Clone Wars -- "Together Again" (Ep. 7.08)

-- You can change who you are, but you cannot run from yourself.

May the 4th be with you...

This arc, what I'm going to call the Trace arc, comes to a close. It didn't redeem itself; it just transitioned into something else.

On the surface, this adventure with Trace and Rafa serves only to put Ahsoka in a place where she can run into Bo-Katan and get caught up in the Mandalorian mess dealing with Darth Maul. And that's fine.
Sort of.
The issue here is that if what they wanted to do was get Ahsoka involved with the far-reaching Maul story line, they could have done it more directly. Having Ahsoka crash onto Trace's landing platform (three episodes ago) is just as arbitrary as having her cross paths with Bo-Katan. They could have gone directly to the pivotal story rather than futz around for four episodes doing nothing.

Except...

Except it seems that they wanted Ahsoka to have an epiphany about her Jedi-ness, and they used the convoluted story with Trace and Rafa to get her there. Not that they couldn't have brought Ahsoka to the same place with any number of stories, but I do understand the appeal of using Trace and the whole idea of 1313 to bring Ahsoka to the mental space where Rafa could say to her, "You're the Jedi we always hoped Jedi would be," and Ahsoka would accept it and take back the Jedi mantle, just from outside of the Council.

Sure, I may be jumping the gun on that, but...
Ahsoka goes off with Bo-Katan to deal with a Sith issue, something that's not really her responsibility anymore. Unless it is.
And I know where she's headed, development-wise, since I've already watched Rebels.

I don't know. Maybe I would have enjoyed this arc more if Trace and Rafa weren't so stereotypical and the plot device of not-using-your-powers not so cliche. I do like when we get to see other bits of the SWU we don't usually see, and we got to see both Kessel and the Pyke home world during this arc. I just wish the story had been more engaging.

"You and I were always good, good until she showed up."

"We have to trust each other."

"You're going back to help her so you can one-up her?!"

Clone Wars -- "Deal No Deal" (Ep. 7.06)

-- Mistakes are valuable lessons often learned too late.

Ahsoka and her new friends get mixed up in some spice trading. This seems to be a not good thing. I think I would like to talk more about spice but, honestly, I don't really understand "spice" so have no coherent thoughts on it. It's pretty clear that the idea of "spice" started out as a drug reference or something pretty close to that. It's also pretty clear that Lucas "borrowed" the term from Dune. The fact that you mine spice, though, seems to have complicated everything about it as the Star Wars universe evolved. What is clear, though, is that there are two sides to the spice trade: the legit side... and the other one. Ahsoka and friends end up on the other one.

And I'm not going to go into that other than to say that Ahsoka is still trying to hide her Jedi-ness.

Kessel is more interesting and also seems to have suffered from the same issues that spice did during the evolution of the Star Wars universe. The spice mines, according to C-3PO, are a horrible place that no droid wants to be sent to. I have vague memories of the depiction of Kessel in one of the Han Solo novels I read when I was a kid, and my memories are not much like how the spice mines are depicted in Solo. But Clone Wars chooses to give us a broader view of the planet and reveals that the planet isn't all spice mine.

What's my takeaway from all of this? I can't really tell you.
Kessel has become something not quite as foreboding as how I thought of it as a kid. Or as foreboding as that book made it out to be (Where I think there were monsters that lived in the rocks? I don't really remember, but it seems like there was some monster thing that came out of the physical walls of the mine and tried to get Han. Look, it's been 40 years since I read that; I have other things in my brain now). Which is the problem, of course, with going back and giving any mystery an origin. [Like Marvel should never have gone back and given Wolverine a concrete origin. Biggest mistake Marvel ever made.]

Mostly, I'm not really getting into this arc. I appreciate the focus on Ahsoka, but I feel like they should have offered a more meaningful story. Or maybe it will turn out to be more meaningful; there's at least one more episode to go. At the moment, though, I would put this in the "throwaway story" bucket. The arc is giving us some interesting glimpses of things in the wider SWU, but the story itself is a little lacking.

"You got any skills?"

"You ever thought you might be the trouble she needs to stay away from?"