Full Series Discuss/Regrade the Episode: S03E22: Wookiee Hunt

Episode 3.22 - Wookiee Hunt
Guest-Starring the Mighty Chewbacca!



"A great student is what the teacher hopes to be."

As Ahsoka and her youngling allies struggle to evade the Trandoshan hunters, their efforts receive an unexpected boost when a new captive -- Chewbacca the Wookiee -- arrives. Chewie scrounges parts from a wrecked Trandoshan slave ship, assembling a communicator to send out a distress signal. Help arrives in the towering, shaggy form of Wookiee warriors led by General Tarfful. Freed from captivity, Ahsoka returns to the Jedi Temple and is reunited with Anakin Skywalker.

http://starwars.com/explore/the-clone-wars/ep322/#!/about
Now let's regrade and discuss this episode!

 

Just because it has Chewie in it, I automatically give the episode a 10/10

 

10/10

My explanation is on the original page.

 

New episode thread has been stickied, old one has been unstickied.

 

we'll go 9/10 for this one. Good action. Good seeing the bounty hunters again. Good seeing wookies clean house.

And yet with all the wookies on screen, there were no arms being pulled from sockets. Disappointing. I really hope there are some in Ep VII or I'm going to start thinking Wookies are all talk.

 

Awesome episode and a great season finale. The continuation of the storyline with Ahsoka now stepping up and doing her best to act as a leader of the Jedi younglings Jinx & O-Mer is handled really well (I really like how the younglings starts showing their strength and using their combat skills and force powers; Jinx using the force to amplify O-Mer's jump kick on the Trandoshan they fight on the transport was a great bit) and of course, the inclusion of Chewbacca, freed from the Trandoshans' prison transport ship, is just great; not only did we get Tarkin this season but also an apperance by the towering Wookiee (one of my favorite supporting characters from the saga) and he really did get to kick ass in this one, using all his strength to give the Trandos their just desserts & he definitely got some great little moments in the episode (like when he smacked the captured Trandoshan, Smug, across the head to make him more susceptible to Jinx' mind trick); I think it was great to have this great and iconic character on the show and it certainly heightened my enjoyment of the episode and I really liked that with him and the Wookiees appearing in the last act, they brought in a bit of the well-known Wookiee/Trandoshan conflict into the show.

There's a lot of great action in this one, including the great setpiece with the attack on and destruction of the prison transport and the climax with the skirmish on the Trandoshans' floating fortress, which has to be one of my favorite sequences on the show (love it when the Wookiee soldiers, led by Tarfful of ROTS fame, show up on the bounty hunter Sugi's ship (including a cameo by Sugi and Seripas), to engage the villainous lizards in an all-out fight; now that's some cavalry and a great payoff). Ahsoka's final confrontation with Garnac, the Trando leader, was a solid finale to the climax and the entire ending of Ahsoka being reunited with Anakin on Coruscant was a lovely ending (the great music helped a lot); Yoda watching them walk away together and smiling a little was the cherry on top. The animation in this one, like in the previous episode, is really great with a lot of detail and great lighting; without a doubt, this arc is definitely one of the best-looking arcs of the show. Overall, it does everything really well, from the plot to the animation, so it is definitely a great ending to a great arc and one of my favorite episodes of the series.

10/10

 

Wookiee Hunt was a solid season finale, and certainly gave a lot of fans excitement by showing fan favorite Chewbacca for the first (and only) time in the series. Though I admit his appearance was quite stirring, I felt it made the galaxy seem quite a bit smaller. Yet another OT character that Ahsoka encounters (she has a way with attracting such attention, doesn't she?). That was a major gripe I had with this episode.

One of the best aspects of this episode was Ahsoka taking on a leadership role and organizing O-Mer and Jinx into a fighting group so that they could strike back against the Trandoshan hunters and escape the moon. Right off the bat she decided to attack the dropship that delivers prisoners to Wasskah, and while they failed to capture the ship intact, as it came crashing down after the deaths of the pilots, they did find a lone survivor, incidentally the only prisoner the Trandoshans intended to deliver: none other than Chewbacca the Wookiee himself. Later, Ahsoka converses with Chewie, being the only one amongst the Jedi to be able to speak Shyriiwook. Chewie proposes that they scour the wreckage of the dropship for parts that would allow him to build a crude transmitter to signal his homeworld Kashyyyk, which wasn't far from Wasskah. However, a Trandoshan patrol has deposited a sniper, Smug, to take out the younglings should they return to the wreckage. After Chewie and Ahsoka claim some parts, O-mer and Jinx foil the sniper and Chewie assists in capturing the Trandoshan, whom Jinx insists on using to trick the Trandoshans into sending a pick-up so that the four can escape the island.

The following morning, the group succeeds in using Smug to claim a patrol ship, and they ride up to Garnac's main ship. Meanwhile, Chewie's transmitter has successfully signaled the Wookiees, and when the four are subdued following a violent battle that claimed the lives of several Trandoshans (Chewie tossed one overboard), the Wookiees under the command of General Tarfful arrive just in the nick of time, in a ship piloted by the bounty hunters Sugi and Seripas (a very nice callback to the episode Bounty Hunters). Then an awesome Wookiees versus Trandoshans battle occurs, including this scene with Tarfful tossing Ramy overboard:

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Defenestration in progress...defenestration in progress...defenestration in progress...​

Spotting Garnac, Ahsoka pursues the Trandoshan leader into his chambers, which contains the skins and heads of many species, including this skull. Garnac attempts to ambush Ahsoka whilst brandishing an axe, but the Jedi is too quick for him, and a fight ensues. Garnac, attempting to avenge his son and claim the Togruta's hide as his own, tries to skin her alive with a vibroknife, but Ahsoka resists, and when Garnac tries to reach for his blaster, she blasts him a powerful Force Push that sends him sprawling over the ledge to his death on the lower decks below. A violent end to a most violent individual.

With the Trandoshans dead (nine named Trandos died in this episode!), the group is able to return home. Back at the Jedi Temple at Coruscant, Anakin greets Ahsoka with the utmost relief, expressing his belief that he had failed his Padawan by not being able to find her, but Ahsoka reassures him that the experience has made her into a stronger, more independent Jedi. There was definite character development for Ahsoka in this arc, and I have to admit compared to the previous arc she is a bit less Mary Sue-ish. It seems that the final scene fits the fortune cookie well, "A great student is what the teacher hopes to be." Though it seems odd that by the end of Season 3 Ahsoka's maturity is fast eclipsing that of her Master... It seemed like only a season ago that she was still a relatively bratty, immature 14-year old Padawan. Rapid character development through traumatizing circumstances, indeed...

Ultimately I decide to give this episode a 7.5/10, a very solid episode with a great payoff and beautiful visuals, and all the Trandoshan hunters met fitting ends.O-mer and Jinx acquitted themselves nicely, and I wished we had seen them again in future episodes. Ahsoka was used pretty well in this episode, but what bothered me most was that Chewie, of all the random Wookiees they could have chosen, had to appear to show us that Ahsoka gets to meet all this very important characters. But I can't deny the cameo wasn't fun.

 

This would get a 9 for great mix of action plus message plus OT goodness with Chewbacca...but the fact that this is the only episode in the whole series where KK uses a certain John Williams Ep. IV action motif (when the Wookiee soldiers arrive to save Chewbacca and Ahsoka) puts it up to a 10. I think this is the first I've rated this episode that high...

 

It makes me wonder what kinda interesting conversations might have happened between Chewie and Han down the line.

Han Solo: This all binding super powerful Force crud? Don't make me laugh! Hokey religions and ancient weapons my outlaw Corellian @$$!

Chewbacca (translated on the fly): Oh yeah? Well, there was this one time, on Wasskah.....

 

There's also Chewbacca and Yoda's interactions in ROTS.. Han would probably be one that needs to see it with his own eyes.

 

Where's the window?

 

Fair enough. You're the first to notice this and mention it, although I was well aware that the scene wasn't a literal representation of the word, by any means. Still, I was trying to make an obscure Mass Effect reference ("decontamination in progress") that apparently flew over everyone's heads, so my mistake. Nevertheless, Season 3 did have a couple of notable defenestrations: Dooku to the Nightsisters in Nightsisters, and the Father to his children in Altar of Mortis. I just love that word. Here's a good example of a defenestration.

So I forgot to add my final tally of episode scores for Season 3. All in all, this season scores a 7.18/10, based on the total score (158/220). A decent season, but one ultimately hampered by a great deal of inconsistent episode quality; to me, the first half was very poor or forgettable, while the second half was mostly brilliant (the Nightsisters trilogy remains one of my personal favorites of the entire series, and I liked the Mortis arc too). I felt the second half of Season 3 was the turning point in which the stories of TCW really began to get interesting. Even if the overall storytelling quality wasn't necessarily improving (the series has always been hit-and-miss), at the very least animation quality was definitely on an upward trend. I know there are those that do think Season 3 was the beginning of the end for the series' quality, though, and it's true more major retcons started to be introduced in Season 3, like Piell's death. And some might say that the series began to jump the shark Karkarodon then. I can understand. Different strokes for different folks.

 

Gotta add that Tarfful stomping in Gilas' face was pretty brutal but also pretty awesome; Wookiees rule and we should have seen more Wookiee action in ROTS (having them go all out on the battle droids; ripping off their limbs, kicking them around & such).

(Also, this arc cemented the fact that the biggest enemy of Trandoshans is gravity; seriously, out of the twelve Trandos in Garnac's team, half of them fell to their deaths, including Garnac himself).