Full Series Missed or wasted opportunities in the show?

That would have been awesome.

 

I would have loved to have seen a Bounty Hunters vs Pirates battle and for two of the shows most popular original characters being Hondo and Cad Bane to meet, this was possibly going to happen in the Bounty Hunter arc since Hondo was last seen in possession of Slave 1.

I agree that the Night Brothers not aiding the CIS on Massacre was a missed opportunity, the CIS being seen as heroes by them is a good idea and would have made the episode more relevant to the war. It annoys me how often the CIS would treat potential allies badly (eg Nute Gunray with Senator Far or Riff Tamson with Nossor Ri) it made the CIS look like bad strategists, we needed to see CIS victories that would have happened due to them being nice to their allies.​

 

I would have loved to see "good guy" bounty hunters. Or at least bounty hunters working for the Republic (they don't have to be morally upright).

They seem to always just work for whomever the bad guy is. They work for the CIS and they work for the Galactic Empire. They're never shown in the films or TV series to work for the Republic or Rebellion. There was the one episode on Felucia in Season 2(?) but I hoped for something bigger and better than that.

With Jedi having to respect borders, neutral worlds, etc. I would have liked to have seen Jedi or the Republic hiring bounty hunters.

I could have loved something like Palpatine hiring Cad Bane to capture Grievous, with the Jedi having a total "what the ****?!" moment given how much trouble he had proven to be in the past.

The bounty hunters are mercenaries that will work for those with the money. I could have also very much enjoyed a Suicide Squad type of deal. In which Boba, Aurra, Bossk, Bane, etc. All wind up in jail, and Palpatine agrees to pardon them if they undertake a mission to go after someone like Dooku or Grievous. And then have the Bounty Hunters on the "good" side.

 

I really would've liked to have seen the Separatist Council throughout the series. All the members we did see got captured by the Republic (Gunray escaped, but he never showed up again for the rest of the series except on hologram at one point). I would've liked to see regular meetings throughout the series with Dooku, the Council, and perhaps even Grievous.

 

Horrifically underused. And when he was present, he was usually ruined.

 

Yeah, that's another thing; I really wish they had made up a couple new Jedi Masters in TCW just to have Grievous kill them at some point. As much as I liked Kit Fisto in Lair of Grievous, I would've rather had another Jedi Master not in RotS go there, only to be slain by Grievous, proving his worth to Dooku. It may not have been a bad idea after Even Piell's death to have another Jedi take his spot, only to be killed before RotS later in the show by Grievous.

 

1. Sugi and her band were working for the "good guys" in one episode, so it was not always a case of the bounty hunters only working for the bad guys.

2. Comeuppance. This show has rarely been about consequences to actions on any meaningful scale - i.e. consequences have largely been glossed over or compromised in some way (yes, you did wrong but it had a great outcome, so let's forget about it). So I don't see why the females-lording-it-over-the-males should be singled out for consequences.

 

Would be perfect moment to introduce Rahm Kota and his militia.

 

Maybe, careful with what you wish for though. TCW seemed good at misguided fan service. I would rather have OCs in as many roles as possible since they allow much more flexible and storytelling potential.

 

Definitely a talk between the Jedi about the moral issues regarding the use of the Clone Army in the war.

 

Chopper always seemed like a bit of a jerk to me. 'Course he was only in one episode. But you're right, even Karen Traviss had jerk clones in her books.

Sugi, Embo, and Seripas seem to count (although Embo later went bad for some reason). Sugi and Seripas especially; they reappeared to help rescue Ahsoka and the Padawans in the Season 3 finale, and Sugi fought against Maul on Hutta; that's good enough for me to count her as good.

 

Double post.

 

Having just watched A Friend in Need again, I just realized that some of the dialogue between Pre Vizsla and Lux Bonteri could easily have been expanded upon regarding background on more recent Mandalorian history. Lux naively believed that Death Watch "had honor", and it can easily be inferred that the warriors on Mandalore generally are honorable people, following the Resol'nare. However, Death Watch is an extremist faction that doesn't subscribe to the most popularly held beliefs on the planet (and neither do the New Mandalorians, for that matter), and apparently Lux never studied up on Mandalorian history since he appeared unaware of this. Vizsla's retort to Bonteri is also quite telling; he proclaims that the Jedi are no different from Count Dooku because of their "crimes against Mandalore", again bringing to the forefront Mandalorian history, and I imagine that the more recently-added to the continuity Mandalorian Excision was what was foremost in Vizsla's mind. In this conflict, the Republic and the Jedi Order preemptively attacked Mandalore in response to the perceived threat they could be due to their bloody history and the fact that Mandalore refused to join the Republic. The Republic conducted planetary bombardments on Mandalore and some of its sister planets, and forever altered the course of Mandalorian history, spawning the pacifistic New Mandalorians and eventually, the terrorist faction Death Watch. So while Vizsla may have misplaced the culpability on Ahsoka and the modern Jedi, he does have a point in saying that the Jedi had been responsible "for their crimes against Mandalore".

I was hoping that they would have spent more time exploring this part of Mandalorian history, created specifically to reconcile George Lucas' vision of Mandalore with that of the EU prior to TCW. The prolific number of visual references to the Old Republic era Mandalorians throughout the Mandalore-focused episodes, as well as the words of Vizsla himself, suggest that Filoni and his crew put much thought into incorporating Mandalorian history into the background, and I would have loved to see an episode or arc intertwining the fallout from the Mandalorian Excision, Great Clan Wars (remember, Obi-Wan was involved here), and similar conflicts that helped to shape the PT-era Mandalore. Ultimately, I suspect they may have gone that path had they been given the opportunity to revisit the fallout from the civil war on Sundari shown in The Lawless. In fact, the Bo-Katan/Ahsoka sketch that Filoni made could have been from a planned episode that may have explored these ideas, as the New Mandalorians transition back into the greater warrior culture of the clans on Mandalore. A conflict that would undoubtedly pave the way for the Mandalorian Protectors to take over, and I would have enjoyed seeing non-Death Watch warrior clans grace the television screen. Who knows, if they choose to explore Sabine's background in Rebels, perhaps we will see Mandalore again, and the opportunity to acknowledge the greater Mandalorian EU would again be there.

 

Good point.

Can't say I'm sorry the Ahsoka and Bo-Katan episode never made it. Bo's cool, but the less input Ahsoka has on Mandalorian politics the better, imo. I'm kind of digging the way things ended now, with The Last Jedi putting the final wrap on things. It all just *works* again, without any Ahsoka guiding the way or anything like that taking away from Fenn Shysa.

 

I think the two biggest missed opportunities were Grievous and Pong Krell.

Gruevous had "Lair of Grievous" about him, and that was great, but there should have been more. I would have adored learning more of his past, and how he feels about what he is now. His "I chose this!" struck me as a hollow kind of denial. And of course there's the fact that his threat was way underdone. He killed a grand total of one Jedi on screen, and at his lowest point was capture by the friggin' Gungans. Ugh. While I do think the writers learned from that debacle (he achieves a lot more in his last 3 appearances: destroying the Nightsisters, defeating Obi-Wan, and crushing Hondo's base), it was just so painful.

Pong Krell, we should have seen more of him. Even if it was a few cameos prior, just show us how he went from stern but respected Jedi general to clone-hating darksider. That don't happen overnight, and it would have made for a good lesson on how war can change Jedi, same way Nahdar Vebb did back in season one. And he should have lived. Sorry all you clone fans, up he should have escaped the seen of the crime and joined Dooku as a new apprentice. I'd have loved to see how that would play out, and how he'd relate to others in the CIS,like Grievous.

 

Krell was a prop character and didn't need to be much more than he was in Umbara in order for the plot to work. However I think it might have been cool if he was introduced before Umbara. From his reputation and Fives' knowledge of him I wondered if he hadn't served under Krell before. Not to mention we could of maybe seen Krell's breaking point and learned more about the visions. As it stands what we really needed were more Jedi broken by the war, looking at gray areas like if the otherside was the correct one, etc. Would have been good stuff.

 

Oh yes! The original CW showed Grievous as a much more brutal and savage warrior, one that even Jedi feared. He was able to combine cybernetic power, creative tactics and good dueling skills against opponents.
In TCW, with the exception of the episodes you mentioned, he is more of a coward and a weak warrior than any of the things I mentioned above.

 

I don't know if it can really be considered a missed or wasted opportunity, but I would have liked to have had greater insight into what Palpatine's plans were.

I've voiced this opinion once or twice before, and I know that I am fairly alone, but I think there is a lot of potential for non-canon/what-if stories taking place in those possible futures that ultimately never come to pass. HOW could things have been different, for instance?

Like, if Qui-Gon never died, but Maul did. HOW would things be different? WHAT would Palpatine's plan be? If Dooku killed Anakin on the Invisible Hand, what would Palpatine have done? How would Order 66 come to pass and how would he fold the Separatists back under the Republic and form the Empire? Etc. Just because these things don't actually happen and aren't canonical events, doesn't mean that I don't think they would be wildly interesting to see, or that they don't shed light on what the Jedi COULD have done to stop Palpatine, or show how one domino falling a different way may have revealed just how fragile Palpatine's plans were.

I could have really dug an episode along the lines of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "Yesterday's Enterprise."

The basic background there is that there have been multiple ships named Enterprise, with different registries. NCC-1701; NCC-1701-A; NCC-1701-B; etc.

The ship from TNG is NCC-1701-D. The NCC-1701-C had been destroyed. The Enterprise-C had responded to a distress call from a Klingon outpost that was under attack by Romulans, and went down fighting to protect it. This had earned the respect of the Klingons and led to a treaty between the Klingons and Federation, thus by the time of TNG, the Klingons and Federation are at peace, and the Enterprise-D is a ship of diplomacy and exploration.

In "Yesterday's Enterprise" the Enterprise-D encounters a time-space rift from which the Enterprise-C emerges, thus altering the timeline, since the Enterprise-C was no longer present to defend the Klingons, the treaty was never made, and the Klingons and Federation are now at war. So everything changes, and the Enterprise-D is now a warship, Picard and everyone else are not aware of the change in the timeline, while the character of Guinan, who is somewhat Yoda-ish in her wisdom, pretty much just senses instinctively that something is wrong and that the Enterprise-D is not supposed to be a ship of war.

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So, I could have really dug an episode like this. Not with time-space rifts or anything like that, mind you. But we hear all throughout the PT that the ability of the Jedi to use the Force is limited. And in ESB, we hear Yoda tell Luke about how through the Force a Jedi can see the future and past.

They could have done an episode in which Yoda suddenly has an intense moment of clarity where he can see through the shroud of the Dark Side and begins to sense things, though differently from how they happened. Like, he would see a past, but one in which Qui-Gon did not die and Dooku never fell. But then there might be sudden time jumps that are jarring to Yoda. So, he might get so lost in this vision that he believes it to be real. So initially Darth Maul might be dead, Qui-Gon is alive, and Dooku never fell, and the Jedi refused to train Anakin. So Asajj might become Sidious' apprentice and we might get a glimpse at what might have been had Asajj gotten her wish, or learn what might have become of Anakin had they listened to Yoda's warnings in TPM. But then suddenly there's a jump in which Qui-Gon is dead, Dooku has fallen, but Anakin was killed during the war, what then? Yoda might get a very vivid image of what is going to come to pass if Dooku is still alive, and by the time of ROTS, the Jedi might be desperately trying to stop Dooku, oblivious to the danger that Vader poses.

And all along the way it might be that Yoda senses that this isn't right, that he knows the world he came from is different and knows he must get back to it, but at the same time keeps getting lost in the vision. And all along the way, we might see Yoda and the Jedi successfully thwart the Sith, and see what they COULD have done to defeat Palpatine, but the problem is that they are defeating him in alternate futures and pasts that never came to pass. So, had Anakin died and Dooku remained the apprentice, perhaps Yoda sees how to defeat Dooku, and how to destroy Palpatine. Which would also lend power to the scene in which Anakin has to choose to side with Palpatine or Mace, since Palpatine too may have realized that he couldn't achieve what he wanted with Dooku and needed to go all in on a gamble that Anakin would side with him, or risk the Senate kicking him out of office and losing everything, etc.

I am just as much interested in what would have happened had X, Y and Z been different. And I think they could have made an amazing story that really explores such concepts.

 

No problem at all, I think that would be awesome. Thought, as a Jedi, Qui-Gon's mandate would be to preserve life, so we'd probably see a lot of severed arms.

I've always thought that Bryan Mills was secretly Ra's Al Ghul and that his daughter grew up to be Talia. Since they're all played by the awesome Liam Neeson.

 

The Taken parody wouldn't be complete with out Satine running stupidly ala the daughter from Taken.

 

They had a prime opportunity to do that with Eeth Koth but decided to keep him alive for...future plans. Y'know, like all those cool episodes we got with Mar Tuuk.

Oh wait...

 

Clone Wars logic: kills dead characters, resurrects dead ones.