In my review for the previous episode, I neglected to delve as deeply into the concept of the “force family” that we were introduced to and instead chose to focus on the characters' inner conflict, and for that I apologize. I regret this and will do them justice in this review. The Clone Wars continues its story arc regarding the balance of the force and the awesomeness continues.
Picking up where the last episode left off, our Jedi heroes are leaving the planet and the force family behind, but the Son has other plans for both the Jedi and his Father. Son (played by Sam Witwer A.K.A. Starkiller from The Force Unleashed video games) attempts to tempt Anakin over to the dark side (give one more movie pal), but when he refuses, he takes Ashoka hostage, turns her to the dark side temporarily by biting her, and Obi-wan must journey with Daughter to collect an ancient sword to control Son before he kills everything.
I can’t say that I care for the Daughter character. She came off as just bland, boring and is just there to validate the existence of a much cooler character: Son. Son is absolutely awesome; he is the best new concept to come out of The Clone Wars cartoon. His level of menace outweighs both Vader and the Emperor combined. He is pure darkness but knows how to have a chuckle. The dark humor that was exchanged between him and his sister makes you laugh when it really shouldn’t, which is what makes dark humor work as well as it does. I also love his force lightning and how it's red. Normally I would say it just smacks of The Force Unleashed, but it reminded me more of Infamous and how when you played evil in the game, your lightning went from blue to red... just saying.
Darth Ashoka was great to see. This is probably just a fanboy theory, but I can’t help but think that this is a tease to the inevitable. Come to think of it, there were so many teases within this one episode. You could look at the death of Daughter as the reason that Anakin’s destiny to bring balance to the force didn’t exactly work out the way it should have. This one episode made me think more than any of the prequels. Why couldn’t these characters be in the prequels? If they had, it would’ve completely changed how the whole franchise works and for the better.
The episode wasn’t quiet as awesome as last week’s installment, but this was damn well up there. This particular arc has one more episode left in it and that’s what everyone should be paying attention to. These first two episodes have been awesome, but next week will have to be the ultimate showdown between Son and the Jedi, whether or not it will live up to our expectations is a different matter. Most of these types of arcs drop off towards the end. I hope that Son lives to fight another day, but knowing the way any Star Wars arc works, he’ll die by Anakin’s lightsaber, there will be some sort of irony, and all will be well until the season finale… but that’s just a fanboy theory.
