Did Yoda forget the moral point of his TCW ‘Sacrifice’ vision in ROTS?

In The Clone Wars episode ‘Sacrifice’, the series finale, Yoda goes on a journey to the Sith homeworld of Moraband, where he encounters a vision induced by Darth Sidious to break him. In this vision, Yoda is placed in a scenario where he is with Anakin and a squad of clone troopers, attacking Dooku and Sidious in their hideout in The Works sector of Coruscant.

There are similarities with the opening of ROTS, mainly where Anakin then executes Dooku despite him being defeated and unarmed. After Yoda’s failure to prevent Anakin’s dark side action, they then give chase to Sidious on a bridge. Sidious promptly collapses the bridge and gives Yoda a choice: continue his attack to kill him, or save Anakin. Yoda backs away from the opportunity to attack Sidious to prevent Anakin from falling, and the vision ends with Sidious upset that he has failed to break Yoda.

Flash-forward to ROTS: In the immediate aftermath of Order 66, Yoda is confronted with his worst fears made reality—the Jedi have been annihilated, and Anakin has turned to the dark side. However, when faced with the same choice as in his vision in ‘Sacrifice’: either save Anakin (not from a literal fall off a bridge, but from a spiritual fall to the dark side) or attack Sidious, Yoda chooses to attack Sidious.

Anyone who sees ROTS knows this doesn’t end well—Yoda is beaten and left to flee in exile, while Sidious goes on to rule the galaxy for another 20 years (and possibly cement his influence longer than that, depending on how the sequel trilogy goes). If Yoda had went with Obi-Wan and actually tried to redeem Anakin, maybe things would have been different?

So the question is, in-universe, why did Yoda completely miss the point of his whole Moraband vision? Did he not get it in the first place? Or perhaps he felt that, with his having done the “right thing” in the vision failing to prevent the Jedi’s fall in reality, he needed to take the opposite path and focus on killing Sidious?

The irony is that while Luke completely fails his vision test in The Empire Strikes Back, he seems to get it right when the choice shows up in reality. Yoda seems to get it right in the vision, but completely flips out and goes “Destroy the Sith we must” when the actual choice presents itself.

 

Clone Wars Season 6 was pretty good, but a lot of material (including 'The Lost One' where the Jedi outright are told Dooku created the clone troopers) is pretty hard to fit with the Jedi's actions in ROTS.

 

Yea it is annoying as the lost missions were very fatalist in nature as was the Mortis arc back in Season 3. I think the episodes served more to remind the audience of the grimmer fate of the characters they've created and to aid the transition to the leading tragedy of Anakin, the Clones and the Jedi , Republic to Empire and all that stuff. Eventually they had to show these heroic characters turn bad and come to ROTS and the OT without shocking the audience as they spent TCW selling those characters as good guys. That is really the only sense I can make out many of the foreshadowing and storylines that sought to connect themselves to ROTS.

Like Fives and Tup, their endings could only have one outcome, death and offer no change for thing as ROTS was made already as was the OT. Some all these characters and events occur, TCW can only lead into it somehow but not kill off major characters nor change events that take place after it.

This old interview is interesting:

TFN: It’s well know by now that authors and writers of other Star Wars projects are often given creative ‘boundaries.’ Assuming this is the case for the new Clone Wars series, were there any surprises to you in terms of what wasn’t off-limits?

Henry: George gave Dave and I a lot of freedom and he didn’t want us to be limited by what the EU had established. In fact, there were times I was really challenged by him to create something new, yet I tried to be true to what came before. On one occasion, I even got in trouble when I tried to be stubbornly true to the OT and he wanted something different. George said about me, “Henry is too married to the movies.”

Initially, there were things that were off limits by George himself, but as I will go into later, he simply changed his mind and opened up the entire Star Wars Galaxy to ‘Dare to be Great!’ Initially, that took some re-thinking for Dave and I as we realized that George wanted to get out of the box of what was and push the boundaries of what Star Wars could be. The greatest boundaries we faced were with what we could execute with the limits of the production — we were a brand new studio remember.

Dave: I’m not sure we really had to think of things as off-limits simply because everything we do, we do right alongside George, but I’m the director as opposed to the writer so maybe I thought of it differently than Henry. I know I imposed restrictions on Henry myself when I could, at least to be careful with the classic characters. Henry and I would get in some great arguments and then George would basically be the “great Decider” as to what direction to go. We could come up with ideas and present them to him immediately, so there was no concern as to whether or not it “was” Star Wars. This series at least to George is NOT EU, it is a part of Star Wars as he sees it. I think if anything there was a period where Henry and I had to learn exactly what it took to be a part of George Lucas’ Star Wars, and tell the Star Wars story his way. We had to learn how to look at the Galaxy from his point of view and let go of some of what we considered canon after we found out the ideas were only EU. Really we had to “unlearn what we had learned” and go back to the movies as the defining source material.

...

TFN: Now that the audience has seen both the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker, do you feel more free to write him as a “good guy?” He comes off more favorably in the show than he does in Episode II or many of the comics and books set during the Clone Wars. Was this intentional?

Henry: Absolutely. George was disappointed that the fun, swashbuckling heroic side of Anakin never really came across in the movies and this is one of the first instructions that he gave to Dave and I. He wanted to show Anakin as that guy that Obi-Wan talks about as a truly great Jedi who was a champion of the Republic who was a hero saving lives. My nephew is 8 and he loves Anakin in the show. He told me that he likes Anakin so much, he hates to think about him as Darth Vader. When Anakin is in danger, my nephew really gets worried about him — he forgets that he lives. This lets me know that we’ve succeeded somewhat in revealing a whole other side to this great character — it’s been a pleasure and a privilege to participate in that. Showing Anakin as a hero that you love to watch be heroic, really makes his redemption that much more emotionally powerful.

Dave: In some ways I think Anakin in our series is always the Anakin I pictured as a kid. I really wanted him to be a cross of Han and Luke, cocky, but immature. I never thought that Anakin was a guy that went around committing atrocities, or drowning puppies. If he did, the Council seems really thick for not realizing what Anakin would become. Anakin has to be a good guy. Luke was a good guy, had friends, was a hero, and yet when he struck Vader down and the Emperor asked him to take his father’s place at his side, I really believed Luke might do it, that he might go to the Dark Side, even though Luke was never really “dark” before. The kinder Anakin is, the more his fall counts. He is a hero, who never believes that he betrays the Republic. He thinks he is a hero the whole time, and in the end he loses everything, until he is redeemed by his son. BUT for those of you who like the darker Anakin, be aware -- Anakin won’t be ‘toothless’ in the series. Especially in season 2, we see him tend to “do what needs to be done”, foreshadowing his choice to align with Palpatine. Though some of these actions might not seem dark at first.

TFN: Describe how you see the Jedi viewing the clones, and vice-versa.

Henry: In my mind, the Jedi see the clones as individuals, living beings that have the same right to life as any other being, but understand that they have a job to do. I’d rather not get into the Jedi’s philosophical issues about an army of living beings created to fight, but the Jedi are in a tough spot themselves, being peacekeepers turned warriors trying to save the Republic. The clones see the Jedi as their commanding officers on one hand, but also, at least subconsciously, they look to them for clues to social \ moral behavior. Some clones may find themselves getting philosophical leadership from the Jedi that helps them answer some of the deeper questions of life. We saw Yoda demonstrate this in Ambush.

Dave: I truly believe that the Jedi try to humanize their clones and make them more individual, as Henry says. I think we saw that in Revenge of the Sith, when the Clones were colorful and named under the Jedi Generals, and then in the final shots of the film with Palpatine and Vader near the new Death Star, the ships are grey, the color and life is sucked out. The Stormtroopers are only numbers and identified by black and white armor or uniforms in A New Hope. Tie-fighters don’t have shields, the soldiers have become disposable to the Emperor — that is something the Jedi would never do. The color leaving the Clone’s armor is representative of the Clones becoming Stormtroopers and the army losing it’s individuality —it was the death of the “good soldier”. At least that’s how I see it.

...

TFN: Will we ever get to see “heroes” of the Separatists? Perhaps an episode from the viewpoint of a rank-and-file Separatist to contrast with both the faceless automatons that comprise the droid army and the evil that leads both the Republic and the CIS?

Henry: Let’s call this a hard YES. Steven Melching and I have a story planned for the Clone Wars comic book that hits on this pretty hard. I’m not really sure if season 3 has any stories like this.

Dave: I think there is an evolution to the way the audience is asked to look at the war. Some views that we did not see in season one will evolve in season two, and the inevitable question “but isn’t Dooku’s criticism of the Republic being corrupt true?” may come up, but it evolves slowly as far out as season three.

...

TFN: How much freedom do you have in writing the show? Are certain characters/locations/plots off limits?

Henry: When I started writing the show bible, George said, “Stay away from Han, Chewie, Boba Fett and Jabba.” Well... George changed his mind about Jabba at the very next meeting. George also said, “And don’t go to any of the planets I went to in the films.” Then eight months later he changed his mind, “Let’s go to ‘DELETED’. What if there’s a secret Separatist base on ‘DELETED’?” So let’s just say we’ll see some familiar Star Wars places besides Tatooine. Lots more cool new planets though. George gave us a tremendous amount of freedom on the show.

Dave: George is always good at listening to ideas. He does pitch us every story now and gives us rather detailed outlines. In first season, it was a little different, but now a lot of the time George will come in and say, “I want to do a story about ‘X’.” Now the part you are all interested in — if what he pitches includes areas that are covered in the EU — this is my only real chance to get the EU material in on the ground floor of the story, right at the beginning, when George presents his idea. I will bring up ideas that are similar in the EU, or talk about how that particular group of characters already has a backstory. Sometimes I would print out whole Wookiepedia entries and show it to him, but now I use the big official encyclopedia set. In the end it is up to George whether it counts or not and that’s his right as the creator of the Star Wars Universe.

http://theforce.net/jedicouncil/interview/henrygilroyanddavefiloni.asp

 

I came here to see if anyone had specifically posted this. One thing to remember is that TCW was done three years after ROTS......

 

I don't see those two moments as analogous. Yoda had already failed to save Anakin from falling to the dark side.

 

It's a continuity breech, Yoda in RotS doesn't even know TCW happens yet.

 

Yeah, it does seem like Filoni and co. weren't really going to take this anywhere or try to connect these episodes to the movies... I know there was an interview where he said he wanted to expand on Yoda's character development to get him to his ESB version, but it doesn't seem like the 'Sacrifice' episode did much to further that.

 

The vision on Moraband doesn't really have much connection to the ending of ROTS as far as Yoda's choice goes. The vision was symbolic of Anakin "falling" to the dark side, but what it really seemed to amount to was whether or not Yoda would willingly sacrifice his friend to reveal or destroy Sidious. If he did, he would be a failure of a Jedi and he'd have to live with that decision for the rest of his life, and Palps would have beaten him. ROTS Yoda wasn't making a similar choice at the end because he wasn't being challenged to make that choice. The duel was just that, a duel. It would decide the fate of the Galaxy, so it was important, but it was just a duel.

 

Maybe he did forget. He was 880 years old or thereabouts.

 

The sole purpose of the test is to measure if Yoda is worthy of being trained in the art of not dying when you die. There was no point to forget, moral or otherwise. It was meant to pay off in ROTJ, not ROTS.

 

Bingo, Yoda couldn't stop it regardless. Anakin was gonna turn to the dark side and the Jedi were gonna be wiped out regardless of what Yoda did.

The whole test was if Yoda was strong enough to survive that and than be worthy enough to live on after death.

 

Plain and simple...I think these inconsistencies are what happens when you try to back pedal and tell a story backwards by filling in the gaps instead of telling the story straight forward.. I bet you the makers of this plot line had no idea that it could be scrutinize and bring into question the type of foreshadowing that was absent in the films due to this specific plot...bet you Filoni would have no idea how to answer this question because it didn't even cross his mind when he made the arc

 

This thread could grow to a million pages, if we point out how TCW contradicted elements of the PT.

 

I think Yoda had his reasons.

 

A little off topic this but I find it amazing that the clone wars weren't willing to let Anakin even be in the same room as Grievous during the entire clone wars series due to a few insignificant lines in ROTS but were willing do all this risky business of Yoda knowing the events like the destruction of the Jedi before ROTS. I mean they were willing to bend canon for the sake of Yoda going on a spiritual journey but weren't willing to bend it for a badass Anakin vs Grievous duel

 

Because the Anakin-Grevious lines were explicitly stated that they had not met before in ROTS. The Yoda stuff was more subtle and more liable to go unnoticed-- as it probably did with the writers.

 

Also, there is precedent from ESB that the visions (based on Yoda's conversation with Luke) that it is only a possible future regarding Yoda's vision.

 

The Anakin/Grievous lines in ROTS could actually just mean this is the first time they'd had a conversation they could have easily met beforehand in passing but not had chance to insult each other on each other's height and age

 

No, the ROTS scene is pretty definitive - Anakin and Grievous never met before that point.

 

That, and there are a lot of hints that Yoda knows a lot more about what is going on in RotS than he tells the other Jedi.

 

I think the OP raises some fantastic questions, but it's true that the 'choice' as presented in ROTS doesn't quite equate to that seen in the final episode of the Yoda arc.

 

It's a stretch but the following is my theory.

I think that Anakin was supposed to symbolize the Skywalker kids. Instead of leading the Rebel Alliance in the battle against Sidious's empire, Yoda decides to ensure that the Skywalker children will remain undetected by the Sith until one of them can finish the fight.

Perhaps Yoda knew that Obi-Wan wouldn't kill Anakin.

Furthermore, when Yoda saw that Anakin had slain many of the Jedi at the Temple, including Younglings, he might have thought he was beyond saving.

 

The Jedi, including Yoda did not like Anakin in ROTS, its hard to reconcile that with TCW which went outve its way to make Anakin a hero and change the storyline characterization of his in the actual films. Yoda at one point blantely says the prophecy misread and didnt think Anakin would survive his bout with Kenobi. Yoda and the rest of the Jedi are blatantly arrogant in the movie, and Lucas placed that in Sidious' mouth saying. The Jedi treated Anakin as little more than their own pawn and to be thrown to the wolves as they set him up as possibly another suspect, they had no trust in him(so everything he did in the movies and TCW meant squat to them by this film).

So Yoda in the TCW and this particular arc proposes problems. Yoda doesnt display any of the enlightment he learned in this arc in ROTS, just the secret weapon of immortality which was a common theme Lucas had in the film shared by both the Jedi and Sith, with the Jedi apparently having the answer while Sidious and Vader were gonna search for it together. Had Yoda in the toon arc instead, for the greater good focused his attention on killing Sidious even if that meant Anakin dying by Sidious' hands, that wouldve been the correct course. Anakin's treachery is personally responsible for the genocide of the Jedi Order and the ushering in of the Sith oppression over the Galaxy.