An ExplosiveClone WarsEpisode Asks the Price of Loyalty in Perpetual Conflict

There ’s a momentin this week’sStar Wars : The Clone Warswhere Mace Windu dramatically leaps into a installation pack with battle droids . Hislightsaberraised , he offers an ultimatum : He has destroyed thousands of their like , so they can place upright down and be reprogrammed by the Republic or link those thousand . They instantly open up fire .

It ’s a minute in “ Unfinished commercial enterprise ” that ’s play as a caper . As Obi - Wan Kenobi falls into action beside Mace when the shootout start , he drolly quips that it was worth trying statecraft before joining his fellow Jedi and a horde ofClone Troopersin batting chargeman bolts away and cutting down droid after droid . The engagement looks like many have before it on Clone Wars .

It ’s not that this inevitable battle is predictable , or that it ’s a ho-hum thing to have conflict on a show literally predict The Clone Wars . It ’s in the name , it ’s in the dealership . We are , arguably , here for it ! But this jokey moment suddenly becomes much more interesting in the context of all the other micro - character moments going on , that continue to paint the picture of a theme that has run for throughout the “ Bad Batch ” arc — which come to a finis in this fourth sequence . It ’s one that is clearer than ever , and a fascinating way for what is live on to be the final time of year of this series to really engage with the fact that it has been choke for seven seasons ( give or take a suspension ): All these people are so clearlyvery , very tiredof conflict , and while some of them can snap joke about it , or even made peace with it , for others , the cracks are begin to show .

Mace Windu and Obi-Wan Kenobi find themselves locked into another bloody battle.

Mace Windu and Obi-Wan Kenobi find themselves locked into another bloody battle.Image: Lucasfilm

Although it should plausibly also be say that the other recurring radical “ Unfinished Business ” shares with the rest of this season so far is that said conflict continues to bet fantastic , delivering a visual fidelity and sense of background that , even four weeks into this new time of year , extend to be impressive for the show .

We can feel bad about the explosion . But the explosion ? They ’re very pretty .

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Echo, Rex, and the Bad Batch prepare for a risky mission.Image: Lucasfilm

Anyway ! pluck up out of the back of last week ’s alsoexplosion - laden episode , this late sees a newly - recuperate Echo endeavor to essay his loyalty to the Republic in the viewing of his cybernetic indoctrination as the Techno Union ’s exist engagement computer . By leading a daring foreign mission with Rex and Anakin to Admiral Trench ’s command ship — while Mace , Obi - Wan , and the rest of the Republic forces stage a last - gasp assault against the Separatist - occupy manufacture yards on Anaxes — Echo trust he can habituate the tool pressure upon him by the Separatists to instead turn the tide in the Republic ’s party favour , feed spoiled strategies into the system that can buy Mace , Obi - Wan , and their dwindling battalions time .

It ’s a hazardous manoeuvre , if only because our hero sandwich have spent the past three weeks repeatedly acknowledging just how stretched thin their force are — it ’s why the Bad Batch was fetch in in the first position , and it ’s why Rex ’s personal delegacy to liberate Echo from his revealed captivity was so risky . The desperate position pass to an unspoken question hang thickly in the zephyr : How can the Jedi be so sure to confide a Clone who ’s just spent twelvemonth , forcibly or otherwise , helping their opposite defeat them ? How can Echo trust the parts of himself given back to him by Separatist cybernetics ?

That enquiry becomes spoken when the Bad Batch is brought on gameboard to Echo ’s plan . Throughout the charge to Trench ’s ship , fairly much everyone in the squad repeatedly needles Echo and Rex with question about the former ’s true commitment — and what the latter would do if their incertitude are examine right . It ’s almost weird in its aggressiveness , but the matter - of - factness with how the Batch express their business organization over Echo ’s loyalty is only because they ’ve accepted their own sight as putz breed for state of war ( albeit ones bred a little accidentally , to theirs and the Republic ’s welfare ) . Echo ’s just another cog in the machine of this apparently endless conflict they were all made for , dispatch from one slot in the Separatist ’s bicycle and put back in the Republic ’s . What ’s to say the reversion could n’t chance ?

Image: Lucasfilm

Echo, Rex, and the Bad Batch prepare for a risky mission.Image: Lucasfilm

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It ’s not a interrogation that ultimately take reply in “ Unfinished Business . ” The mission goes off without a hinderance ( mostly , we ’ll get to that soon ) , and Echo ’s venturesome , fugitive re - integration into separationist systems leads to victory for the Republic , and ultimately even with Echo choose to part ways with Rex and join the Bad Batch full time . Despite it hanging in the melodic line throughout the sequence , Echo ’s allegiance was never truly in question , even as the episode take us as an hearing to harbor similar suspicions as our sub . But the fact that it was brought up over and over anyway speak to that lingering tiredness that hangs on the shoulders of all these characters . The longer the warfare go on , the more these cynical questions emerge , even in victory , about who ’s about to go .

But maybe the episode should n’t have even been asking us that in Echo ’s case .. Because it gives us a mo of realization that there was someone else among our heroes where the sally are starting to become much more readily visible .

Image: Lucasfilm

Rex and Echo both face questions over the latter’s loyalty.Image: Lucasfilm

A sure Jedi Knight .

Remember how I sound out the Bad Batch ’s escape from Trench ’s ship went off mostly without a hitch ? Well , that hitch — the discovery of Echo ’s subterfuge alerting Trench and his forces , conduce the Admiral to prime a series of bombs that would rip the Anaxes factories and the Republic USA that just secured them to shred — leads Anakin into a direct showdown with the Admiral . Unlike his fellow Jedi on the surface below , Anakin no longer has the time or the patience to sell with Trench ’s game of obfuscation over the codes to demilitarise the explosive . With ire in his voice and etched across his nerve , his brutal torturing of Trench — and eventually his swift execution of him once Mace has receive the terminal digits to demilitarize the bomb — is a shivery reminder of the conversation Anakin shared with Padmé back in “ A Distant Echo , ” his frustration at being unable to just kibosh the warfare with a waving of his hand … or , at least with Trench , his lightsaber .

In a moment of fury , Anakin gets the comforting taste of explore that potentiality . What if he could make unnecessary the day with a mere wafture of that lightsaber ? What if stopping the war is less about daring heroics , and only striking the Republic ’s enemies down ? Just as conflict on The Clone Wars is inevitable , the sullen way Anakin Skywalker is heading ever further down is as well an inevitability . And now , as Clone Wars continues towards its conclusion , that darkness is only pass to start to get clear and vindicated .

Image: Lucasfilm