Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Victory and Death Review

TCW "Victory and Death"

To review "Victory and Death" is to review the last five minutes of the episode.

But before we get to that, the bulk of the episode must be addressed. It is a runaround, albeit one imbued with desperation, as Ahsoka and Rex try to flee the Star Destroyer, relentlessly hunted by the clones. Maul disables the ship with the Force, putting it on a collision course with a moon, and the brainwashed clones are so focused on the task of assassinating Ahsoka, Rex, and Maul, they don't pay any mind to self-preservation. In a poignant moment, Rex allows himself to feel the emotional weight of what has happened to his brothers. And the clones' situation, sacrificed on a crashing Star Destroyer, symbolizes the new Empire's attitude toward them: they are disposable things.

(Ahsoka and Rex are helped by a cadre of droids, and when ARC trooper Jesse and his clones kill the droids, the show stops short of showing blaster fire hit the droids. In a darkly amusing way, the episode treats shooting a droid like most movies treat shooting a dog.)

After the action of the episode is resolved, all that's left are two elegiac epilogues. First, Ahsoka and Rex mourn the clones, who have been granted the dignity of burial; Ahsoka leaves one of her lightsabers in the makeshift cemetery. And later, the snowed over Star Destroyer is discovered by Darth Vader and his newly-minted snowtroopers. Vader picks up Ahsoka's blade, ignites it for the rare spectacle of the Sith Lord wielding a blue lightsaber, and walks away.

Vader, seemingly animated more like the skinny frame of Hayden Christensen, is depicted here not long after first donning the suit at the end of Revenge of the Sith. From Charles Soule's Darth Vader comic series, we know this is a period in his life when the wounds of Anakin Skywalker are at their most raw; he's still struggling in the dark. And as he surveys the snow, and finds the lightsaber of the woman he's now so far away from, physically and emotionally, it is clear how much Vader has lost.

"You were right. You were right about me. Tell your sister, you were right." - Anakin Skywalker

After his redemption, when Anakin speaks those words to Luke referencing Leia, it's possible Anakin's thoughts also turned to Ahsoka, the surrogate sister he lost 23 years ago, the loving bond he never stopped mourning.

An episode of survival and sadness. 7/10.

So that's it for Star Wars: The Clone Wars. We thought the show was all over twice before, but now it's true. Farewell to the show that gave fans Ahsoka Tano, Rex, Asajj Ventress, the Nightsisters, Savage Opress, Mandalore, Satine Kryze, the Darksaber, Saw Gerrera, Mina Bonteri, a resurrected Maul, Hondo Ohnaka, Cad Bane, and a tolerable Jar Jar Binks.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Shattered Review

TCW "Shattered"

"I wish I was good at something other than war." - Bo-Katan Kryze

"Shattered" shows that The Clone Wars as a show is good at something other than war. This measuredly paced episode generates an atmosphere of dread and foreboding centering around one event: Order 66.

As Ahsoka and Rex are en route to Coruscant with a captured Maul, soon-to-be-Emperor Palpatine gives the fateful Order. This allows the show to confront head on the idea of Order 66 as a tragedy for the clones. In Revenge of the Sith, the galaxy-wide kill order against Jedi is exclusively seen from the Jedi perspective; the clones are plot devices. But The Clone Wars has spent seven seasons showing humanity and individuality in clone characters. In a way the whole show has been building to this final indignity, when the clones' autonomy and free will is short-circuited. A tragedy for the executed, yes, but also for the executioners.

Kevin Kiner's score goes a long way to establishing a mood of dissonant unease. His eerie melodies, utilizing synthesizers in extremely Blade Runner-esque patterns, eventually give way to a rendering of John Williams' Order 66 music from Revenge of the Sith that gave me chills. As Ahsoka de-programs Rex with help from industrious droids, hope returns to the narrative.

"Shattered" is almost meditative in its unflinching embrace of one idea. So it is more like a tone poem than a dynamic epic. Heavily atmospheric, the tragedy of Order 66 is further unveiled here. 7/10.

Canon connections:
- Ahsoka is directly embedded into the end of the "I sense a plot to destroy the Jedi" scene from Revenge of the Sith.
- Ahsoka chooses not to send a message to an Anakin whose turn to the dark side is imminent.
- When Ahsoka and Maul hear Anakin's fall through a disturbance in the Force, audio from the movie is used, but Anakin voice actor Matt Lanter is also given the opportunity to offer his interpretation of the "What have I done?!" line.
- There's an astromech droid named Cheep, who resembles and sounds like Chopper from Star Wars Rebels.
- Maul gets his equivalent of the Darth Vader hallway massacre from Rogue One.
- There are a few echoes of exact dialogue from the films. The phrasing "hunt down and destroy the Jedi Knights" used by Obi-Wan in A New Hope is a Rex line here. "More to say, have you?" is said by Yoda both here and in The Phantom Menace. And "The Jedi are keepers of the peace, not soldiers" is spoken by Ahsoka, after Mace Windu said almost exactly that in Attack of the Clones.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - The Phantom Apprentice Review

TCW "The Phantom Apprentice"

"The dark side has never been stronger..." - Maul

Driven by an atmosphere of high-octane foreboding, "The Phantom Apprentice" is The Clone Wars at its best. Ahsoka's confrontation with Maul, set against the backdrop of a burning Mandalore, is not only a clash of lightsabers but an insight into Maul's unique perspective on current galactic events. Maul's almost stagey dramatic monologues are sibilantly brought to life by Sam Witwer, while original actor Ray Park performs motion capture for Maul. The choice to utilize Park pays off, as his movements are very noticeably "human". Not to discount the actor performing motion capture for Ahsoka, but Maul's moves are more ostentatious.

Maul elevates villain monologues to an art because of the tragedy of his character: for all his raging ambition, he is trapped by hate and cast aside as a pawn of his master. He sees well enough that truth, that he and Dooku were mere tools for Darth Sidious, as Maul says, "always one step behind". And when Maul says the line quoted up top, it is not with bluster but with a mix of dread and aspiration. We are far away from the silent devil of The Phantom Menace.

With attention to the wider Star Wars story, it is nicely surprising how far into Revenge of the Sith this arc has already overlapped. The episode's climax unfolds more or less in parallel with Obi-Wan's mission to Utapau. With knowledge of Order 66, the imminent rise of the Empire, and Sidious' plans for Anakin, Maul has a familiar proposition for Ahsoka. Just like Vader to Luke, and Kylo Ren to Rey in events yet to come, it's the classic Star Wars "join me". This is part of the appeal of Star Wars: the episode throws new light on events that have been established for years, and stories told in the orbit of the prequel trilogy still have the capacity to surprise.

Canon connections:
- Kevin Kiner uses the Emperor's Theme, the Imperial March, and a motif from Duel of the Fates.
- Excuse me while I freak out that Dryden Vos is in the episode!

A self-consciously dramatic episode, "The Phantom Apprentice" thrillingly dances in the shadow of the wider Star Wars story. 10/10.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Old Friends Not Forgotten Review

We open on a familiar green Lucasfilm Ltd. logo, which transitions into a burst of even more familiar John Williams fanfare as The Clone Wars logo zooms away against a starfield. Just like The Clone Wars all began, with a few episodes pinned together for feature length, its last four-episode arc is being framed as another movie.

And that statement of intent is matched by the show itself. Everything feels bigger, from the hero moments to the emotions to Kevin Kiner's music. Seeing Obi-Wan Kenobi, the 501st legion, and Ahsoka Tano each get their big action moments, the cumulative effect is that this feels like a victory lap for the show.

After some classic clones on droids action, the episode brings wayward Jedi Ahsoka briefly back into the lives of her beloved older brother figure Anakin and uncle figure Obi-Wan. Old nemesis Maul is on Mandalore, and Ahsoka and her Mandalorian ally Bo-Katan Kryze request help from the Republic to end his reign of terror. The emotional centerpiece of the episode is the scene where Ahsoka sees that Rex and his 501st have colored their helmets in tribute to her, their former commander. The irony  is clear: the noble clones choose to poignantly honor their Jedi sister-in-arms, when most of them will painfully soon have their free will taken away by Order 66 and be forced to kill their Jedi colleagues.

I mentioned before that Ahsoka gets a big hero moment, and it's a tribute to Jedi idealism. She ignites her lightsabers and rampages through Shadow Collective Mandalorians, but only incapacitating them and tending to target their jetpacks. To quote Snoke, she "has the spirit of a true Jedi".

Canon Connections:
- A couple Star Wars Rebels tie-ins: in the newsreel segment, there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance from Caleb Dume, the future Kanan Jarrus, with his master Depa Billaba. And Ursa Wren, mother of Sabine, helps to defend Mandalore.
- Obi-Wan heroically saves the life of his friend Commander Cody, who during Order 66 will try to kill Obi-Wan.
- Kiner pulls out the Star Wars theme, the Rebel fanfare, and the Force theme to great effect.

A compelling and cinematically-scaled episode that begins to draw the curtain on this show. 9/10.