The last season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars has finally launched into the long and highly anticipated Siege of Mandalore story arc, but Dave Filoni and his team sure took their time to reach this point.
In terms of narrative resolutions and character conclusions, the final 12-episode run of The Clone Wars has a lot to wrap up. Some would even say that it’s impossible to weave all of these plot threads together into a cohesive narrative that would allegedly lead to Revenge of the Sith. Still, Filoni has promised us a satisfying conclusion, unlike the one we got when the series came to an abrupt end in 2014.
While the first four episodes revolved around the Clones and their battle against the Separatist Army on Anaxes, the fifth episode quickly picked up with Ahsoka as she tried to make a living in Coruscant after leaving the Jedi Order for good. The former Padawan even made some friends: Trace and Rafa Martez. Their journey together pitted them against the Pyke crime syndicate, and also further revealed the hypocrisy of the Jedi to Ahsoka.
But the whole encounter and the moral lessons therein took a whopping 4 episodes to unfold, leaving the Siege of Mandalore and apparently, the conclusion to The Clone Wars, to merely 4 episodes. As such, many fans criticized the arc with the Martez sisters as “boring” and “filler,” but Ashley Eckstein, the voice behind Ahsoka Tano, thinks that the story is actually important to her character’s motives.
In a recent interview, Eckstein addressed the apparent backlash by saying that the encounter with Rafa and Trace are important to Ahsoka’s arc.
“These first four episodes in the final season, the arc with Trace and Rafa, I’ve been reading a lot of people’s comments and everyone wants to make the jump to the Siege of Mandalore,” She explained. “I understand why everyone wants to jump straight to it but I will say these first four episodes where she goes on this journey with Trace and Rafa are so important to her own journey and so they should definitely not be skipped over.”
The voice actress then talked about the inner conflict of Ahsoka as she tries to find her true identity, but also revealed why she thinks these episodes, whose main theme is helping other people, are absolutely important amid the current COVID-19 pandemic.
“In my life when I find people who need your help, you help them no matter what. I guess it’s just who I am,” She said.
In hindsight, that’s exactly what Ahsoka did, even if it meant using her Jedi powers, albeit reluctantly.
As for where she’ll end up, I guess we’ll have to wait and see for ourselves as the remaining episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars premiere on Disney Plus.