Full Series The Yoda Arc (6.10-6.13) Discussion Thread

Yes Mace is an evil douche for wanting to end the war as quickly as possible. What villiany, I have to agree the problem is things have to work out because the future is already written which means the more details you add the worse the problems become.

 

Yoda agreed with Mace that the Sith had to wiped out ASAP. He does the exact same thing Mace does, when he goes to the Senate to kill Palpatine. The only difference is that Yoda survives Palpatine's assault long enough to realize that there is no chance of victory. Make no mistake, if Yoda had the opportunity to kill Palpatine and end the Sith, he would have done it. He went to the Senate to do exactly that. It's only after he failed, just as Mace did, that Yoda realizes that fighting is not the way to destroy the Sith.

 

Exactly also Yoda might have gotten in a suicide win but he was also not going to be able to win if also had to deal with a bunch of minions at the same time.

 

Just to add to this, even in the illusion in "Sacrifice" Yoda flat out says that Sidious and Dooku must not escape and must be killed if they can't be captured.

 

The only logical explanation I can come up with is that Yoda didn't tell them about how to continue living after death because he didn't know at the time. All those tests he went through were only to "prepare" himself to allow Qui-Gon to teach him. It does raise the question though as to why he didn't tell them after Qui-Gon taught him, since it seems by RotS Yoda had already been taught by Qui-Gon.

 

lol, You guys have talent in misreading what someone said. Mace is not evil. He's misleaden, like the entire Order. They themselves repeat over and over, that the Dark Side clouds everything. And as Yoda pointed it out: they were lost, in the moment they decided to participate in the war. I was simply refering to the fact, that Mace is so caught up in trying to end the war, he can't realise this simple truth. Whereas Yoda was able to figure it out by himself, proving himself worthy of the knowledge of immortality.

There's a world of difference between killing someone, when there's absolutely no other way, to stop them from causing harm, and not murdering a helpless man, even if that men survives and goes on to do horrible things.

 

I was comparing Yoda's and Mace's determination to kill Palpatine, with Obi-Wan NOT murdering the helpless Anakin/Vader on Mustafar. Because if you read back, Palpatine's case was brough up in an attempt to counter my argument, on Obi-Wan's decision.

 

Yoda figured that out after things were explained to him. Besides its a classic rock and the hard place. Its like a Casino, Palps has the machine rigged so either way results in a win for him.

 

Ah, good point! That was something I was mulling over in my head, is Ashoka or Yoda arc the One True Ending Coda to Clone Wars? (I dug the hell outta them both) But the core of the Yoda arc is really a meditation on the cost of the war and what it will lead to, for good and bad. I will say, however, for pure emotional punch, I think Ashoka walking away on the steps of the Jedi Temple may have been a more heartfelt ending if you view Clone Wars = Ashoka's tale. However, "There is another Skywalker" bit in the Yoda arc comes realllly close to me.

 

But TCW unambiguously wasn't Ahsoka's tale (although I can understand why it gravitated that way).

 

It leans towards being Ashoka's story with her being the big new main character but there's so much non-Ashoka stuff throughout the series that the Yoda arc does take the Big Picture aspect to ending the series. Show is called Clone Wars, after all.

Ashoka's story ending makes for a solid ending of it's broadcast network TV / Cartoon Network years, let's say.

 

True, plus one could also add into the mix what Yoda says to Anakin in ROTS: "Death is a natural part of life." Of course, for a Jedi, violence is a last resort, but when all other options fail, it is not outside of the Force to have to take life as well.

 

Is orange now the canon color of Korriban's Moraband's sky? Part of me was hoping for the purple sky seen in TOTJ and KOTOR II.

 

To me Ahsoka was always a necessary irritant - I didn't like her, but apparently to make this show they felt they needed a new character like that, so I accepted the trade-off (and lowered expectations). So I'm admittedly biased against seeing The Wrong Jedi as the series finale. That aside, her lines in the Yoda arc seem to only work if it took place after The Wrong Jedi, so I think for that reason alone the Yoda arc is the real finale.

 

Such an amazing arc. Probably one of the best the show has produced (especially the final 2 episodes).

 

lol I like your sig.

 

Yeah, I'm a slacker, I'm just now gonna do this. The easy part is going on and on about animation like the snow flakes around the ignited lightsaber blade or the time-lapse-shot or a beautiful Wolf Rayet star. Kevin Kliner and music that reminded me of Gargoyles everytime the clock tower was shown. The hard part was figuring out everything else. This was the toughest TCW arc for me.

Loving all the callbacks to old episodes. Right off the back Obi-wan reminds the council they've been wrong before. Remember the Obi-wan faking his death thing? Remember throwing Ahsoka to the wolves then offering her knighthood as if that would magically make things alright? Your one to talk Obi-wan didn't you screw up Mandalore? This is great because among the obvious call back to Mortis we get to see some more of the council not getting along with Anakin. Ki Adi just dismissed Anakin's "Far as we know its not possible to communicate with the dead" wish we could have seen Anakin's face. Then Mace shouts "What have you done!" all suspecting Anakin's gone and done something although he just brushes it off cuz Yoda had just got done complimenting Anakin as he talked him into helping him escape. That seen is still funny as hell by the way. It was cool to see some of Anakin and Yoda's friendship BTW.

Tim Curry sounds worse in his arc. He sounds more like he's trying to imitate Jeremy Irons then Ian Abercrombie. Its weird that Jedi records would be sealed by the Chancellor but man it was cool seeing Sidious so panicked he was beating up on Dooku. Dooku was like a living Darwin Award for the Pykes when he showed up. But I am really confused. I thought Dooku set out on a cover up mission but instead ended up just making damn sure Obi-wan connected the dots from Geonosis. That bothers me more than the Jedi having knowledge Tyrannus is Dooku and thus the clone army being given to the Republic for them to lead by the guy they are dueling. I wish Tyrannus wasn't a movie character so Sidious really could choke him to death. After all the Jedi believe the Clones are valiant men who have learned from their Jedi Generals' to be upstanding and besides that they think they'll steamroll anyone who tries to attack them. They are much more concerned about an enemy within the order and seduction by the darkside than an external threat or that one of the politicians might be the Sith they are looking for. Seems counter intuitive but I'm sure I keep missing something. In the duel Anakin seems to be getting angrier when he is fighter Dooku, even angrier than in the Rako Hardeen arc.

Liem Neeson is just epic win. Follow the wisps Yoda. Yoda's vision in the cave is alot more dramatic than ROTS. Its like a manifistation of the blackness, destruction, confusing, jadedness of war. Thoughts and fears on what can happen, not what will happen or exact causes. I get callbacks to the Order 66 arc here most deff though. Interesting there is even a blue lightsaber in the vision that kills Shaak Ti. It all ties in with dark animal Yoda's decadence of War remark and Yoda vision where he sees both his great fear of the destruction of the order and desire to go back to before. The serenity of everyone including Dooku and living Qui-gon seeming to be at the Jedi Temple Garden party. Garden Parties? Man, those were the days. I am lead to believe the mistakes Obi-wan mentioned are really meant to refer to Ahsoka.

I think the design of the planet that is the origin of life just may be my favorite because of how wild it is. With the gas that is radiating through the planet and perhaps somehow being transformed from something hot and deadly to a primordial soup coming out of a shell that protects an alien rain forest. I think the parent star is a Wolf Rayet Star.

I'd been asking for a cool space object and TCW gave me one in the final arc. That's a giant star in the process of shedding itself off into space as it dies. It'll eventually create a nebula from which new stars and planets can be born which is quite appropriate. Its a process that could repeat itself in circles.

Compare that to Korriban which looks like cold, bleak Mars with no parent star visible in the sky. Probably orbits something dim and ugly like a Brown Dwarf which is basically an aborted star. Darh Bane kinda looked like Vader, on fire. The rest of this arc just confuses me. Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and caldron bubble with Dooku and Sidious. I just couldn't figure out if the whole thing was a vision, if any of it happened if any or if it didn't. Besides obviously the take down of Sidious was a vision. Sad though its a vision Rex's last moment on screen is getting fried. Wonder if that would have been foreshadowing? Kinda like Anakin decapping Dooku in the vision. It kinda feels like filler though which is a sad thing to say about the final episode. Don't get me wrong the entire take down vision and journey was cool.

I struggle to rate this arc. But I think I've setting on 7/10, 6/10, 6/10, and 6/10. Call me slow and give me an F in force philosophy. This arc probably just overwhelmed me at times. "In blood shed we've already lost. There is another way, victory for all time." And so The Clone Wars ends its run for now with Yoda like how it started.

 

All is easily understood if one remembers that in "Voices," Qui-Gon told Yoda to tell no one and trust no one when telling him to go to Dagobah. And one of the very next people Yoda interacts with - in fact, the one he asked to help him break out of the hospital in order to GET to Dagobah - was ANAKIN. All Yoda had to do was ignore what Qui-Gon told him, even slightly, and the entire OT looks different because that would mean Darth Vader knows about Dagobah. And Jinn meant what he said for EVERY Jedi and non-Jedi anywhere, ever. "Tell no one and trust no one" is fairly clear and difficult to misconstrue: no one means NO ONE. Not Windu or any of Yoda's other best friends on the Council, not Obi-Wan (until, in all likelihood, Qui-Gon agreed to let him in on it), not Tera Sinube, not ANYONE.

Why would Qui-Gon Jinn, a Jedi Master, be so strict about that if the entire point of the quest and the immortality-trick was to preserve the Jedi Order?

Because the point isn't to preserve the CURRENT Jedi Order; Jinn knows that's already as good as toast, particularly when it's been morally and philosophically compromised. He says as much to Yoda when, after the tree-vision, he says that what he felt in there was merely a portion of what the dark side now holds, and that dark times are ahead. His "mind" (or whatever metaphysical equivalent he now has in spirit-land) is already on the future, already focused on the OT (or perhaps beyond, depending on how one chooses to read some of the dialogue in this arc). He's already anticipating the restoration of the order at a later date upon its original values, and he knows it cannot happen with the order as it is just carrying over into the future; the great upheaval approaching for the order cannot - and, in the apparent opinion of Qui-Gon and the Priestesses - should not be avoided or averted. To big-picture mindsets, such things are just nature: the old and rotten yields and dies; the young and vigorous replaces it. The old Jedi Order HAS to die for a new one to replace it; what needs to be preserved are the original VALUES of the order, which Yoda has now been reminded of, so that the new order can be taught such values in order to avoid the mistakes of the old.

And by the way, no one ever said that Yoda already knew ANYTHING about the actual immortality technique by ROTS, only that he had learned to commune with a dead man. That's it. Even at the end of "Sacrifice" it was made perfectly clear that all he had done is pass the acceptance test for training. When Yoda asks Serenity, "Now does my training begin?" she then specifically says "The one you know as Qui-Gon Jinn will commune with you and carry out your training. Like us, you shall learn to maintain your consciousness after death." So Yoda, after all that, has only gained their PERMISSION to train, but he hasn't STARTED training and probably never had the real time to in the TCW period; he still had the Outer Rim Sieges to deal with, all that jazz (which is hardly different than Luke putting off his training until he had rescued Han from Jabba in ROTJ). But with the war and the purge over and done at the end of ROTS, and he and Obi-Wan still surviving, THEN he could begin his training on Dagobah, one of the few places in the galaxy pure enough for him to be able to access Qui-Gon. It was for those years of exile, which Qui-Gon by then KNEW were coming, that he was preparing Yoda for.

 

One thing I noticed on a re-watch, was that when Yoda is hearing Qui-Gon's voice, Ki-Adi-Mundi voices a concern that the Sith are using Dooku's close connection to Yoda in the Force to attack him. This, of course, is not the case in this situation, however, the former is exactly what Sidious and Dooku do to Yoda on Moraband.

Sidious uses Dooku's close connection to Yoda, as his former apprentice, and harnesses that connection to reach across time and space to assault Yoda from half a galaxy away. Ki-Adi-Mundi was actually quite perceptive, as the Sith did exactly what he was afraid of, and used Yoda's relationship to Dooku to attack him.

I really liked the way this arc emphasized the close connection that once existed between Yoda and Dooku, how they really were Master and Apprentice. That illusion in the Temple courtyard, where Jedi Master Dooku is talking to Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan about the adventures he and Yoda used to have is a really powerful moment. You can see how Yoda remembers those events fondly, and then is filled with sorrow when he remembers that the young boy he once trained has become the sworn enemy of all Jedi.

 

And therein lies my problem with this arc. Those trials were pointless. Any Jedi seemed like they could have passed them. I think someone jokingly said that Salacious Crumb could have passed them.

They chose Yoda, like there was something special about him, but then they make him prove himself via three tests, the third of which doesn't make any sense as to why Sidious would perceive it to be a failure, since the Sith consider compassion to be a weakness. So it makes no sense for Sidious to be disheartened that Yoda would go so far as to sacrifice himself to save another.

And why the hell was Qui-Gon even selected to undego this training. As you claim, Yoda was selected because Qui-Gon sensed the end of the order. But in TPM, Qui-Gon is the one that is adamant about training Anakin, despite everyone's warnings of the danger, and by then he already would have been selected to undergo this training, since he was able to preserve his identity to some extent after death.

He is responsible for getting the ball rolling on the destruction of the Jedi Order that he then has to warn Yoda about. And the idea that Yoda could not tell anyone seems like a convenient plot device so as to avoid a plot hole, not something that makes any logical sense.

The Jedi were facing extinction, and he selects only one of them for this training, a Jedi that could have easily have been killed in Order 66 or in his subsequent fight with Palpatine. It would make more sense for Qui-Gon to try a shotgun strategy. Have several Jedi prove themselves, because as I said, there are no doubt many Jedi that could pass such stupid trials, and then hope that at least one of them survives.

But instead, Qui-Gon chooses only Yoda and tells Yoda to speak of it to nobody else. And the idea that the Jedi Order was so corrupt or compromised that Qui-Gon couldn't trust anyone other than Yoda just leads to more of that Jedi bashing that I'm gradually beginning to see eye-to-eye with anakinfansince1983 about.

 

AFS-1983 can indeed be most persuasive.

As for the rest, I'll be the first to admit these episodes have their problems; in future months I plan to go into considerable depth about these episodes and weigh both the sweet and the bitter in equal measure. It's just that for me they're just so beautiful that they transcend those problems, and my hope and expectation is that when I get around to those analyses, you'll all get a better sense of what I'm personally bringing to the table when I watch this arc.

There's but one point where I would take issue with anything you said: I'm not sure we can say that all I'm doing is "claiming" that Qui-Gon foresaw the end of the order. The arc itself seems to point the way to that conclusion. Qui-Gon frankly tells Yoda that the tree-cave vision, which depicts the death of most of the members of the Council along with several other notables, is but a portion of what the dark side now holds in store; Qui-Gon says to Yoda that dark times are ahead, and that the forces of light must remain, which is why he was chosen to take the path that only a few Jedi will take; the episode Destiny opens with the narrator specifying that Qui-Gon also explained on Dagobah that Yoda has to learn to manifest his consciousness after death if he is to preserve the Jedi Order. I'll admit I made a slight leap, but I based it on some pretty good circumstantial evidence.

 

This is complicated, as I said in another thread, by the fact that ROTS was already written. And so, it's a little late to go back and alter it to make things fit more neatly together.

But my issue here is with Qui-Gon's completely nihilistic view. He knows the Jedi Order is facing destruction, and that the Jedi themselves are facing extinction. And he puts his faith in one Jedi and explicitly tells that Jedi not to tell anyone.

The implication there, I feel is that Qui-Gon believes that the Jedi Order must fall in order to create something new, but that fall is also accompanied by the deaths of thousands of Jedi, including little kids, all for the sake of building something new with Obi-Wan and Luke.

What was Qui-Gon going to do, if Yoda told everyone? Why would Qui-Gon care if Yoda told everyone?

Would Qui-Gon say, "you told Mace Windu, when I explicitly told you not to. You can rot for all I care, because I'm not going to train you now"(?)

We know that Yoda can't tell anyone because ROTS was already written and it's clear that Obi-Wan, a council member himself, is hearing of this for the first time.

If ROTS could be revised, I would say the best way of making this work would be to in fact have Yoda go to the Council, reveal everything that he has learned, with the Jedi perhaps believing that Yoda is mistaken or being misled by the Sith, with Mace kind of becoming the de facto head of the Council as Yoda's credibility wanes. And then it could be the rest of the Council that tragically runs the Jedi Order into the ground because they dismissed Yoda. And then in ROTS they could have Yoda approach Obi-Wan about this once more, with Obi-Wan finally ready to listen, or perhaps Qui-Gon finally reveals himself to Obi-Wan then, or something like that.

But ROTS can't (or likely won't, anyway) be revised. So, instead we have to watch ROTS now with the knowledge that Yoda pretty much knows what is going to happen, but is just keeping his mouth shut because Qui-Gon told him to.

 

We must consider the possibility that though it is Qui-Gon that is saying these things, he is in all likelihood doing so because the Priestesses forbade it; the fact that neither Yoda nor any other Jedi seems to have heard of this planet or these beings, before they were revealed to Yoda by Qui-Gon, is a fair clue that they probably also forbade Qui-Gon from telling anyone about it when he went on his own never-completed training.

This could very well be a pattern with the Priestesses; they watch and study all who are strong in the Force in the universe, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're happy with the Force-sensitive people they're studying KNOWING they're being studied, or who they're being studied by. Most of those they study apparently live their entire lives never knowing that they're being studied at all. Only those apparently rare few that catch their eye are deemed worthy of even being guided to their presence; on that kind of logic, we're forced to sweep a bunch of plot holes, such as those you correctly mention, under a carpet, upon which is stitched the oh-so-trope-ish but still appropriate words "The morality of the everyday means nothing to beings as far above us - if not farther - than we are above the ants. And what means the morality of ants to us?"