Last night's double-length premiere, "Holocron Heist/Cargo of Doom," brought Cad Bane further to the forefront of the series after his appearance at the end of last season, but what made the episodes work weren't so much that character - He's still pretty much a cypher who's just a little bit less inept and more successful than last season's villains; given that he's working for Darth Sidious, he's essentially just another Seperatist flunkie, as opposed to part of a theoretical third Bounty Hunter faction as was teased previously - as much as the show finally finding balance between comedic side characters, action and character development. We got to see Anakin's emotions overpowering his mission (Hi, Revenge of The Sith foreshadowing!) when he gave in to Bane to save the life of Ahsoka, as well as Ahsoka learning the wrong lessons from Anakin's tutelage at the opening of the episode (Winning isn't everything, unless your name is Skywalker, it seems), but this was nicely balanced with some of the best action sequences the series has come up with - and so many of them! Battles in space, zero-gravity battles aboard spacecraft (with some wonderful choreography from the animators), lightsaber duels, and large-scale ground battles were all on offer, bringing a sense of large scale... well, war, to the series that we hadn't really seen since the show's earliest days.

In addition to all of this, the start of what looks to be a subplot running all through the season - Darth Sidious looking for all the future Jedi by stealing a database of all known "force sensitive" children in the universe. After a first season that seemed fragmented and scattered a lot of the time, bringing a throughline to this second season (and one that makes sense in the larger Star Wars context) is very welcome, giving the show a necessary continuity and unique story to tell that it's missed up until this point. Not to mention, Bane's supposed death (Because, sure, there's no way he's that clone trooper who's wandering around with the sore arm at the end of the episode, nooooooo) being a fun, if obvious, swerve so early on, if one betrayed by publicity for the season featuring him so prominently.

All in all, the return of Clone Wars was a surprise joy: It was more confident than before, and deservedly so - everyone involved had raised their game, and gave us the most "Star Wars-y" Star Wars we've seen in years... even moreso than the movies this series is based on. Let's see if they can keep it up all season.

Clone Wars creator Dave Filoni emphasized that the bounty hunters will add some color to the second season, breaking up the usual clone-versus-drone plotlines. Cad Bane, who will serve as one of the season's major antagonists, appeared at the end of last season, and this season we will see bounty hunters from other Star Wars media, including The Empire Strike Back's fearsome, carnivorous Bossk:

The Clone Wars second season premieres on October 2nd.

As much as the introduction of new character Cad Bane was trailed as being the selling point for "Hostage Crisis," he was nowhere near the best thing about it... In fact, he was worryingly generic, all machismo and mystery without much to make you that interested in him (He even lacked the visual impact of other Star Wars badasses like Boba Fett or Darth Maul; he was just a guy without a nose in a trenchcoat). Although the action of the episode was well-done and engaging - in part because, for once, the Jedi didn't obviously have the upper hand from the start - and the animation was (for the most part) as strong as ever, what satisfied so much was a surprising new-found maturity in the writing.

Yes, I said maturity. For Clone Wars. Get used to it.
It wasn't just the opening scenes of Anakin and Padme discussing their relationship displaying a subtlety in foreshadowing Anakin's dark side (Or the series coming close to admitting just how ridiculous their "secret relationship" is, in what had to have been a wink to the audience), and in the same episode that introduces Senator Organa to the series, knowing that he'll take one of Padme and Anakin's children in the future, for that matter; there was something oddly pleasing about closing the season with the bad guys just outright winning, and doing so by freeing Ziro The Hutt, everyone's favorite giant lizard Truman Capote from the Clone Wars movie. It brought a sense of closure (as well as a sense of continuity) to the season that it possibly didn't deserve, but was nonetheless very welcome. I'd love it if the show continued down this more... morally ambiguous if probably too generous a term, but almost fits, route, showing more of a darker side to its heroes and less of a constant stalemate between both sides in the war. If we need to bring in bounty hunters to do it, then I'm perfectly happy with that, as long as we don't see more Baby Boba along the way.

It wasn't a perfect season finale - the ending itself was very anti-climactic, perhaps a "to be continued" that failed to go off - but it was more than enough to make me look forward to what happens when the show returns next fall. Here's hoping that it'll include things going wrong a lot more often.