Nov 14, 2009 02:00 PM
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Wed Feb 10
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Last night's Star Wars: The Clone Wars may not have been as brutal as the week before, but "Weapons Factory" also showed off one of the strange things about the series: Celebrating the non-Jedi emotions that'll turn Anakin Darth-like. Spoilers.
Skipping over the lack of logic in the McGuffin necessary to get the plot going where it was supposed to (Seriously, it was a better idea to send the two apprentices off alone to complete a mission than one apprentice and one Jedi? Or, for that matter, two Jedi, and leave the apprentices leading the clone troops, as we've seen many times before?), the moral of last night's episode seemed to be "Sometimes that Jedi training is a drag." Without the mad improvisational skillz taught to her by Anakin, Ahsoka and Barris would've failed in their mission, after all, and if Anakin hadn't let his emotions overwhelm him and keep looking for the missing Padawans, then... well, they still probably would've been discovered eventually, but still.
I'm all for morals being "Sometimes you have to do what you know is right, irregardless of peer pressure/authority/whatever," but everytime we see Anakin save the day by listening to his inner voice instead of other, more experienced Jedi, I keep thinking "Wait, so he's just taking another small step towards killing all those kids in Revenge of The Sith, right?" I mean, I get that we're not really supposed to think about the fact that the hero of the show turns into a child-murdering galactic dictator too much - It kind of makes you think of that whole "What if you could travel back in time and kill Hitler" thing, and makes you wish that Ahsoka would accidentally slip and chop Anakin's head off, or maybe that's just me - but by repeating the schtick so often, it draws attention to it so much that it's impossible to avoid: The thing that saves the day so often now will end up being the biggest problem of all soon enough. Suddenly, the show becomes more ambiguous and subversive than it probably meant to be.
Of course, it all makes sense in the larger context (Luke combines Jedi training with emotion to bring "balance to the Force," like Anakin was supposed to before he was manipulated by Palpatine and became too emotional), but nonetheless, it makes episodes like "Weapons Factory" feel curiously off-balance. Shouldn't we get some more episodes about the value of calming down and thinking things through, every now and again, just to even everything out? Before The Clone Wars ends, whenever that may be, it'd be nice to see that addressed - and if it takes the death of Ahsoka to do that, then that wouldn't be too much of a problem for me.
Send an email to Graeme McMillan, the author of this post, at graeme@io9.com.
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