This episode of Clone Wars’ last season had tons of action to offer, and it really demonstrated two aspects of the show that I have always loved: Jedi powers, and the moral relativism of war. Let’s jump in!
This episode picks up right where last week’s left off: Rex, Anakin, and the Clone Army’s equivalent of Black Ops X-Men known as the Bad Batch have infiltrated a Techno Union outpost and found them holding Echo prisoner, a clone who we previously thought to be dead during the Battle of the Citadel. Together, they all escape thanks to Echo now having access to the Techno Union’s files and take shelter in the native village. Meanwhile, totally neutral and not-Separatist-at-all Wat Tambor orders his droid battalion (because that’s what all neutral capitalists have during wartime) to attack the clones at the village and retrieve Echo for their experiments and strategy algorithms.
The battle of Skako Minor offers some terrific action, and it really demonstrates just how powerful and influential Jedi could be during the Clone Wars. Anakin displays impressive lightsaber and force powers throughout the fight, and the battle basically ends when Anakin decides to take out the heavy weaponry the droids have brought almost single-handedly. While the show has historically struggled to write most Jedi characters, it has always done a great job at showing just what powerhouses they could be, and this episode does a great job at displaying how Anakin is simply head and shoulders above all other combatants.
The battle sequence also displays just how grey so much of the conflict in the Clone Wars is. Sure, there’s the heavy-handed conflict between the Light and Dark sides of the Force, but the political side of the war is much more nuanced, especially when uninvolved planets and races get, well, involved. Rex makes a show of telling the planet’s inhabitants that they must choose a side in the war because the Techno Union has already sided with the Confederacy, and while that seems all well and good (gotta have a sweet battle scene, after all), the natives have a point: they weren’t in danger of the Techno Union or the Separatists factions at all until the clones showed up. Up to the point where our heroes return to the village (with the full knowledge that the droids would follow them, by the way), there was never any indication that totally neutral, Switzerland-esque Tambor had any intention of bothering the natives in the village. And sure enough, we see the natives lose tons of people in the ensuing conflict, and they are likely to lose more now that they have actively opposed the Separatists. The whole scenario begs the question of just how much damage the Republic is doing by visiting these neutral planets and people to begin with, and seeing so many natives of Skako Minor (Skakoans? Skakonites?) get slaughtered in the battle really makes one think about how manipulative Rex was when he told the natives they had to choose a side. God forbid Anakin just takes his clones anywhere else on the planet-sized planet. These kinds of ethical dilemmas really highlight the complicated nature of war and force us to think carefully about the conflict amidst cool action sequences and Anakin angst.
Overall, this was probably my favorite episode of the season, and I’m excited to see if next week’s adventure continues the Echo storyline or deviates toward something new. A lot needs to happen between now and Order 66, so it will be interesting to see what characters and storylines we get next!
