Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV Show Review

All right, everyone, so, like what I was saying in the last post when I showed the trailer for the next season of the Mandalorian, I mentioned how I was also rewatching all of Star Wars: The Clone Wars on Disney+. And I just finished watching it just a little while ago. So, in preparation of the next season of the Mandalorian, I wanted to rewatch all of this along with Star Wars: Rebels and do a review for both of them. So, let's get started with the Clone Wars series that originally aired on Cartoon Network. I remember seeing bits and pieces from this series on TV when I was a kid, but I was never really interested in it. But, gratefully, I began getting interesting in it in recent years and I finally decided to watch the entire show on Disney+. This series is all centred on what happened in the Clone Wars between Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith. And this is the series that made the prequel stuff really interesting. Unlike the movies where most of everything was super boring and all the other things everyone has said about the prequel trilogy, this actually made all of that stuff interesting. And all the characters and writing are a whole lot better than the movies. Well, okay, there was a movie that came out before this that was essentially what started this series, and, like everyone has said, it's pretty bad. But, thankfully, everything that movie did wrong, this series improved tenfold. So, I'm just gonna do what I did for my Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend Of Korra reviews where I go season by season and talk about my thoughts with each one. Okay, so first off, the first season doesn't have the best of the series. The first season is probably the least of the series because there are some episodes that are kinda boring and some characters are kinda annoying. But there are still some great moments. These episodes are mostly episodic with the Jedi being dispatched to different planets to stop the separatists along with Count Dooku and General Grievous. There are definitely some stand out episodes like the episode where there's a traitorous clone trooper and Rex and Cody are trying to find out who it is. Or the one where R2 is captured by Grievous and Anakin and Ahsoka trying to rescue him. I also liked the Blue Sky Virus episode. There're stand out episodes like them in the first season, but some are pretty boring and the story can feel meandering as a result. Also, something else this season didn't do very well was Ahsoka. Like I said in the last entry, Ahsoka has always been my favourite character in the show with the clips I've seen her in. I've loved her in everything I've seen her in and her along with Rex are some of, if not, maybe, my favourite Star Wars characters. However, this season didn't do her very well. She was often shown as just doing things the way she wanted and being a bit of a whiner. I was constantly waiting for when she would get better because I knew that she eventually would. But that didn't happen in the first season. There's also a weird thing this show did where some episodes were placed out of order. This isn't because of Disney+, this is because this is how they were originally aired and so it's really weird because the order of the episodes was wrong so that was really weird. So, overall, Season 1 of this series is definitely the least of the show and there are problems with it. I was getting through it all right, but there were some boring moments and some episodes are kind of a drag. But, moving on to Season 2, this is definitely an improvement over the first season. There's a lot of things in this that are a lot more interesting and entertaining and Ahsoka got way better in this. For one, this season introduced some really great and hateable villains who you kinda wish would die even though you know they're not gonna. In fact, this whole series has those, instances where you want something to happen, but from having the knowledge of the movies, you know it's not gonna happen. The most notable of villains like that is Cad Bane. A bounty hunter who does a lot of terrible things and you want him to die, but you know he won't. Anyway, this season is centred on bounty hunters a lot. And I like the arcs in this a lot more too. Like there's one involving Ahsoka and another padawan who's also a friend of hers, Barriss Offee, who are on this ship with clones who have been infected with a parasite which begins to make them turn on the Jedi. So, that part of the season is pretty fun and I like how Ahsoka had to make the ship freeze to kill all the parasites. However, there's also some filler in this show too. One of the biggest examples I can think of is in this season where Anakin and Mace Windu are on this planet with this huge creature called a Zillo Beast. This is a two parter and the whole thing is just a filler arc. Though it does make Mace look like a more likeable character. It does however feel like a bit of a waste of time because there's nothing in it that connects to the later parts of the show. There is however a pretty cool aspect to the season where Boba Fett returns and he's trying to get revenge on Mace for what happened with Jango. And I liked those episodes too and I like how this show introduced us to the Mandalorians. Not just that, we get introduced to Mandalore, the planet where they come from. We even meet Duchess Satine, the ruler of Mandalore who's even someone that Obi-Wan has a crush on. So we get to see a different side to him that we haven't before and I like what they do on the planet like when we see that there's a traitor in this group along with Satine. There's a lot of great episodes like those in the show that definitely help the show stand out. Again, there are those filler episodes that bring it down a bit, though, they're not the worst ones because the worst part is a bit later on that's also the worst part of the whole show in my opinion that I'll get into in a bit. Overall, this season was definitely an improvement over the first even if it does have its own problems and some more episodes out of order. That happens a lot throughout the series as well. Anyway, the third season is where a lot of way better things really begins. This season actually begins to put more enthesis on the clone because the first two episodes are on Kamino with some new clones being trained and then there's the episode where Ventress and Grievous attempt to destroy the cloning process. I like how they put the focus on the clones because it shows that they're not just some useless pawns. They show that they care for one another and they can all have individual personalities. The biggest ones I can think of besides Rex and Cody are Fives and Echo. This season also gives Ahsoka more to do and I really like a lot of what she does here like she's tasked with teaching some kids on Mandalore about the corruption in places and I like seeing her being able to do things like that and she even gets a nice episode with Padmé with her getting visions of an assassin trying to kill her so Ahsoka does everything she can to protect her. This season also gives more backstory on Ventress, which was nice. Darth Sidious tells Count Dooku to betray her and kill her before she gets too powerful which leads her to go to home planet of Dathomir where we meet her fellow Nightsisters. Everything they do with her here is really interesting, especially when we meet Mother Talzin and then we see her plan to get revenge on Dooku. She selects a Nightbrother to give power to and tries to get him on Dooku's side to betray him. And the Nightbrother she chooses, Savage Opress, is really cool. Not only just with the Force, but he's physically strong as well. And we get a lot of great moments with him like when he and Ventress fight Dooku or when he fight both of them or when he returns to Dathomir and Talzin even tells him about how Darth Maul is still alive so he goes on a journey to find him. But, my favourite part of this season is when Anakin, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka end up on some planet somewhere where the Force is incredibly strong and these three creatures who are insanely powerful with it. They're a man and his son and daughter. His daughter represents the light side whereas his son represents the dark side. And we get a lot of great moments with this part like when the Son, which is literally his name, controls Ahsoka and she turns evil and we get a cool fight with her against Anakin and Obi-Wan.

And then it keeps going when the Son then shows Anakin the future of what happens in Revenge Of The Sith, especially the part where he becomes Darth Vader and we even see the Vader helmet. Anakin then even turns evil briefly until the father erases his memory of ever seeing it.

And, overall, this part of the series is really great and there's a lot of great moments too. And then, right after that, we get another great part, the Citadel. This is something I remembered watching a bit of when I was a kid and it was kinda nostalgic watching it again. It's when we're shown Tarkin in the show and we see them trying to save another Jedi with information about the separatists but then he's killed and so he shares the information with Ahsoka and she has to be the one to deliver it along with the other part of it that Tarkin has. It was nice to see those episodes again. Something else I liked about this was what they did with kinda give Ahsoka a love interest. On a mission with Padmé to a friend of hers, she meets her friend's son, Lux.

And the two of them sorta begin to really like each other and they do different things with them in the series, though, there are some things about their story I don't like. I'll get into that later. And the last part of this season is focused on Ahsoka as she's kidnapped and used for hunting. This two parter is a bit of a drag. I mean, I didn't find it terrible, there were some points where I was getting kinda bored in this. But there were some great moments like when she befriends some other people there who are like her and are even Jedi themselves. And we even see Chewbacca here. He gets captured like them and put on this place too. And it was cool to see him and Ahsoka team up. And I liked the ending of it with Anakin and Ahsoka with them having a nice chat. The season afterwards is kind of a weird one for me because it has a lot of things in it I like and some things I really didn't. For one, I didn't like the first few episodes. I mostly found them a little boring. They revolve around Anakin, Ahsoka, Padmé and Kit Fisto trying to help this water world and I just wasn't really invested at all. The other big part of this story actually introduces a really hateable character. A Jedi traitor, Pong Krell, who really hates clones and is actually in league with the separatists. And you just end up hating this guy with everything he does with trying to kill the clones and using their loyalty against them. So, while I found this story to be a bit too long, I thought following the clones was good given how you felt so sorry for them, especially Rex with having to take orders from this guy, until they eventually expose him and stop him. The next big part of the story is when we go to Ahsoka's home world where her, Anakin and Obi-Wan go to free her people from slave owners and Obi-Wan even tells her about Anakin's past along with all of them having to save the planet from bombs. We even see them going to another planet where Anakin has to try to pretend to be a slave owner and pretend to give over Ahsoka as a slave along with the rest of her people. This even has Obi-Wan and Rex as  slaves and this part does have some kinda hard to watch scenes, especially since this is a kid's show. Which, on that note, is pretty brutal. As a kid's show, there are some really hardcore things in this like the way some characters die or how some might be dismembered and all sorts of things like that. I imagine some kids would be kinda terrified by some of the things in this. And this part of the story is really great in that way with having things that might be kinda rough to watch with having some people in slavery and having their spirits be crushed. It's really sad to watch that, but it's done really well in the sense that writing makes us care about these characters so much. This season also brought back Lux and it was nice to see him again because, like I said, I like him and Ahsoka together and it was just cool to see him again. Though, in the episode we see him in, he kinda tricks Ahsoka because he's trying to make a deal with Death Watch, these Mandalorian terrorists. One of them even has the Darksaber that I mentioned in my Mandalorian: Season 1 review. Thankfully, he does learn his lesson and do the right thing at the end. Then, right after that episode, we get another story arc that I'm kinda mixed on. It's where Obi-Wan fakes his own death and tries to pose as a bounty hunter by order of the Jedi Council to capture Cad Bane. This is another one where I feel it goes on for too long because there were some parts where it just got really boring for me and I was losing interest, but it wasn't bad, it was cool at the end when they finally caught Bane and some other bounty hunter. But then the season ends with us seeing Savage again and we see him finding Maul on some planet somewhere with his legs missing and replaced with some metal ones and he's also kinda lost his mind after his fight with Obi-Wan. But after he brings him back to Dathomir where Talzin fixes him and gives him new legs. He and Savage then begin to plan to kill Obi-Wan and Ventress. And we get a really cool fight in the last episode of this season where Obi-Wan and Ventress team up against the two of them. And it's cool when Ventress sorta begins to show signs of possibly being good. And the first episode of the next season is the continuation of that where Obi-Wan teams up with Hondo and some other pirates to fight the two of them. But this season does have some of my favourite moments in the series as well the worst part in my opinion. For starters, after the first episode where Obi-Wan and the pirates fight Maul and Savage, we get an arc I really liked. Anakin, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka go to a planet  where Lux is and we meet Saw Gerrera there along with his sister, Steela. Saw Gurrera would later go on to be seen in Rogue One and Jedi: Fallen Order. So it was cool to see where he came from originally. And this is the one part where I didn't like the thing between Ahsoka and Lux because Lux is sorta torn on who he likes more, either Ahsoka or Steela. That whole part was pretty clichiéd and the part of this story I liked the least. But I liked everything else about it. The battle on the planet with them trying to free the king and trying to liberate the whole planet. But then at the end, it's pretty tragic when Steela dies. I didn't see that coming at all and it was pretty sad when she died. This season also has some other pretty good episodes that're kinda sweet like there's one where Ahsoka and Yoda are with a group of younglings and are trying to help them find their Kyber Crystals for their Lightsabers. I like the idea of Ahsoka leading younglings like this. It sorta helps show how much she's maturing and it's nice to see anyway. However, now we're gonna get into what I consider the worst aspect about this show and that's the filler arc in this. Yeah, despite this being a regular American show, there's some filler in this like an anime and this season has the worst one in my opinion. It revolves around R2 teaming up with some other droids along with a small coronel to track something down but they get lost after they get it on a desert planet. And this whole thing is four episodes long, so that's over two hours and I found it so boring. Not just boring, but also annoying because the coronal himself is egotistical and one of the droids can talk and is really annoying. And a lot of the time it's just wandering around a desert and it's so boring. I was constantly waiting for this to be over, but it just kept going and going. They eventually find a lost clone trooper who's lost his memory and that's when it kinda begins to pick itself up, but, the rest of it is so boring and, if you're hoping to watch the series, I would definitely say skip this. It's so boring. But, thankfully, some of the best aspects of the series comes right afterwards. One of them is when we see Maul invade Manadlore with him siding with the Death Watch to take over Mandalore. But then they kinda split in half because some don't like what he's doing so some side with him and some don't. But we get a pretty sad moment where Maul kills Satine right in front of Obi-Wan and then it's revealed that one of the main Mandalorians we see is actually Satine's sister. And, not only that, but in that same episode, Sidious arrives and fights Maul and Savage. And it's a really cool fight. Not just with the awesome action, but Maul also got the Darksaber from that one Mandalorian after beating him in a fight so he fights with that too. He's obviously defeated though and Savage is killed with Sidious letting Maul live because he wants him to do something. But then, probably not the best thing in the show, but probably my second favourite part of the series comes right afterwards. There's an attack in the Jedi Temple and someone is trying to frame Ahsoka and make it look like she's a traitor. And there's a lot of tension in this part with the real traitor doing everything they can to make Ahsoka look guilty. Not only is she locked up as a result, but she gets help escaping and is now on the run with the clones and Anakin trying to capture her. Here's one part that I love.

And now Ahsoka is on the run trying to avoid the Jedi and the authorities and trying to find out who's framing her. Again, I had seen this in clips and things like that a lot before I rewatched this on Disney+ so I knew what was gonna happen, but it was still nice to watch it nonetheless. We even see Ahsoka teaming up with Ventress who's now just kinda wandering around Coruscant trying to get by but she agrees to help since she's no longer in league with Dooku and Ahsoka agrees to help pardon her crimes if she helps her. But then, a whole bunch of stuff happens until it's revealed the traitor is Barriss Offee. That other padawan who was Ahsoka's friend. Eventually Anakin finds out and we get a cool fight with the two of them while Ahsoka is on trial.

But, after this, Ahsoka decides to leave the Jedi Order due to her faith in them being shaken afterwards. So, that's really the end of Season 5. Season 6 was the last season for a while because it didn't have a definitive final season for a few years until recently. But Season 6 does have a lot of moments that are frustrating. And I mean that in a good way because we see so many instances where the good guys are so close to winning and exposing Sidious and his plan in Revenge Of Sith but they keep failing. We obviously know it's not gonna happen because we already know what happens in that movie, but it's still incredibly frustrating. Like when Fives is about to reveal the purpose of the inhibitor chips in the clone's head, but then he's shot dead, or another Jedi is about to tell Anakin and Obi-Wan about another Jedi named Syfo-Dias, but then Dooku shows up and kills him. And the last episodes are showing Yoda trying to investigate why he's hearing the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn and he goes to some different planets trying to gain more knowledge about the Force and all sorts of things like that. This whole time watching Season 6, I was really missing Ahsoka because she never shows up once in this whole season, but I was really enjoying what was happening. And that's how the show was for a while. But, thankfully, because of Disney+, we finally got a real proper ending. The seventh season is the last season of this show and the only one that's a Disney+ original. This one is actually only twelve episodes long and only has three arcs in it. The first eight episodes are kind of nothing episodes. The first four focus on a group of clones called the Bad Batch, which are a special group of clones along with Rex trying to find Echo after the citadel episode. This kinda helps explain what happened to him, but the rest is mostly focused on action and it's pretty cool, though I did find myself bored after a while. They were fine to watch, but they're not super integral to watch. The next four focus on Ahsoka finally returning, which got me really excited to focus on her again, but then she get a kinda bland story for the next four episodes. She comes across these two sisters who are trying to get more money by delivering a dangerous spice to the Pikes who we've seen a few times in the series and Ahsoka knows them to be really dangerous people. But the sisters, Trace and Rafa, are trying to get by with getting money to just live their lives. And, yeah, these episodes are a major drag. I love how we got to see Ahsoka again, but these episodes felt really boring after a while. Not as boring as that other filler arc I mentioned before with R2 and that coronal, but still. One episode is all about them getting out of jail but then they end up in jail again at the end, so that episode felt really pointless. The only thing about them was that Trace and Rafa have a distrust towards the Jedi due to what happened with their parents, but, there's not much to these episodes at all. But then, the entire thing was completely worth it with the last four episodes which is might be tied with the first season of the Mandalorian in regards to my favourite thing Disney has ever done with Star Wars. Everything about these last four episodes are absolutely amazing. This is the big, epic, tense Star Wars content I've wanted to see for a long time. It starts with Ahsoka having met Satine's sister from Mandalore, Bo-Katan, and they team up to take down Maul who's still on Mandalore. They even get help from Anakin and Obi-Wan who supply them with clones like Rex and Anakin gives her back her Lightsabers, and he even made them blue this time. The clones have even painted their helmets to look like Ahsoka's face to honour her and it's really sweet. The first two of these episodes are about Ahsoka, Bo-Katan, Rex, the clones and the Mandalorians on their side going up against Maul and his army of Mandalorians. And the whole thing is so cool and epic. It even ends with Ahsoka going up against Maul himself in an awesome Lightsaber fight which was made from using motion capture. They managed to get Ray Park and some other actor to do the motion capture for this fight and it's incredible. Not only that, but I love Maul's portrayal here because he knows what's gonna happen with him feeling Sidious is about to make his move and it's really chilling. Though, I do need to mention that I did see this already too. I knew everything that was gonna happen here from seeing clips and hearing different people's thoughts on the season, but that didn't make it any easier to watch due to what happens next. After capturing Maul, Ahsoka and the clones are on a ship on their way to bring Maul to Coruscant. But then, well, this happens...

We finally get to see what happened to Ahsoka during Order 66 with the clones turning on her and it's terrifying and tragic. It's so heart-breaking seeing every single clone trying to kill her. But then she frees Maul as a distraction and he gets an awesome moment with tearing through the clone troopers while she tries to get the inhibitor chip out of Rex. She eventually does and he's then back to normal.

And then the last episode is about them trying to get off the ship their on and avoiding the clones. And it's all heart pounding. Eventually they do with the ship crashing on a planet and them burying the clones. They then leave with Ahsoka leaving behind her Lightsaber and we then see an awesome scene with Vader appearing and finding it.

And that's it. This show had a perfect ending and a really tragic ending with it finally showing what happened with Ahsoka during Order 66. So, overall, this series had so many things that I loved as a fan of Star Wars. There were somethings I really didn't like and some story arcs that I found boring, but the whole show is so amazing when you really watch all the great content in it and I loved so many aspects about it. I love how even though we know the eventual outcome of what happens at the end, it's still great to see what the Clone Wars itself was like. Seeing all these characters on these adventures and doing so many things was a lot of fun to watch a lot of the time. And it even gave me that feeling I love where when I watch a show with characters I love so much, I makes me kinda wish they were real people to meet. I know that sounds really weird, but, I think that goes to show how much I liked the characters here. There are some questions I wish were answered though like I wish we know what happened to Ventress and Lux at the end and some other things like that, but, I gotta say, I'm really surprised by how much I liked this. Again, it's not perfect and there are some really bad parts to the show, but the positives definitely outdo the negatives. The acting and animation are all amazing and I loved a lot of aspects like that too. This is honestly what I wish the prequel movies were like, actually making them stuff interesting instead of boring and impossible to follow like they were there. And, watching this makes me all the more excited to get started on Star Wars: Rebels. It's the sequel series that's set in the middle of the Empire taking over everything and a group against them. I can't wait to get started on that and do a review for that too. I know some of the things about that too from seeing some bits of episodes on TV a few times and seeing some clips of it too. But now I'm gonna be watching all of it on Disney+ too and I can't wait to do my review of it too. The fact that Ahsoka makes a return in it is already excited for me along with a lot of other aspects to it too. So, yeah, overall, I loved a lot about this series and, if you're a Star Wars fan and you want to see this, especially on Disney+, do, it's totally worth your time. And so, everyone, that was my review of the Star Wars: The Clone Wars show. Thank you all for reading and please comment down below to tell me what you think.