Full Series The Clone Wars - Episode 5.2 - A War on Two Fronts - discussion thread

It's rare that we see Anakin and Mace agree with each other

 

They are loyal to the previous king and don't accept the current one. Just like the rebels in OT who didn't accept the Empire. I think that upcoming episodes explain more what sort of rule there is in Onderon and why people want to rebel against it. I don't think every detail needs to be spoonfed.

Shouldn't be too hard in CIS-world.... I guess it could make a webcomic if they would still do such things....

Have we seen such thing in TCW? Jedi don't topple legitimate governments but CIS-governments are many times illegal. Onderon has left the Republic and not taken violently during the war like Ryloth or Christophsis. It is not under enslavement or military occupation like many CIS-worlds, probably some locals actually support the CIS. I guess the main reason why Onderon is different is that they are not planning to attack there with clones- they support internal disorder instead. They have no time to fight a war for them so they want to teach them how to survive WITHOUT jedi. That's why they won't fight.

Well yeah that one made me laugh - Steela is sniper with such a poor eye vision?

I hardly think that Lux is legitimate senator in eyes of the current king. Probably rebels hope that Lux would be senator in the future since he is on their side and politically educated. And position of senator could be hereditary in theory while that's not democracy really... I don't know- too early to say all these things before we see the entire arc- then we can criticize more.

 

Well, Onderon won't need a Senator, if the rebels depose the CIS king and institute their own. I assumed that Onderon would remain independent, they don't want to rejoin the Republic. I'd like to know if the CIS king (or Dooku) instituted his own puppet Senator in the CIS parliament, after Mina's death.

 

This episode had a few great aspects while being mostly boring. I can't bring myself to do a full WALL-OF-TEXT write-up because on each re-watch this one has felt more and more mediocre. There's so much time wasted, there's just not nearly as much to write about next to Revival.

I absolutely love the dynamic between Anakin and Obi-Wan in this episode. Obi-Wan going along not because he distrusts Anakin but because he's self-conscious about trusting him too much works perfectly. Then at the end, another perfect moment when Anakin has his head stuck in the future and suggests Obi-Wan knows the plan will work, and Obi-Wan corrects him that he's merely hopeful. Anakin shows a tiny microcosm of why he fell to the dark side by overestimating the degree to which he can control fate.

Other than that and the robes (which were AMAZING to finally see and make this whole thing feel much more connected to the OT for me) this episode was mostly filler. Spending half an episode on elementary training sessions really felt like a TCW S1 move. Not a fan.

And then there's Luxoka...

AHSOKA TEEN ROMANCE = DO NOT WANT

I really hope it goes nowhere. The only good thing that could come of it is seeing how Anakin handles it and if that's interesting.

This episode is 20% amazing, 10% crap, and 70% mediocre. Overall, disappointing. Smart move not making this the season opener.

 

Adding the robes seems like such a minor thing, but it immediately made every scene 15,732 times better.

 

+1

 

So can I ask a question?

What's the main story in this Arc? Is it the bland and generic war between droids and rebels who we all know are going to win?

Or is it the Love Square between Ahsoka, Lux, Steela and that black guy? Either way, this story seems screwed from launch. But at least with the latter we can get a foursome going, or at least a make out scene between Lux and Ahsoka.

 

Hell no... x.x;

I'm assuming where we are going from here is the Rebels are going to go to town and try to use guerilla tactics to destroy droids and over throw an unrightful king. Yeah we've seen these stories before but as an upside I'm not feeling TCW's regular circle yet. There isn't a clear monster of the day established yet. There is obviously someone behind this yet to be revealed.

 

Eh, the whole "Master in the dark" concept is ruined since...well Palpatine. But maybe this can still turn out well.

 

TCW is about the Journey. Not what happens at the end. You just gotta relax and take in the journey. This arc like Umbara is going to be mostly original characters which should help make it far more interesting. It makes things much less predictable. Things can happen and folks can die. I'm calling it now for Saw.

 

The thing I love about this arc the most is the sheer unpredictability of the characters for me (besides knowing

Spoiler

the king will fall

, there's not much else and that is great, versus the "I will kill Kenobi face-to-face" from Grievous for the millionth time.

 

IMO: Gerrera is the betrayer in this arc, so yeah.... whack him.

 

Can it really be a Square Steela and Saw are siblings after all so its not like they are going to date each other. So Ahsoka doing anything with Saw would just be sticking it to Lux.

No one looks like a traitor. No motive. Besides this arc probably ends with Saw getting to be King and Lux getting to be Senator.

 

Yeah, but the journey between AotC and RotS that has already been done, and done far better by other works.

 

^ Agreed

I've said this once, and I'll say it again.
I'd rather see the war, and not the magical adventures with the Zabrak brothers. If feels like TCW is veering off at random points of the season with them. I went back and went through my reviews over from season 3-4 and notice how erratic my ratings were. At some points.. I even lost interest about catching TCW on TV because I had no excitement for the episode at all. This saddens me, because in season 1, I'd just die if I missed an episode. I dunno.. I just think TCW needs to focus on building a bridge to RotS, not build a whole new story. (this is not towards this episode)

/tired rant

 

^ *I* like the TCW journey between AoTC and ROTS. (Almost always.)

 

And this arc is C.I.S. vs. Republic. The battle droids are clearly aggressors and the republic is building up a guerilla group to fight them pretty much on the Republic's behalf. Sure the Jedi Council makes it out to be like they are giving the rebels a chance to liberate their own planet. That's not what its really about about. TCW can't be Ryloth, Geonosis, and Umbara all the time. I love clone troopers but I don't need to see them all the time. We need more stuff like Slaves of the Republic and the Rako Hardeen arc as well. Droids vs clones all the time would get boring as much as that is a major part of The Clone Wars and that does need to be shown more. The scope of the war and what is going on in the snapshots of this era is clearly larger within TCW. I expect that some how some way before TCW bridges into ROTS it will tie all this stuff together. This arc with almost all original non clone characters in mortal danger is something TCW has been needing.

 

As do I.

 

Star Wars is best in a video format - it matches the films.

 

No, it doesn't even match the films, because they don't even do things like mention "a border dispute on Ansion" or "that business on Cato Neimoidia" beyond things like the events from Young Jedi in this episode. The Clone Wars itself was introduced in a passing reference by Obi-Wan in ANH. Mia pointed out that they didn't even mention the Battle of Kamino from the comics, even though it was the reason why the underwater assault happened.

 

It does match the films because Obi-Wan describes his relationship with Anakin Skywalker to Luke as a brother Jedi Knight and good friend and Yoda describes some of his personality and how it related to his fall to the dark side in the OT as well. Despite its flaws, this episode does a great job of showing that connection in a way the PT almost completely failed to, albeit for a regrettably small fraction of the episode. The Ep. III references to off-screen stuff don't do as much as situations like we see them being placed in in this episode.

 

We are going to have to agree to disagree because I don't see it that way due to novels like Labyrinth of Evil and the beginning of Revenge of the Sith.

 

Agree to disagree.

 

These type of wrong opinions never fail to make me sad. But I'll get over it.

GM Edit: This type of baiting post is just setting the thread up for failure. We've talked about this before.