, how their views on attachment became warped and how ultimately they weren’t able to be there for Anakin. The story about the Martez parents helps hit that home – the Jedi are now forced to be in this war, but they can’t stop for a second and have the basic empathy to comfort two orphans, nor do they have the ability/resources/wherewithal to really help them as they ought. (This is honestly the thing I really wanted to see Luke address in the sequels but alas. Colin R @43 – you hit the nail on the head in some ways about what I didn’t love about the sequels, which is that it just continued the dysfunctional cycle).
That said I don’t want to turn Anakin into a victim with no agency here, as if his fall is all the Jedi’s (and Palpatine’s) fault – he made his choices, and they were certainly parts of his own flaws and inability to let go of things or accept loss. The Jedi were wrong about how they handled attachment, but Anakin isn’t without blame either; he is just wrong in a different way. The Jedi weren’t able to handle his flaws, but I don’t think they bear as much of the moral blame, and ultimately I still view them as the good guys (and in some way also victims of the long con Palpatine was playing, that played right into their own faults, just like it did Anakin’s – BrianDolan@33, I like your take!).
So, I disagree with your take in the paragraph that begins “The failures of the Jedi are abundantly clear in these episodes.” Not that I disagree with the premise that the Jedi have failures, just that they are the specific failures you mention. I don’t think Ahsoka was reluctant to do any ‘dirty work’ – in fact, I don’t think it was dirty work at all. I think she likely wanted to talk to him as well and there are various near misses that prevent this conversation from ever occurring but I don’t think it’s the result of any particular failures. Perhaps Mace being a bit dismissive with her counts, but at the same time they were discussing some pretty sensitive issues, and nothing was stopping Ahsoka from bringing up her specific concerns about Anakin/Maul’s words before she departed. Unless you mean Obi-Wan’s request that Ahsoka talk to him about spying on the Chancellor? She recognizes that Anakin would be very conflicted about it, but it’s also one of those things where, well, the Jedi weren’t wrong to suspect him and his motives. They were just way outclassed and didn’t realize how easily Palpatine would be able to manipulate Anakin (which even Mace, in the movie, mentions is dangerous). Although I do think they were wrong in forcing Anakin into a position where he had to do something he felt was dishonest.
At any rate: would Ahsoka being able to talk to Anakin (or give her information to the Council) have done any good? I’m not sure I’m all in on the idea that Ahsoka was a key factor in Anakin’s fall, and that she could have prevented it. I think that removes a lot of Anakin’s own involvement from the equation. Then again, I can certainly buy that perhaps Ahsoka as a stabilizing force could have done some good, or some advance warning of what was going down. But by now Palpatine has been manipulating Anakin and stoking the fears of losing his wife so thoroughly that it’s hard to say.
So yes, I still feel bad for the Jedi (and honestly, if the point of the Clone Wars was to make us feel like, oh, well the Jedi are just as bad and deserved everything they got, then I wouldn’t want to watch it).
(splitting into two since I apparently am coming against the character limit. Sorry!)
And this actually relates to Ahsoka (and two scenes specifically) because I think it was really a cool idea to have her leave the Jedi Order out of her own disillusionment and realizing that this path was not the correct Jedi path, and that SOMETHING is amiss. She could continue on her own path (plus conveniently escape Order 66). But I HATED how they executed it in the previous seasons. They leaned into one of my least favorite tropes – I don’t know if there’s a name for it – but it’s where a person keeps getting caught in compromising situations and the viewer knows the truth, but to any rational outsider, there’s no way of knowing it. At the time, I think it was logical that the Jedi would at least investigate her and not possibly show favoritism. So for her to be mad about THAT just felt kind of self-serving. Especially because in the end, it DID end up being a Jedi responsible, just a different one. Of all the things the Jedi did that were a betrayal of their ideals, and all the legitamate reasons Ahsoka may have had for deciding it just wasn’t for her any longer, I just didn’t see them in the wrong there, specifically. (Granted, there is a lot I don’t remember from that season so there might have been something else there – I remember Tarkin was manipulating a lot of the proceedings – but I don’t remember the Jedi doing anything that struck me as particuarly egregious).
There were two scenes in the newest season that reminded me of this:
1)When she eventually reunites with Anakin and Obi-Wan and attempts to enlist their help in the Siege. Obi-Wan points out they have ZERO authority to do without violating a treaty that will result in another war – but of course we never see any consequences to this. Bo-Katan tries to needle him about Satine, but Obi-Wan stands his ground, and frankly I think he was right to do so and NOT let his personal feelings cause him to do something rash which could have huge consequences. That said, I think Obi-Wan WAS sympathetic and would have eventually found a way to help (and we even see that later on; I don’t think any of the plan they came up with could have really happened if Obi-Wan hadn’t tacitly approved).
Then, when Coruscant comes under attack and that takes priority, Ahsoka accuses them of not caring about ‘the people’ (what people? The Coruscant citizens she claims she cares so much about and that the Jedi have abandoned but are now under attack???) or it just being about the Chancellor (which yes, obviously we know he’s pulling the strings, but a few scenes later she actually defends him, so it’s not like she thinks he is evil, and it’s not unreasonable for that to be a priority during a war). I really felt she was being a bit hypocritical there, and like the narrative wants us to see her as having some kind of moral high ground over him but…well, I think Obi-Wan still has the high ground.
2)You actually bring this scene up yourself, but I kinda sided with Mace in the later episodes where he shut her out of their conversation. I’m NOT saying he did it with grace – I mean, we see the way he routinely shuts Anakin down (starting in TPM! That little narrowed eye glance Jake Lloyd gives him is just a harbringer of things to come…) and how that ended for him, including not fully trusting him about the whole ‘Palpatine is a Sith lord’ and forcing him to stay behind when it might have been best to accept him. But in the context of the whole situation; Yoda and Mace thank her for her help. Ahoska affirms that she did it as a citizen, not as a Jedi – at least not yet. And I do think that Yoda, at least, has some compassion/understanding for her and had things not gone the way they did, may have been willing to continue to work with her and perhaps she eventually would have come back with some broader ideas/influence that would help the Jedi for the better. Tragically, of course, we know it doesn’t happen. Mace, probably, would have continued to be judgy mc-judgypants (okay, aside, but in the Auralnauts ‘Kylo Ren Reacts to Rise of Skywalker’ video there’s totally a jab at how Mace just constantly disapproves of everything, even when he approves, lol). But in this specific context, where they were discussing a VERY sensitive topic about the possibility of the Chancellor not having the right motives and needing to overthrow him…well, he’s right in that this is Council business and not really for Ahsoka’s ears, especially after she just made a point herself of excluding herself from the Jedi. Like, he was a dick about it, but I don’t think he was wrong.
Anyway, moving on from that – there was a ton of great stuff in the last 4 episodes especially. I feel like the previous takes up perhaps a disproportionate amount of words, but I don’t know how to say it all without being long winded!
Other stuff I gushed about:
1)I definitely geeked out a bit at seeing cameos by baby Kanan and Dryden Vos in various holgram form
2)The scene where Anakin saves the day, set to that triumphant reprise of the main theme honestly made me grin, but there was also an element of sadness/tragedy in the whole thing. I loved seeing Anakin being…well, a Skywalker, but it’s so sad knowing what is about to happen (and I think you provide some really good commentery on how the war is shaping Obi-Wan and Anakin differently).
3)The clones painting their helmets! Which becomes especially gutting once Order 66 happens.
4)The stuff with Maul was really quite meaty and I wish there had been more of it! Maul is another example where I was so skeptical about bringing him back but man they did some interesting things with him, especially as a rogue agent who at this point doesn’t give a shit about the Sith or the Jedi or any grand plans or prophecies, he just wants to get his, and if that means thwarting Sidious simply out of spite (but not for the right reasons) than so be it. And yes, the tragic irony here of Ahsoka simply not taking him seriously because the thing she can’t believe is that Anakin would fall is pretty gutwrenching. His arc in Rebels (and eventual denoument and last words to Obi-Wan) also fall into this.
5)I chuckled a bit at Ahsoka basically pulling a Rey and stopping as ship in mid-air.
6)Everything about ‘Shattered’ was great – the atmosphere, the cinemotagraphy, the dark synth music (some what reminiscent of Padme’s Ruminations), the pulling in of Anakin’s Dark Deeds (one of my all time favorite pieces of music). The pulling in of the RotS dialogue with Hayden’s voice morphing into Matt Lanter’s! I watched that episode a few times in a row. Oh! And Ahsoka chanting ‘I am one with the Force, the Force is with me’ – I loved that! Did Chirrut get that from an old Jedi chant, or has she started exploring the Guardians of the Whills and whatever they are? (I love Chirrut so much so any nod to him and the Whills makes me happy). And the nod to ‘Fulcrum’! I think it was a pretty tidy way to explain why Rex wasn’t part of Order 66 and his absence from the 501st during the Temple march.
7)Likewise, that last episode especially ended on such a punch. The grief Ahsoka and Rex feel for their fallen (former) comrades that were treated as tools and disposed of so shamelessly was palpable, and that ending scene with the burial was so powerful. And then the scene of Vader finding her saber (I wondered why she just left it there, but now I wonder if it was specifically to cover her trail) and just…standing there in thought. The ANH-esque red tint to his mask eyes was a really nice touch as well. The ending was much more mysterious and melancholy than I was expecting.
“But more importantly, the show understood that Star Wars is primarily a lesson in visual storytelling. That was George Lucas’s forte, an aspect that The Clone Wars elevated with every season it was on the air. The soundtrack provides the atmosphere, the scripts provide detail and texture, but when Star Wars is done right—all it takes is a frame.” – This is so true. The last episodes especially did such an amazing job with visceral scenes that were low on dialogue, perhaps, but had some incredibly striking visuals and music (I would actually argue that the soundtrack is equally as vital here and the two cannot be separated). It’s a huge reason I love Revenge of the Sith, as I feel that of all the prequels it succeeds the best of this. Lucas certainly struggled with some aspects of the storytelling, but the places where he really got it right (in originals and prequels both) were those amazing scenes that had almost no dialogue but said so much*. Many of my favorite scenes in the sequels involve this as well although those movies didn’t always get the chance to breathe that they should have. I’m actually working on a blog post trying to outline my favorite of these scenes in each movie so it’s something I’ve been thinking about, and was definitely thinking about while watching these last episodes.
(*Although interestingly, some really notable subversions of this that are VERY dialogue heavy are The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise and Palpatine’s Seduction – but Ian McDiarmid completely carries both of those).
Questions –
1)How did Rex know to call him Darth Sidious? Is that just something that we’re accepting was part of the programming?
2)In one of the later scenes the clones mentioned a ‘special order’ to kill Ahsoka even after Rex tried to get out of it by claiming she wasn’t actually a Jedi (which, honestly, I thought would be more of a plot point and perhaps how some of the clones would be able to break their programming)…so are we to believe that Palpatine perhaps accounted for this contingency (since I believe he definitely would want her eliminated).
As for all the retconning/EU stuff, well, as others have pointed out, lets not kid ourselves, Star Wars has always been about retconning. Sometimes it really works, and sometimes it doesn’t. For the most part I do think the EU held together (at least in the novels – the comics may be another story) and I do hope they at least try to do a better job of it in this next round, but I can totally see why things may change. Still, the slickest retcon in my opinion will always be Tolkien literally re-writing a chapter of the Hobbit to fit better with his eventual conception of the Ring and *also* including a plausible meta in-world reason for why the first edition had the ‘wrong’ story :) (Not to mention if you follow Middle Earth lore, Tolkien was constantly rewriting/revising until he died).
Also, speaking of Filoni: we’ve been watching the Mandalorian documentary on Disney+ and I have to say, every time Filoni opens his mouth I’m always loving what he has to say. Somewhat relevant to this particular post, in the latest episode he actually goes on this huge spiel about Anakin, his fall, Qui-Gon, Ob-Wan, the failures of the PT Jedi, Luke Skywalker, hope/redemption etc that is honestly really incredible and also puts some scenes of the prequels in a pretty interesting focus. (And he actually touches on a similar theme about how Palpatine has basically just used Maul, and will eventually just use Anakin, etc)
He doesn’t really go into the Clone Wars itself, but I feel like it’s really clear that all of this must have been in his mind and whatever my feelings about Ahsoka at times, I love what he’s done with Star Wars in general.
I always thought that putting Jedi generals in charge of a clone army, instead of droids, was a deliberate choice to corrupt the Jedi. Leading disposable troops, with little to no free will, is more of a dark side thing. It damages their connection to the Light side by making them question the righteousness of their cause. It makes them feel the cost of the war and saps their will to fight. It makes them complicit in the suffering. The purpose of the clone wars wasn’t to conquer the galaxy. It was to weaken and destroy the Jedi.
@61/morganbael: That would be more credible as a rationale behind the movies if the movies had given the clones any real personality. Instead, IIRC, the actual films pretty much just treated the clones as an impersonal horde that just followed orders, differing from the droids only in being organic in origin. It was the TV series that turned them into actual individuals and explored the moral ambiguity of their creation and use.
@61/62 – I have to be honest, that was my impression as well, and that was before the Clone Wars came out.
It could also be part of my own personal interests, but I never actually saw them as an impersonal horde. I saw that some people viewed them as such, or simply viewed them as slightly better droids (the Kaminoans flat out say this) but to me it was quite obviously a morally shady thing to do once you read between the lines. The movie doesn’t let us spend a lot of time with the clones, but we do see some glimmers of it with the way Cody and Obi-Wan interact.
I’m willing to grant that I’ve read more into it than was initially intended, but right from the start I’ve seen it this way, and as a gross violation against persnhood that the Jedi – or the New Republic for that matter – never should have accepted, and was a key part of Palpatine’s manipluation of them into this moral no-win situation that ultimately weakens them (along with the war in general). He was always playing both sides of the war, and I think this was an important part of it.
However truly exploring this IS one of the best aspects of the Clone Wars, imo. (Along with the Traviss novels that ended up being de-canonized).
@63/Lisamarie: Oh, I’m not denying that the movies textually portrayed the clones as sentient people, or that it raises all sorts of ethical questions about the Jedi/Republic’s willingness to go along with that. I just don’t see compelling evidence that George Lucas actually intended it to raise those ethical questions, because if he had, the films would have done more to address that issue. I think maybe he was thinking more about needing a horde of identical characters so he could play around with massive-crowd CGI battle scenes. Plus, of course, he was stuck with the phrase “Clone Wars” that he’d used in the original films and thus needed to throw clones into the war in some capacity.
Lucas stated outright that the Separatists had a big-ass droid army so he could portray carnage without blood and keep his PG rating.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@65/krad: Yeah, that sounds about right. He wanted The Phantom Menace in particular to be accessible to children as a jumping-on point for the franchise, so he wanted to tone down the violence, and he went for the standard Saturday morning cartoon approach of having all the bad guys’ troops be disposable robots. Then, when he got into the older-skewing sequels, he added in living troops, but he made it so that only the bad guys were killing live people while the good guys were still just killing droids (most of the time). Which is why I’m not convinced he really thought through how much it undermined the good guys that they were willing to breed a race of live people as cannon fodder.
In fairness, this is definitely a thing Lucas thought about subsequently at least, because from what I’ve seen in behind-the-scenes features he was a big driver on the “give the clones individuality and personality” front for The Clone Wars.
(“Ambush!” making that point so definitively right from the start was a huge part of why I got on-board with the show).
Yeah, i was going to say – the droids, definitely were droids for that reason.
But he was a pretty big driver on the Clone Wars, especially in the early seasons, so I think saying he just didn’t think about it is probably not true. Certainly he didn’t prioritize it in the movies for various reasons (and I can see why from a certain point of view). Even Ahsoka is the kind of thing that just would not have happened without his input. Filoni has been pretty open that Lucas still would come in and course correct if he felt the series was not ‘correct’ according to his vision, for better or worse :)
Certainly not going to argue that Lucas always made perfect fillmmaking decisions, or that his thoughts always translated to film in the way he intended, but I do believe he definitely has thought a LOT about these things.
@55: That’s right, it was mostly just a throwaway reference when it was first mentioned, and it wasn’t until work on the prequels proper began that the concept began to be fleshed out. Hence why, in the Thrawn Trilogy, the Clone Wars were presented as the Old Republic fighting against an invasion of evil clones.
@60: Yeah, Filoni’s passion for Star Wars and the projects he undertakes is easily apparent every time he opens his mouth; it’s a matter of telling great stories in a franchise he’s deeply committed to, rather than printing money, selling toys or pushing an agenda, and it shows in the general quality of his works.
62/63 Yeah, I should have said I thought that was Palpatine’s motivating thought about the clone army, rather than Lucas. I’m not one to really dwell on plot holes. I just think up my own head cannon and move on. I never expected the clones in the movies to show much personality. Between time constraints, helmets, and the formal nature of soldiers speaking to superior officers, it just isn’t possible. So I filled in the blanks with what I would expect from any of my friends who served. I was happily surprised when the Clone Wars cartoon meshed with what I had though of.
For whatever it’s worth, my initial thought an the clone wars after watching Star Wars as a kid was a bunch of small conflicts turning much more serious as cloning technology let the warring states create troops on the cheap and escalate wars that should have burned out from attrition, so the Jedi had to intervene in their role as peace keepers. (Yeah, I was a weird kid).
Personally, I loved the Siege of Mandalore, but I didn’t understand Ahsoka’s portrayal.
Especially that moment where she said the Jedi were playing politics. How is defending the very heart of the Republic, and the headquarters of the Jedi from invading forces playing politics??? Like, Ahsoka, honey, I love you and you’re my favourite character, but you sound ridiculous. You’re 17 years old; you were a Jedi once and it seemed like you were planning on returning, you realize that the Jedi have a duty to the people right? That Obi-Wan and Anakin can not just choose a neutral system where terrible stuff happened the last time Obi-Wan went there over defending Coruscant? The writers did her dirty in that scene.
But I honestly don’t see how the Jedi “alienated” Ahsoka. They maintained good relations with her after she left, with the whole Sith Temple arc and as we saw with Yoda.
@69:
Hence why, in the Thrawn Trilogy, the Clone Wars were presented as the Old Republic fighting against an invasion of evil clones.
Yeah, and the timeline changed too. The Trilogy stated the Wars had happened, what, 40 years prior to the OT? And it was because that was the time-frame Lucas gave him in 1991.
By the time Lucas began work on the PT, of course, he compressed that timeline into 20 years prior to the OT.