Much of the “content” released during “Star Wars“‘ Disney era has had the homogeneity of a production line, with scenes from “Ahsoka”, “The Mandalorian”, and even “The Acolyte” often seeming interchangeable. For better or worse, this was definitely not the case when George Lucas made his prequel trilogy. As we approach the 20th anniversary of Revenge of the Sith, and the re-release of the movie in theaters to celebrate, we figured it’d be a good time to look back on the series that recontextualized the prequel trilogy closer.
In the late ’90s, many fans assumed we’d be getting three movies set during the Clone Wars, with Anakin Skywalker swashing buckles at the height of his Jedi powers, before making that inevitable switch to the Dark Side. Lucas — who, having funded the movies himself, could essentially do what he wanted — thought differently. Instead, he decided to follow Papa Skywalker through his pre-teen podracer phase, his awkward romance phase, his slaughtering Tusken Raiders phase, and (eventually) his hero of the Republic phase. With the much-anticipated fall from grace confined to trilogy closer “Revenge of the Sith”, pivotal moments that would affect the destiny of an entire galaxy played out in something of a blur.
Meanwhile, the Clone Wars themselves (the stuff of legend thanks to a tantalising line spoken by Obi-Wan Kenobi in “A New Hope”) were essentially just bookends, as Lucas saved the bulk of the long-running spat between the Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems for an animated spin-off.
During the wilderness years between “Revenge of the Sith” and the 2012 Disney takeover, the animated “The Clone Wars” TV show was the only screen “Star Wars” in town. That didn’t stop Disney from cancelling the show after season 5 concluded in 2013, but it did briefly return for 2014’s “Lost Missions”. Even then, there was unfinished business, so it wasn’t until season 7 belatedly landed on Disney Plus in 2020 that the circle was finally complete.
The closing four episodes of that final season turned out to be the perfect companion piece to “Revenge of the Sith”, running parallel to the events of the movie and providing context that had been missing when we watched it in cinemas. Indeed, back in 2005, “ROTS”‘s opening crawl had to do an awful lot of heavy lifting, claiming that “there are heroes on both sides. Evil is everywhere.” The subsequent two hours unfold in the broadest of brush strokes as the heroic Anakin devolves into a yellow-eyed, child-slaughtering psychopath in a preposterously short amount of time.
The brains behind his downfall, of course, is the prequel trilogy’s MVP, Ian McDiarmid’s Supreme Chancellor (later Emperor) Palpatine. At breakneck speed, he persuades his young protégé to execute Count Dooku, convinces him that the Jedi Council are holding him back, plays on his nightmares that his wife Padmé is going to die, and seeds the idea that the Dark Side could be used to cheat death. He even finds time to regale the legend of Darth Plagueis the Wise and — wink — the apprentice who killed him.
So by the time Mace Windu, Kit Fisto, and a pair of Jedi expendables turn up to arrest the Chancellor (aka Darth Sidious) for orchestrating the entire Clone War, the damage has already been done. Faced with a choice of doing the right thing or keeping Palpatine alive to save Padmé, Anakin chops off Windu’s arm, opening the door (okay, window) for the Emperor-in-waiting to zap the Jedi Master to his death.
But Palpatine’s genius is less about those poisonous whispers than his plot to isolate Anakin from his friends. You don’t realise it on first viewing, but Anakin waving Obi-Wan off for an appointment with General Grievous is one of the most important moments in the film. In this moment, master and apprentice finally talk as equals, their long-standing friendship much more believable than the implausible romance that’s allegedly the root of the Republic’s demise. Once upon a time, they’d have taken the wheezing cyborg down together, but with Anakin now a double agent, working for both the Jedi and Palpatine, he’s left vulnerable. The next time they meet, Anakin will have rebranded himself as Darth Vader, and become hellbent on giving his former master a lava bath on Mustafar.
“The Clone Wars”‘ four-part finale adds new layers to Anakin’s tragedy, courtesy of a character who didn’t even exist when “Revenge of the Sith” was released.
Introduced in the 2008 “Clone Wars” animated movie, Anakin’s former apprentice, Ahsoka Tano, quit the Jedi at the end of season 5, having been framed for a crime she did not commit. She’s back in action in these final episodes and, although she has no desire to return to the Order, she does get busy tidying up another of the franchise’s loose ends.
While Anakin’s making some very bad life choices, the artist formerly known as Darth Maul has taken control of Mandalore. This leads the now freelance Ahsoka to join forces with heir to the throne Bo-Katan Kryze (another familiar face from “The Mandalorian” and its spin-offs) to overthrow Palpatine’s former apprentice. On coming face-to-face with the spiky-headed, double lightsaber-wielding menace, she learns she isn’t the Jedi he’d been hoping for. Obviously, he still has serious beef with Kenobi — you’re entitled to bear a grudge against the guy who cut you in half — but it’s Anakin who’s really piqued his interest. In fact, he’s arranged the entire skirmish in an effort to tempt Skywalker to Mandalore so he can bump him off.
Maul knows that his old master, Darth Sidious, is responsible for everything, that — far from being on the verge of victory — the Republic is about to fall, and that it’s too late for the Jedi to do anything about it. But he also knows that Anakin has long been groomed to be Sidious’s new Sith apprentice, and that he is “the key to everything”. Forget that hoary old prophecy about the kid who’ll bring balance to the Force. The main word in Anakin’s future is “destroy”.
Unsurprisingly, Ahsoka chooses not to believe such things, and her subsequent choices may be just as big a sliding doors moment as the Empire not shooting down C-3PO and R2-D2’s escape pod in “A New Hope” (as pointed out by Tim Bisley in “Spaced”). Thanks to a cruel twist of fate, she enters a meeting with Mace Windu, Yoda, and other Jedi top brass (a scene that straddles both “Revenge of the Sith” and “The Clone Wars”) just after Anakin has left. She never gets to speak to her master as Obi-Wan had requested, and — more crucially — chooses not to pass on what Maul has just divulged. “I’ll tell him myself when I see him,” she informs Yoda when he asks if there’s anything she’d like to pass on. Even the eternally loyal Clone Commander Rex seems surprised at her silence.
Speaking of the Clone Troopers, “The Clone Wars” also puts an entirely new spin on Order 66, the Emperor’s decree that all Jedi should be executed as enemies of the state. Ahsoka manages to isolate the mind-influencing chip in Rex’s brain — watching her kill her old friend would have been too cruel for a family show — but there’s not much else they can do when an entire ship full of genetically engineered elite soldiers wants you dead. The tragedy is inescapable as they watch Rex’s brothers taken down first by Maul — released by Ahsoka to conjure up a bit of chaos — and then their Star Destroyer crashing into the planet’s surface.
As the culmination of seven seasons of storytelling, “The Clone Wars” final episodes are able to explore character depths that the Star Wars movies never could. With its 1977-vintage Lucasfilm titles and a melancholic “Blade Runner”-esque score, the denouement of “The Clone Wars” instantly feels like an event in itself. But watched in tandem with “Revenge of the Sith”, there’s no question these closing chapters make “Revenge of the Sith” a better, more nuanced movie.
“Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” is being re-released in cinemas on April 25. You can also watch the movie and the whole of “The Clone Wars” on Disney+.