As the Siege of Mandalore rages on, Maul tries and fails to convince Ahsoka that something terrible is about to happen in the latest episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
Is everyone OK? Mostly? Are we ready to talk about this yet? No? Well, just like this Star Wars: The Clone Wars arc, there’s no stopping this now. It’s happening whether we’re ready for it or not.
From what we can gather from the general timeline, we should be about halfway through Revenge of the Sith as this episode’s events are unfolding. Obi-Wan is heading off to confront Grievous, and Anakin has been left alone with Palpatine.
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Maul knows what’s about to happen. So he’s frantically reaching out to anyone and everyone he can in hopes that someone will listen. But no one is listening. No one believes him.
But we do.
Ahsoka’s conversation with Obi-Wan about Anakin was an unexpected jolt of pain, but a necessary one. In Rebels we find out that Ahsoka went years without knowing what happened to her former master, and this makes the fact that she never got to say goodbye all the more heartbreaking.
And then there’s Maul. Creating just the right amount of sympathy for a villain isn’t easy, and to say we feel bad for this guy is an understatement. Shoutout to Sam Witwer for his performance throughout this episode, but especially during Maul’s capture.
“We’re all going to burn.” I hope you’ve watched The Mandalorian, because that wording may or may not be foreshadowing something even darker. Sorry. You signed up for this!
Though I’ll refrain from calling this the Best Episode Ever (because we technically haven’t seen them all yet), I can’t remember the last time an episode of television has filled me with so much ongoing dread from the first second to the last.
Let’s talk about suspense for a second. Because not all shows do the best job of creating it. The recipe is complex. The stakes have to be high, the characters have to be emotionally invested enough to emotionally invest the audience. And you have to figure out a way to pace it in such a way that you inch closer and closer to “that” moment in increasingly tense increments until —
Well, in this case, until the episode ends. Because what we’re slowly building up to is Order 66, and it still hasn’t happened yet.
But it will. Oh, it will. It’s coming. It’s so close we can already feel how much it’s going to hurt.
Maul’s vision of what’s presumed to be Order 66 has left him desperate. Chances are, in one way or another, he and Ahsoka are going to team up if only for the sake of survival. Because being surrounded by clone troopers is probably the worst possible place both of them could be right now, judging by what’s about to happen.
At this point, we still don’t know what’s going to happen to Rex when the order comes in. We also don’t know if Ahsoka is going to get her lightsabers back? Let’s hold off from drawing too many comparisons to E.K. Johnston’s novel until we have the full story.
Unanswered questions are good, though. These last episodes are going to throw a lot at us, but it’s what so many fans have been waiting for.
The Clone Wars are about to end. Two years ago, we didn’t even know we were getting a true conclusion to this story. Look how far we’ve come.
The final two episodes of The Clone Wars drop on Disney+ May 1 & May 4.