When Star Wars Clone Wars began way back when, one of the most annoying inclusions (and a seeming continuation of the kiddification that drove fans nuts with some of the prequels) was giving Anakin a whippersnapper of a padawan named Ahsoka Tano. All credit to Dave Filoni and six seasons of Clone Wars and two of Rebels gradually grew Ahsoka into one of my favorite characters on the show, and her re-emergence in Rebels as an adult and a founder of the The Rebellion has been absolute brilliance. But in that, there’s been a sense of dread, because it seemed inevitable when Ahsoka returned that there was going to be a reckoning and that it wasn’t going to go well for her. SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS for season two of Rebels if you haven’t seen it…..probably should have lead with that.
Season Two of Rebels got saggy in the middle. Started out great, finished great, and the middle seemed wholly unnecessary. Basically you can go from disc one to disc three and not miss much at all if you’re watching on blu ray. But the season finale “Twilight of an Apprentice” is one of the best episodes in the CW/Rebels series. You have a Sith temple, the re-emergence of Darth Maul (that guy may outlive Vader and here we thought he was done in 1999), a permanent injury to Kanan, and Vader making one of his best entrances ever to confront his old apprentice. There’s eight years of history in these animated series leading up to this confrontation, and while the end is left ambiguous, it doesn’t disappoint.
We’re featuring this today for three reasons:
1) It’s just awesome.
2) Yesterday was National Fight with a Lightsaber Day and shame if you didn’t.
3) A new novel simply titled Ahsoka hits stores today filling in some of the gaps about what happened between the end of The Clone Wars and Ahsoka’s reappearance in Star Wars Rebels.
Even if this turns out to be the end for Ahsoka (and you know it isn’t), this added a whole new layer to the most complex character in the the Star Wars Saga, giving Anakin another tie to his past he had to brutally sever to become Vader. Then using his disaffected padawan as one of the founders of The Rebellion that would bring down the Empire? Such a great way to add to something without taking away from any of the stories we already know and love.
I still haven’t seen a moment of Rebels (there are not enough hours in the day for me to watch all the wonderful things I need to watch) but I think the time for a serious binge is drawing nigh. Are you serious about the middle of season 2? Because that kind of puts a damper on things. Nevertheless, I shall embark, hopefully before Rogue One.
Star Wars makes life better. And not just a little better. It upsets me that this guy I worshipped as a child gets mocked, insulted, and otherwise abused by anonymous people everywhere on the internet, because I can safely say that through his movies he helped shape my interests and my life, almost as much as certain relatives who actually contributed to my upbringing. The six SW movies he made, all six of them, are my favorite movies of all time. With some distance, I can now say that while TFA is wonderful, it is not a myth, and that makes it fall a bit short. Clone Wars was also not a myth, and I gather that Rebels is not a myth either.
I hope, when I am an old man, that some of my last memories are of SW, and that SW outlives me, because that would be cool in the extreme, but there was something about the films that I saw in my childhood that will never be matched, and I don’t think this is a product of rose colored glasses. I think Return of the Jedi combined unusually timeless storytelling and themes with special effects that showed people images unlike anything they had ever imagined, and it was magic. That confluence of circumstances will probably never be duplicated.
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TFA may not be mythic yet, but can you honestly tell me that the final shot doesn’t elevate it from bugnuts amazing to possibly mythic depending on how VIII picks up that moment? That’s one of my favorite scenes in any SW film period. Rebels is not a waste (well there are bumps, but The Clone Wars had more in its early seasons). The middle is actually focused on character building the crew’s backstories and will probably enrich the series as a whole, but the Vader/Ahsoka/Maul storyline and the coalescing of The Rebellion’s origins tied to Anakin’s fallen apprentice to me is the meat of the series so far and the season finale was just amazing. I’m completely stoked to see Vader return in Rogue One and to get to know all these new characters. I think they’re going to jump around enriching the times around each of the films (even the prequels when enough time has passed) and what they’re doing to make A New Hope even better is amazing.
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