Near the start of season five of “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” between the season first real arc and the second arc of the season, the Star Wars universe changed forever on October 30th, 2012. That was the day that George Lucas more or less officially retired, and sold the entirety of his “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones,” and all related companies to Disney for four billion dollars.
The move had perhaps been a long time coming for Lucas. At the start of his career he wanted to be an independent filmmaker, just doing it for the art man, in true hippie fashion. He even considered making “Apocalypse Now” as a low budget production shot on location in Vietnam, while the Vietnam War was still ongoing. But like most boomers though, Lucas soon found unexpected success he could dine out on for the rest of his life on, in making the original “Star Wars” movies.
Once he had made those, which he pretty much wholly owned, along with the subsequent merchandising rights, he turned his newfound wealth into producing. He built up the special effects houses and teams he pioneered, leading Hollywood fully into the computer age. He also produced a lot of movies during the 80s, basically acting as his own independent studio head. He employed and collaborated with a lot of his friends, who he was more than willing to help in their careers.
After the original Indiana Jones trilogy finished in 1989 though, George’s output slowed significantly, becoming entranced by how far CGI had come as a medium, as showcased perfectly in Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park.” From there he realized the computer effects dream could be a reality, so he first tested it out by adding stuff to re-releases of his original Star Wars trilogy. When he was satisfied by that, he turned his efforts to doing a fabled prequel trilogy of films. He tried to get his friends to help make the new movies, but all of them refused, saying it was George’s property, and he should be the one to make them.
It worked in terms of the fact that Lucas’ continued ownership of the franchise made him a lot more money, but being the sole creative, he was also the sole person to blame when the films were less than well-received by the fans. Here he had made more new entries in this beloved universe, and people were angry at him for it? After this new trilogy was done, George kept talking about making independent features again, or at least producing more, but most of what ended up getting off the ground was Star Wars-related.
As I said in my last entry about The Clone Wars animated show, I said George did have a detailed say in creative decisions for the show, but he mostly just wanted to be a money man. He was funding this animated show mostly out of his own pocket. He even commissioned fifty episodes of a major live-action television series to be written, that would presumably air on ABC, but was again mostly funded by George.
But by 2010, I think George had enough of funding the franchise on his own, making creative decisions, and then taking heat for those decisions. He would keep funding Clone Wars for the moment, but the live-action series would be put on hold, because it would just be too expensive to make on his own, which is the only way he wanted to do it.
And so, George eventually sold his life’s work to Disney and retired, to be left alone by the public, letting other schmucks take responsibility for the heat from then on. Of course, the Cartoon Network-airing Clone Wars would be incompatible with Disney’s future plans, and so the show was cancelled at the end of season five, even though they had already planned out and even made part of season six.
I’ll talk about the eventual seasons six and seven in another post, after I watch them, but it felt best to take stock in what the show had become when it was first cancelled. Because on the one hand, there’s obviously some real challenges that the creative team was running into, often of their own making. These struggles often came from the fact the show structured its stories most often as three or four episode arcs, even when they did not have nearly the story for that amount of time. As a result, these two seasons have some of the truly worst episodes of the series to date.
But on the other hand, when that structure works, and the creative team is firing on all cylinders, they also end up creating several of the show’s best episodes, which are truly up there with some of the best stuff the franchise has ever done. I’m keeping track of my rating for each episode of the show individually on IMDB, and while the first four seasons have their fair share of 9/10 episodes, the end of season five is when the show really earns some 10/10 episodes for the first time.
Going back to what I was talking about in the last post, all of the context that you’ve had in watching the entire show is also what’s making these episodes hit as hard as they do. If you came to these episodes not having watched the show, then you don’t feel the immediate jump in quality they have, or the unique things that characters are doing that really let you know they mean business.
Without having watched the previous 103 episodes of Palpatine just sitting in a chair menacingly playing 3D chess with the galaxy, him actually getting directly involved, and having an all-out Sith beatdown with the Maul brothers just doesn’t hit as hard. But with that context, it’s a really earned “Holy fucking shit” sequence that actually sells this petty little frogman on being the greatest threat the galaxy has ever faced. George Lucas couldn’t even sell that in the movies, because you’re limited in moving around senior citizen Brits. But in animation? GODDAMN.
On paper, a lot of what happens in these episodes sounds dumb. Obi-Wan actually has an old flame, that is killed? Darth Maul survived being cut in half, and is now on the warpath to become an underworld crime lord, and also have vengeance upon Obi-Wan, who cut him in half? All of that sounds terrible.
And when executing everything leading up to that, sometimes the show was terrible. But when it counted, the show ends up paying off on most everything. The show perhaps doesn’t feel worth it in the moment, when it’s at its most inconsistent, which it can often be. But looking back, because the payoff was that good, in retrospect everybody that watches the show feels pretty highly on it.
You can watch selected episodes in prep for “The Mandalorian,” and skip lesser executed episodes in an arc, but it just doesn’t hit the same for. It’s like I said last time, the highs almost feel so much higher, because you’ve experienced the lows. I get that not everybody has time to go through this show, and you’ll certainly question life decisions during certain episodes, but I’ve found rewatching this show to be a very rewarding experience.
The last arc of season five, the one where the Jedi basically throw Ahsoka under the bus to the Galactic Empire that has sprung up under their noses, and Ahsoka willingly leaves the order because of it, is almost as rewarding, if not more so, than what came before it. Last entry I downplayed the notion that this series “fixes” the prequel trilogy, as much as it just adds context, and shows us many more points where Anakin is failed, by the Jedi order, and of his own volition.
But this last arc really is the first time where it feels like the events you now have in context of what happens right before ‘Revenge of the Sith,’ really changes your perception of everything that happens in that movie. You realize that the Jedi order is so far up their ass in bullshit that they’re truly fucked no matter what, and all their decisions made to arrest Palpatine and such in the movie are way too little, way too late. He’s already won. He’s already running the Republic under military control. It’s already an Empire, in all but name.
This arc also really underlines how not only unpopular the titular Clone Wars are broadly in the minds of the galaxy, but how unpopular the Jedi are. When Palpatine comes up with the story of the Jedi attempting to assassinating him later, it’s not questioned, because few people trust them anyways. They don’t even know what a Jedi broadly is. When Maul is wrecking havoc previously, people just assume he’s a Jedi, because Jedi all have lightsabers. The only perceived difference between Jedi and Sith are not a moral code, but rather just the simple color of their lightsaber.
The Jedi are also so incredibly weakened by this point, as the leaders in this ongoing war, that the line between them being peace keepers or a religious order is all but erased. They allowed themselves to be fundamentally corrupted and used as tools of this governmental system. Again, presented with an obvious frame job against Ahsoka, the Jedi council without a second thought throws her under the bus to the increasingly fascistic government. They know her, trained her, and have trusted real in-field experience with her. The Jedi should be standing up for their own, but they’re such tools of the Republic that they just toe the governmental line.
When Ahsoka is eventually proven innocent, the Jedi don’t even really apologize, or resolve to meditate on what’s just occurred. Instead they cursorily offer her old status back, insisting that this was actually just the will of the Force to make her a better Jedi. Rightfully, Ahsoka fully comes into her own as a main character, and rejects the offer. There’s no going back on what just happened. Something is fundamentally broken, and in the most wordless, contemplative way Ahsoka can, she tells the Jedi council to rightly fuck off.
It’s a really earned moment that the previous five seasons of television have been building to, and it lands in appropriately heartbreaking fashion. Ahsoka’s fate was not written in this show, as she doesn’t appear, or is even directly mentioned in ‘Revenge of the Sith.’ As such, apparently George Lucas wanted her killed off, while Dave Filoni decided on this ending as a compromise, because he felt personal ownership over the character. I think Filoni was right in this case though, because this event really does change how you view all the characters’ mindsets in ‘Revenge of the Sith.’
In that film, Anakin is having doubts about the Jedi, and dealing with the great fear of feeling powerless in preventing the loss of his friends. Ahsoka’s leaving is rightfully justified, but it’s also part of what isolates Anakin even further, before turning to the open arms of Palpatine. Hell, after this arc and what the Jedi do, and how clear it is that they’ve been royally fucking at most every step during the course of this war, and the relationship they’ve had as tools of the this obviously failing Republic, and you outright wonder if the fall of the Jedi was a long time coming, if not entirely deserved.
Granted, everybody involved could have had a much less violent path to sort all this out, but when you’re this willfully ignorant and lost for so long, sometimes to wake up you need a real big message saying so. Again, I know the Mortis arc from season three is controversial, but I think George’s whole point there with Anakin’s chosen one prophecy is that sometimes balance means removing everything from the scales.
There’s certainly a lot of thematic stuff I’ve left out in discussion these last two full seasons, but that’s why you should rewatch the show yourself, and listen to the “A More Civilized Age” podcast while doing so. I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, but it’s just been so enriching hearing their discussions on everything this ostensible kids show brings up.
But sadly, I’ll be diverging from them soon for a while, because instead of doing season seven, they’re going to watch all of ‘Rebels’ beforehand, which I will not be doing, since that’s how I did it initially. So I’ll be watching season seven with season six fresh in my mind, watch the ‘Tales’ series of canon shorts on Disney+, then read a couple books taking place in-between ‘Clone Wars’ and ‘Rebels.’ Who knows, maybe I’ll even watch ‘Revenge of the Sith’ yet again, with all this fresh context.
For now, I’ll end by giving my highlights and low lights for each season, along with my average overall rating is between 1 and 10, based on what I rated each episode of that season individually.
Season 4:
Highlights:
“Carnage of Krill”
“Massacre”
“Revenge”
Lowlights:
“Water War”
“Gungan Attack”
“Prisoners”
“Slaves of the Republic”
Average Rating: 6.2
Season 5:
Highlights:
“Revival”
“Eminence”
“The Lawless”
“The Wrong Jedi”
Lowlights:
“Bound for Rescue”
“Secret Weapons”
“Missing in Action”
“Point of No Return”
Average Rating: 6.7
