The dark days are truly about to begin.
What They Say:
Ahsoka and Rex must use their wit and skills to survive the turbulent end of the Clone Wars.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With three incredibly strong episodes prior to this. The Clone Wars is going out on the dark notes it needs to and providing the payoff that it has built toward for years, making this twelve-episode run worth it beyond measure, quite honestly. We know where some of this goes based on Rebels, and with word of Ahsoka being in The Mandalorian with its upcoming season, but there’s still so much to enjoy and run with here as we see Ahsoka and Rex do their best to survive against a Republic that has now completely turned on them in a way that they never could have imagined. And that means taking down so many of those that they’ve lived, fought, and worked with for years side by side.
Running that in parallel to Maul figuring out his best course of action with no lightsaber at his side means it’s a pure Force effort for him and it’s impressive as hell as he manages to force the ship out of hyperdrive, making it essentially a piece of junk that’s now in normal space. And caught in the gravity well of the nearby moon they came out by. It’s the typical situation in the franchise where things go from bad to worse for our favorite characters in huge and striking ways and this is quite possibly one of the biggest ones. They stack the odds against Rex and Ahsoka (and the droids!) in such a big way that it’s almost comical with no real way out of it. But this is also when we see the humanity of those we watch in this, what with Rex lashing out at what they’re facing and Ahsoka making it clear that they can’t just go and kill them to get away because of all that’s happened over the years.
We get a lot of creativity in attempts by the pair to stave off the clones from killing them, to try and turn the situation into one they can work together with, but in the end, it doesn’t quite go to plan and they have to go a more difficult route. But it plays out well, if not for Maul stepping in to caus a little additional chaos as well that’s just a delight to watch. While he may not be Sidious’ apprentice any long he’s definitely still a Sith and very much focused on his own survival. It’s a wonderful battle of sorts between the two with Ahsoka again making the difficult choice but the right one which lets Maul escape to fight another day. But all it leads to is more darkness, with the droids being destroyed and Ahsoka and Rex forced to take down more and more clones while trying to find a ship that can get them off the cruiser that’s about to burn up in orbit by all appearances.
The last five minutes of this hits a really interesting place when you get down to it. The contrast in having Ahsoka and Rex bury so many clones and put their helmets on sticks with what we saw in The Mandalorian after the fall of the Empire is intense. The weight of everything is heavy on Ahsoka, enough so that she lets go of her lightsaber as well in order to try and move on and hide in this dangerous new galaxy. Seeing the Empire come here, some time later when it’s been covered in snow, with Vader leading the search only adds to the creepiness of the entire situation as he’s still struggling at this point in putting behind him the person that was Anakin. But finding Ahsoka’s lightsaber there only makes it clear that he’ll never be free of who he was and that she is very much a part of that. It’s beautiful and haunting in all the right ways, giving closure to both of these leads that dominated this series.
In Summary:
With seven seasons of sprawling material, storylines, characters, and details that spill into other works, there’s no summarizing the series as a whole. It was one that many shrugged off at the start with the introduction of Ahsoka because she would never amount to anything because she wasn’t in the films. But she became the key character and one of the most tragic figures of all in it, especially in these final episodes and her time in Rebels along with her own novel. The series finale can do only so much overall but I’ve been thrilled with this run as it didn’t just go up to Revenge of the Sith but placed us alongside it and showing us other events, the impact and fallout from it, and a look at where things can go from here. I’m hopeful for more tales of these characters and I’d love to see this period opened up to more novel and comic storytelling now that the animated series is done. But this series defied everything thrown at it at one time or another and has come out the other side as a near-masterpiece to me.
Grade: A
Streamed By: Disney+
