After a long wait, Season 2 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars has started up again, and I could not be happier. Season 1 ended on a high note as the animation advanced and the stories took on more dramatic heft, so I’ve been eagerly awaiting new episodes all summer. The fact that the season opened with a trilogy storyline — “Holocron Heist,” “Cargo of Doom,” and “Children of the Force” — makes it all the sweeter.
Early in the video game “Knights of the Old Republic 2,” the enigmatic Jedi Master Kreia talks to pilot Atton Rand about how because Atton can’t use the Force, in some ways he’s better off than the Jedi, because they have a tendency to overly rely on it. This perfectly encapsulates my love for the new character Cad Bane, a deadly Duros bounty hunter who does whatever it takes to earn his pay. He’s the most non-Jedi bad guy on the show — no Force powers like Ventress or Dooku, no lightsabers like Grievous — and yet he consistently gets the drop on the heroes more than they ever did. If anything, giving Bane the ability to use the Force would’ve held his character back. He gets by solely on his cunning and street smarts, and as these episodes show us, he’s a master of misdirection. He’s inventive in a way that the other bad guys are not, and that makes him fun to watch.
It’s really Bane who’s the star of the first two episodes, first in “Holocron Heist” when he breaks into the Jedi Temple to steal a Jedi holocron, and again in “Cargo of Doom” when he’s trapped aboard a damaged Confederate ship and maneuvers Anakin and Ahsoka into giving him exactly what he wants. The things he does aren’t Force-related or the result of any special “deus ex machina” technology — he’s just smart on his feet. He uses his droid, Todo 360, to help break him in, then sacrifices the droid to mislead the Jedi as to where he’s really headed. While Anakin and Obi-Wan are focused on the big picture and think whoever’s inside is after military intelligence, Bane’s really using that tendency against them by sending his droid on a kamikaze mission to the communications center. Only Yoda senses that something is amiss, but even he doesn’t figure it out in time. And rather than shoot his way out, he just grabs a Jedi robe and walks right out the front door. On the damaged ship, he uses his control of the ship to keep the Jedi off-balance, luring them in and then separating them so he can force Anakin to unlock the holocron. He even sneaks off the ship under their very noses, and no one’s the wiser. If he were just a hired gun who liked shooting things, he’d be a far less interesting character than the mastermind we’ve got now.
He’s also exceptionally cruel, and that makes him fun to hate because he’s so good at hurting the heroes. He sacrifices adorable Todo 360 just to throw the Jedi off his scent (not that they even needed his help anyway!) in the Jedi Temple, but he really shines in “Cargo of Doom,” in which he tortures Jedi Master Bolla Ropal to death. It’s a very grim scene, and it’s hard to say whether Bane really thought the maximum level on the torture field would get Ropal to unlock the holocron, or whether he just enjoyed torturing and killing a Jedi. He also puts Ahsoka in a death trap — knocks her out, stun-cuffs her, tortures her some more, threatens to blast her out the airlock, then does so — with a casual cruelty. A hero’s only as good as his villain, and Cad Bane has shown he’s willing to go all the way to get what he wants.
The other big character to follow in those two episodes is Ahsoka. The character was groan-inducing in her first appearances, especially since the show had an early tendency for Ahsoka Knows Best episodes, in that even when she was wrong, circumstances would vindicate her. (This is why I still can’t fully enjoy the episode “Cloak of Darkness.”) Instead, now we’re seeing her as inexperienced, reckless, and pretty unsure of herself. When “Holocron Heist” opens, she’s fighting alongside the clones on Felucia and thinks she’s winning because the droids are running away. It doesn’t occur to her that they’re not running away, they’re regrouping for a counterattack — which Anakin and Obi-Wan thankfully save her from. Later, when she’s chasing Cad Bane through the Separatist ship, she’s making exactly the same mistake Anakin made in “Shadow of Malevolence” — overconfidently assuming she can end the entire battle right there. Given Anakin’s rather lax disciplining — “Is she winning?” he asks when Obi-Wan warns him that Ahsoka’s ignoring orders to retreat — I hate to say I’m actually kind of curious to see where they go from here.
After the excitement of “Holocron Heist” and “Cargo of Doom,” I shouldn’t have been surprised that the finale, “Children of the Force,” was a little bit of a letdown. Historically, the show has been great at episodes that start off multi-episode arcs (“Jedi Crash,” “Dooku Captured,” “Rising Malevolence”) but only okay at finales (“The Gungan General” and “Destroy Malevolence” spring to mind). After last week’s entrance blew my socks off, “Children of the Force” merely rocked me with my socks on.
Cad Bane quickly steals a starfighter and makes his escape. Darth Sidious entrusts him to steal four Force-sensitive babies, but he only manages to grab two before Anakin and Ahsoka capture him on Naboo. Obi-Wan and Mace Windu get the stolen holocron back, but Bane escapes. Anakin and Ahsoka deduce that Cad Bane took the kids to Mustafar, and that’s where they go to rescue them. The kids are safe, the holocron is back, but Bane has escaped, and they have no idea who hired Bane to steal the kids.
My biggest problem is that this episode is a bit unfocused. It runs around all over the galaxy — the Republic cruiser, Coruscant, Rodia, Naboo, Bane’s hideout in the asteroid field, Mustafar — without giving us much of a chance to catch our breath, and a few times I was completely lost as to where the Jedi were going. I thought for a long time that Cad Bane was taking Obi-Wan and Mace to Mustafar, but he took them to his hideout in an asteroid field instead, and that wasn’t quite clear until we were already there.
Darth Sidious’ plot was a bit nebulous as well. So he’s going to steal these children and train them to be Sith spies so they can overwhelm the Jedi… it seems to be an unusually long-term plan, considering he’s training babies. It struck me later that perhaps this is his first foray at creating what would later be his Emperor’s Hands, but at first it just seemed like sort of a weird evil plot. The math is a little fuzzy, too — Sidious told Bane to steal four kids, but he only manages to steal two, but that’s not entirely clear because we see four bassinets on Mustafar, but Anakin and Ahsoka rescue two babies at the end, not four. I was pretty uncertain by the end of the episode whether Sidious had actually succeeded in stealing any children or not, and it’s something that could’ve been better spelled out.
Finally… why Mustafar? This is a big point of contention in the commentary video on starwars.com, because apparently George Lucas insisted that this big trilogy end on Mustafar, and Dave Filoni seemed more content to just let the planet lie until Revenge of the Sith. I think the story could’ve been serviced just as well with some other planet or even a deep-space station, because having the ending on Mustafar creates more fan headaches than I want to think about.
However, don’t take my complaints as an excuse not to watch this episode — it’s still enjoyable. We get to see Cad Bane be Cad Bane some more (seeing him pretend to be a Jedi again was a cool moment), and he’s quite good at outthinking the Jedi — it’s telling that Anakin and Ahsoka are only able to get the drop on him when they use some deception of their own. There’s also some stunning visuals, from a welcome return to Rodia to a Gungan bubble city on Naboo. And the Force-sensitive babies are cute in their own right — that little Rodian playing with the ball through the Force is mighty adorable. Still, between Anakin and Ahsoka’s tricking Bane in order to capture him, and the ominous attempt by Anakin, Obi-Wan and Mace Windu to probe Cad Bane’s mind through force, it’s easy to see how the Jedi are on a slippery slope and how the war is changing the way they think.
Benton Sartore has been reading comic books off and on since his age was in single digits, and playing RPGs since college. His bookshelf is now full of 1960s Marvel Comics, Batman trades, and Star Wars comics, and he's been known to DM Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, and Serenity. He's most proud of his DVD collection — Joss Whedon is his master now.
Benton is also an acting editor at In Genre. 
Merin on 
