Episode 51: Onderon Arc, Part 1

Hot on the heels of our arc about brotherhood, we have another sibling story — and this time, it’s about Saw and Steela Gerrera. 

Our recap of the first half of the Onderon Arc (The Clone Wars 5.2–3, “A War on Two Fronts” and “Front Runners”) throws us into a rebellion of Anakin’s making. There is a fantastic training montage, a sort of meh love triangle between Ahsoka, Steela and Lux, and a delightful heist that brings the rebellion to new heights.

We talk about overachieving daughters and proxy wars of history. Most importantly, we celebrate Anakin giving extremely good dad-vice to Ahsoka. Snips and Skyguy 4ever.

Transcript

Anna: Welcome to Growing Up Skywalker. My name is Anna.

Sam: And I'm Sam.

Anna: Welcome to Season Five of the Clone Wars!

Sam: Although we are starting with episode two of Season Five.

Anna: Yes. I hope that when we finished Season Four last week, you did not go on and watch Season Five, episode one, because chronologically…it hasn't happened yet.

Sam: Yes.

Anna: So we are actually starting with the first half of the Onderon Arc, which is the Clone Wars Season Five, episodes two and three: “A War on Two Fronts” and “Frontrunners.”

Sam: Lots of fronts.

Anna: Lots of fronts.

Sam: A lot of fronting.

Anna: So the fortune cookie of “A War on Two Fronts” is “Fear is a malleable weapon.”

Sam: Not valuable. Malleable.

Anna: Interesting. We begin on the planet Onderon, which has decided to secede and join the Separatists. But deep in the wilderness, a band of rebels wants to plan a counter attack. They want to become real rebels.

Sam: And they want to restore the previous king.

Anna: They do. So the Jedi Council is split on what to do, but eventually, they do decide to send Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka as advisors to train the rebels.

Sam: Advisors only. They can only defend themselves.

Anna: I should mention one of the rebels is Lux Bonteri, AKA Ahsoka’s boyfriend, AKA the boy that she's making heart eyes at via holocron!! It is delightful.

Sam: We also send Rex, who's wearing his full Rex outfit. You can't even recognize him because he has a very cool hat and goggles and backpack full of explosives.

Anna: Rex is looking so good. So fine.

Sam: In this episode, the Jedi are all stealthed up and he's like, “I literally look like someone going to war.”

Anna: He looks great. So last time we saw Lux, he was speedily exiting the Death Watch camp on Carlac. So it seems he has now decided to throw in his lot with a different kind of resistance movement.

Sam: I mean, last time we saw him, he was holding up his hand to Ahsoka through the glass of the escape pod window.

Anna: And he's like, “We'll meet again.” Our faves drop out of a ship onto Onderon and very speedily meet Steela, who takes them back to the rebel camp where they meet her brother Saw. As in Saw Gerrera.

Sam: So this is actually Saw Gerrera's first appearance chronologically and in release order. This is the first time we see him.

Anna: We will meet him again. But he is a major player in these episodes. We make it to the rebel camp, and then we get a training montage that lasts for most of the episode. So, Anakin, Ahsoka, and Kenobi and Rex are teaching the rebels how to stop tanks and droideka destroyers. But unfortunately, they're only midway through their training when the Separatist battle droids that are guarding the capital city of Iziz get orders to march on the rebels and destroy them.

Sam: That's ISIS with two Zs. For those of you keeping track at home.

Anna: For those of you who are hooked on phonics like me, does it make sense? No. Are we going to roll with it? I guess so. The droid army marches into the training camp, blasters firing, and Anakin is ready to split up the Jedi crew and destroy them. But Obi-Wan stops him. They're only here to help the rebels train. They're not here to actually fight the war for the rebels. So immediately and delightfully, all of their lessons come in handy. Lux and Saw have been training on disabling tanks, and they do that immediately. They jump up the tank, they open the hatch, they throw explosives in, and then they close it again. Steela has been getting really good target practice, and she is a great sniper. So she blasts open the animal pens in the village to knock down a whole wave of battle droids. There's a fun and exciting battle scene, and they are victorious. And Anakin says, “Okay, I think you're ready to bring the fight to the capital.”

Sam: So then they get aboard some carts and they say they were out hunting, so they have a whole bunch of meat to cover up their weapons, and animal pelts. And they sneak everyone into the city.

Anna: The city of Iziz. So they disguise themselves as merchants, they get into the city, and then they split up. And the goal is, I guess, to simultaneously recruit as many people as they can to their side, and wage terror and chaos, and basically become nuisances of themselves.

Sam: And that is the episode that leads us right into “Frontrunners” — “To seek something is to believe in its possibility.” So now all these rebels are in Iziz, and they are openly wrecking the place up. There's fires, like, lighting up all over the city. And we see King Rash, who's up there in his absolutely gorgeous palace, and he is getting cheesed. They actually even attacked the royal carriage. And he's like, “We have to do something about this.” So he brings in the old king, who has apparently been under house arrest. He's like, “You have to stop this. I know that you, the old king,” — whose name we don't learn yet — is part of this rebellion. And the old king says, “It's up to the King to embrace, bend, or break, and I am no longer the king.” King Rash is being…rash about that. Meanwhile, the rebels have found an extremely cool rebel bar to hang out in, and they are making a plan, and it's kind of a Goldilocks thing. Lux is all about the hearts and minds, Saw is all about fists and guns and bombs, and Steela is charting a path through the middle, and they come up with a plan. Anakin and Obi-Wan have left, and they leave Ahsoka behind. And as Ahsoka is sitting there being part of this, he, Anakin's, like, “Remember our purpose here.” Because he knows that Ahsoka has been making heart eyes at Lux. And Lux has been making heart eyes at Steela. But Steela comes up with a plan, and they're going to go off to this enormous droid charging station.

Anna: So it's really fun. Saw has to steal one of the battle droids heads to get the intel so they can concoct their nefarious plan.

Sam: It's a rather convoluted gambit to get in here, but they steal the droid head. And then they're like, “We go to the charging station, we create enough of a ruckus. They're going to send a tank. We can hijack the tank, burst through the doors, blow up the charging station, and retreat.” So that is their plan.

Anna: Which they promptly execute.

Sam: They do. And then the crowd goes wild, and all sorts of things are going on. The lights for the whole city turn off, and the rebels appear out of nowhere, wearing very cool ghost recon glasses, and start sniping out droids because the droids can't see in the dark. And King Rash is like, “This is crazy.” He phones Count Dooku, and he’s like, “I need help.” And from behind Dooku, in classic Star Wars manner, a super tactical droid shows up, and he says, “This is General Kalani. He will succeed where you have failed.”

Anna: He looks like a tactical droid, but not really.

Sam: He's a super tactical droid.

Anna: Okay, that is deeply ominous.

Sam: Mhm.

Anna: So at the end of their victory, the rebels actually managed to turn some of the city people over to their side. But their next job is to win over the rest of the population, inspire them, get recruits, fight that battle for hearts and minds.

Sam: And Anakin holocrons in and gives them an absolutely amazing speech.

Anna: It's really good, y'all.

Sam: He says, “Now you must rally the people. You will need their support. Your ability to influence them will also determine your capacity to represent them, not only on the battlefield, but also off it — against the enemies, even within your own ranks. Your commitment will inspire others. Your conviction will lead to victory.”

Anna: Oh, that's so good.

Sam: Yes.

Anna: And then we close the episode, and the rebels have elected Steela Gerrera as their leader. And Saw storms off, super mad.

Sam: And that is where apparently, Ahsoka learns that Saw and Steela are related.

Anna: Oh, she didn't know that?

Sam: It doesn't seem like it because she says, “I have to go after him. He's my brother.” Because we have been going this whole time as “Saw Gerrera” and “Steela,” we don't know that they're siblings yet.

Anna: Interesting. But that is the weird cliffhanger that we end this episode on.

Sam: It's really ominous because the action is ramping up this entire time.

Anna: Yeah. So let's talk about the episodes. I thought the pacing was interesting. So whenever we have these four-part arcs and we split them up two and two, I always feel like there's a really luxurious amount of time that we get to spend on the action scenes on the character development, and I love that. But it is in such direct contrast to the episodes we have where we cram so much in. Do you remember the start of Season Four when we smash cut open with “Water Wars” and we fought an entire war on Mon Cala in, like, 22 minutes?

Sam: That was three episodes, wasn't it?

Anna: It was. But the first episode was so jam-packed.

Sam: Yeah, they took a lot of time.

Anna: And then they spent the next two episodes kind of weaving in some of the finer points. But we had a massive battle just to start Season Four. And these episodes, I love them. They're luxurious. But for some reason, I find myself noting how slow the pacing is, because we get to really dig into some of the relationships between the characters and really spend a long time with the main thrust of the episode.

Sam: Yeah. So far, these two episodes have sort of two plots going on. The A plot and the B plot. The A plot is Anakin pursuing the Reagan Doctrine to introduce terrorism onto this planet and Obi-Wan being like, “Is it terrorism? I feel like I should be there to make sure.” And the B plot is this love quadrangle between Steela, Saw, Lux and Asoka, because Saw is into Asoka.

Anna: Is he, though?

Sam: I mean, a little bit. But Saw is also super defensive of his sister.

Anna: I did not see Saw as a player. I thought this was a love triangle.

Sam: It seems that way. But then Saw is definitely there, because he is extremely defensive of his sister. And I can see how Ahsoka would be like, “Is there chemistry between these two?” Although, they are dark-skinned with blue eyes, both of them. Although…she's an alien. So maybe she's like, “I don't know what humans look like.”

Anna: I do want to talk about the romance, but I don't want to talk about it yet.

Sam: All right.

Anna: I want to talk about the A plot.

Sam: The A plot. The Reagan Doctrine.

Anna: The Reagan Doctrine. Okay, so there's a big conflict for the Jedi Council in this episode. The conflict and the question they're trying to figure out is, “How is helping a group of rebels to overthrow a sovereign system different than aiding and abetting terrorists?”

Sam: And so that is what Yoda brings up. He says, “Fear is not a weapon the Jedi can use.”

Anna: Right. So we open in “A War on Two Fronts” with the Jedi Council pretty much saying, “No, we cannot do this.” And Anakin kind of calling back to Season One with “Trespass” where he's like, “We're not here to fight your war. We're here to show you how to fight a war at all.”

Sam: Yeah. And so I keep referencing the Reagan Doctrine historically. What happened? It actually started in the Carter administration, which was the one right before Reagan with the funding of the mujahedeen in Afghanistan by Senator Charlie Wilson and Dana Rohrabacher, who is still in Congress, and they wanted to give a whole bunch of arms to Osama bin Laden to fight the Soviets and the other mujahedeens at the time, because the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan. So that was kind of a mess, because it was basically a bunch of senators going against a lot of provisions of government and doing their own thing. Later on, thanks to the Heritage Foundation, which also is a big funder of the Reagan Doctrine, Reagan was elected. Reagan decided to persecute, finish off that element in Afghanistan, and then start up trouble in Nicaragua and in Angola and in Iran and a few other countries. But it’s this idea of the CIA going in, training locals, doing a lot of propaganda, spending a lot of money and moving weapons around — but you only put, like, four Americans on the ground.

Anna: So if I remember correctly — because, as you know, Sam, I studied political science — this is, I think, what we would call a proxy war, what the Jedi are doing. So there's a couple of different non-state actors that are not fighting the war themselves, but aiding a different party in fighting that war because they have interest in it.

Sam: Yeah, absolutely. So during the Cold War, the Truman Doctrine — which happened at the end of World War Two — was one of containment, and that the Western countries, the First World, wanted to contain the Second World by fighting in the Third World. So, NATO versus Warsaw Pact in the Third World, because that was the countries that were at play. Countries like Angola and the Second World being Cuba, China and Russia, even though Russia and China even fought wars during that time. So this containment policy was, “If the Soviet Union invades a country…”

Anna: …”We will stop them by aiding the country that they are invading.”

Sam: Well, yeah, or in the case of Korea or Vietnam, “We'll counter-invade, and then we'll have a proxy war.” Korea and Vietnam are more proxy wars because in Korea, for example, in MiG Alley, this is in the 1950s, ostensibly, it was North Korean pilots versus South Korean pilots in these top of the line first generation jet fighters. In reality, it was Russian pilots versus American pilots in the top of line first generation jet fighters.

Anna: So that is the line that the Jedi Council appears unwilling to cross. So what they're saying is, “Maybe we can see the big picture that helping these rebels to rise up against this Separatist government could inspire others to do the same, or could help our cause across the galaxy. But we're not willing to send our own troops in. We're only willing to train and possibly even arm and equip the rebels who are already on the ground.”

Sam: And so that is where the Reagan Doctrine came into play, because of a whole bunch of conservative think tanks, notably not the Cato Institute, because they're like, we don't really care about Nicaragua. But the history of Nicaragua is they had had an American — well, not American, United Fruit Company, same thing — backed dictatorship for a lot of years. And then the Sandinista government took over in a Democratic election. And the Sandinistas said, “Hey, we'd like to trade with Western Europe. We'd like to trade with France and Germany.” And America is like, “No, because you are allowing liberal labor laws, which means you're aligned with Cuba, which means you're aligned with the Soviet Union.” So Reagan went in and funded the Contras, and the Contras were this terrorist regime, which went around butchering nunneries. And the CIA funded them. And then we put up all this propaganda saying “The Contras are a legitimate political party, and they need to be supported.” So that's the kind of thing that the Jedi Council is probably aware of and that they probably don't want to get involved in, because it is a tricksy line to pass. And that's actually where the whole Iran-Contra arrangement came from, is that after the International Court of Justice sanctioned the U.S. for mining the harbors of Nicaragua, the U.S. Senate passed an amendment that said “We can't give them any more money.” Reagan and Oliver North went ahead and did that anyway by selling drugs and weapons to Iran, the country we were ostensibly tense with, in exchange for giving them, the Contras, arms, to finish taking over Nicaragua. So this type of thing has a long history, and it makes me think that my thesis — I can tell I'm losing you here — but my thesis here is that Anakin is acting as this avatar of American conservative ’80s, ’90s strength. And he's like, “I'm going to do the right thing in this war because I'm on the side of freedom and democracy and justice, and the bad guys are the bad guys. It doesn't really matter the details.” And Yoda is like, “I'm saying your methods do matter. The methods are the difference between a good guy and a bad guy,” and Anakin's like, “…Right.”

Anna: So I think I'm a little bit less interested in the question of whether the Jedi Council was right or wrong to agree to this. I am super interested that Anakin was himself interested in starting this kind of unprecedented Jedi assistance, and then that he had to be reminded by Obi-Wan, in the heat of the conflict, what he was actually there for.

Sam: Now, that is a very interesting question. I feel like I've spoken enough about Cold War politics now. So let's talk about Jedi politics.

Anna: Yeah, totally. Okay. So I do want to say I am intrigued that this episode was aired in 2013, which means it was probably being produced in 2012, and there was such a sharp rise in terrorist attacks from 2012 to 2013. It was 61% more than 2011 to 2012 internationally.

Sam: So what was happening in 2012? We had an escalation in Iraq. We had an escalation in Afghanistan. And America was still involved heavily in both of those conflicts. We were trying to do drawdown in Iraq, but we had to rise back up again.

Anna: The one that I remember really vividly from my formative years was the Boston Marathon Bombing, which was in 2013. That's the one that affected, I think, the United States the most, but the Islamic state — ISIS — Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, and the Taliban were behind most of the many thousands of deaths that occurred from terrorist attacks in those years.

Sam: I felt like this was before the Mumbai embassy attack.

Anna: I believe that was in 2013.

Sam: Yeah. Okay. But, yeah, it was a very tense time.

Anna: It was a tense time. I'm intrigued that it was so tense and so pervasive that the makers of Star Wars — who are famous for bringing historical battles and historical undertones into their work — they were like, “No, you know what we need to do is bring in what's happening in the current moment, what's happening right now.” I'm headcanoning that they were thinking, “This is history being made." And so why don't we riff off of that instead of whatever…Franco-whatever war they usually riff off of?

Sam: Yeah, that's fair. I think also there's famous beef between Newt Gingrich and George Lucas, as well as Ronald Reagan.

Anna: That is delightful.

Sam: That's why Nute Gunray is named as he is, and also because Ronald Reagan stole the name Star Wars for his anti-ballistic missile shield, which never worked. But that's why Lucas was like, “You can't just call something Star Wars. I'm Star Wars. You're not Star Wars.” So by this time, by 2012, the concept of blowback was the real deal. And this has been going on since the first Iraq war in the early ’90s, and then later on in the second Iraq war in the early 2000s. Because that was, like, the running joke. “Of course the Iraqis have weapons of mass destruction. We gave them to them.” That's why they massacred their Kurds, because they had chemical weapons that the US gave them. So, of course we know what's going on. The fact that we increase the tensions…we moved from containment of “Okay, this country is not a country that the Soviet Union or the US is fighting in, and neither of us are going to fight over. If we do, we'll meet it with incredible force,” to, “We are going to have these small scale proxy battles” led to an increase in the tension around the world, especially years later. So, blowback being the reason for this. Also, I think it's important to note in this episode, this is the founding of a rebel movement.

Anna: Yes. Okay, I want to talk about that a little bit, because as you know, Sam, I have a very shaky memory of what happens in the main feature films. Because when I was watching them, I didn't have any understanding of the underlying mechanics or dynamics of what was happening in Star Wars politics, so I fell asleep during a significant number of the Star Wars feature films the first time I watched them.

Sam: You keep admitting that on our podcast about Star Wars. You're brave.

Anna: I am brave. But if I am tying these threads together correctly, Saw Gerrera is here at the formation of a rebel group, and we are going to see him in Rogue One, having been the leader of a rebel group. As a small spoiler.

Sam: Yeah, we also see the same thing last time we ran into Cham Syndulla on Ryloth, because he's like, “Okay, so what happens after you guys help us defeat the Separatists? Are you going to leave?”

Anna: And there's something cool. I'm actually reading a book right now about rebelling against colonization and corrupt governments. And there's this really fascinating concept that was so bizarrely applicable to what the rebellion is doing in these episodes. It's called The Traitor’s Qualm. So when you're trying to overthrow a system, when you are trying to foment a rebellion, you need supporters. You need to make people switch to your side. But most people will stay loyal to the party in power until the rebellion can prove that it's strong enough to succeed. Only then will people throw their support behind the rebels. So you need supporters, so that you can be successful. But to be successful, you need supporters. So the Traitor’s Qualm is that the only thing you can do to make people lose their qualms, to become traitors for your side, is you need big splashy victories right away to start luring people to your side. So this, I think, is the advice that Anakin and Obi-Wan are giving to the rebels there. They're saying, “You can't wait too long. You need to become good enough to strike and strike fast and strike hard. And you have to be able to show people that you're powerful so that you can get them on your side before you run out of steam or before they turn against you.”

Sam: That book is “The Traitor Baru Cormorant,” by Seth Dickinson.

Anna: It's very good.

Sam: Extremely good. I think the exact same point is the conversation between Steela and Saw and Lux, because they are representing these three ideals of the rebellion. Lux is like, “All hearts and minds will get the people.”

Anna: And he's diplomacy first.

Sam: Well, he's the soft boi, and Saw gets on his case about it because Saw is a couple of inches taller. He's leaner, he's more muscular. Lux is wearing his very cool tactical turtleneck, and he looks like he's been off doing commando stuff. But Saw looks like he was raised with a knife between his teeth.

Anna: He really does. And then Steela is charting this path through the middle where she's saying, “Yes, I hear you. We're capable fighters. We've got fire in our bellies. We want to go for the jugular. But Lux, I hear what you're saying, too. We can't frighten people out of supporting us. We need to show them that we have their best interests at heart.”

Sam: Which is why they went after this purely tactical target as opposed to a more symbolic target. Because if they had blown up the palace, that would have sent one message, by blowing up the charging station for the droids. Not only is it a tactical coup, because then they were able to kill a whole bunch of droids. It was also a show to the people of Onderon, “We're not after you. We're here for you.”

Anna: And that's critical. And that's what I think they were so excited about at the end of “Frontrunners”. Because people in the streets picked up their metaphorical torches and pitchforks.

Sam: They're laser pitchforks.

Anna: And they were like, “Freedom for Onderon! Down with the droids!” So that's the piece of advice that the deposed king actually gives to King Rash. He says, you need to end the droid supremacy here. You need to get rid of the droids. And that is the terrifying cliffhanger that we end with King Rash and Dooku, where Dooku is like, not only am I going to send you better reinforcements, I'm going to send you a super tactical droid.

Sam: And that ask of Dooku is just the scariest thing, because imagine you work for Dooku in one capacity or another, and you have to call them up. Like, hey, boss, I need help. Dooku is like, I'm sending you a droid. It's going to do your job. It's going to kill you when it's done.

Anna: And also, I do have better reinforcements than all of the battle droids and droidekas and Magna Droids and super battle droids that you already had. I can one-up that.

Sam: Yeah. If you are at this juncture inviting me to escalate your situation, I'll turn it up to numbers you didn't even know existed, but you aren’t going to survive. I'm sorry. I mean, I'm not sorry. That's Dooku's attitude. Dooku is such a horrifying person to have on your side. It's such a Devil's bargain.

Anna: Absolutely. It's Faustian.

Sam: And it's amazing that that's the type of thing that people will do. There are so many people on his side, and it makes me wonder how desperate the situation is. Remember, in “Supply Lines,” way back.

Anna: Oh, calling back to Season One and King Katuunko!

Sam: Where my Katuunko heads at? And also the Rhodians.

Anna: Right, Season One. In like, “Bombad Jedi.”

Sam: Yeah. They’re like, “We need to be talking with the Separatists because they blockaded us and we need food.” That's Dooku's modus operandi.

Anna: That's his whole jam.

Sam: Yeah. “I will starve you until you work for me,” which is, like, brutal but effective.

Anna: Yeah. So that's why I'm really interested in this rebel group. Not particularly because I'm interested in rebellions in and of themselves, but, yeah, I know we do have a show called Rebels coming up that apparently people are really buckwild about. But it's interesting that these rebels are fighting against the Separatists but not aligned with the Republic, per se. So there's something that they hate about the Separatists but not enough to band with the Republic. Or they also hate the Republic, too and I'm interested that they found each other — because it is very dangerous to become a rebel — and I'm interested that they were willing to reach out to the Republic for help, but they were like, “But we don't like you. We don't want to be you.”

Sam: Well, that's something else that the Republic says, particularly Mace and Yoda. They're like, King Rash is duly appointed. We can't overthrow governments, because if we can overthrow your government, we can throw any government, and that makes us the oppressors, right? Even though calling back to the Geonosis Arc, Obi-Wan is like…what's her name?

Anna: Queen Karina the Great!

Sam: Yeah. “I am depositing you right here now because bug people don't matter.”

Anna: Bug people don't get rights. Only humanoid people get rights in Star Wars.

Sam: So it's interesting, that shift back and forth, and it actually calls to mind more Cold War history going back to the bombings in Italy and stuff. Yeah, she's rolling her eyes at me, listeners. This is a common threat throughout history that if you aren't on one side strongly or the other you're going to be wooed by both sides or booed by both sides and it might be problematic for you.

Anna: Yes.

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Sam: So are you ready to talk about that love triangle?

Anna: Do you want to talk about the romance?

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: Okay. Let's talk about the romance. I am not interested in Lux as a romantic interest anymore.

Sam: Really?

Anna: Yes.

Sam: Because he shacked up with a sexy sniper babe in the jungles of Onderon?

Anna: No, it is not — it is related to that. It is correlated to that, but it is not necessarily about that. Okay, so here's the thing. Lux Bonteri was raised by famous Senator Mina Bonteri, a famously adept diplomat. And we see that Lux took on enough of what his mom was interested in, that now he's the diplomacy guy, right? He's got the mind for, “What is the perception going to be? What's the underlying tension here?” That guy — I find it hard that that guy was unable or unwilling to acknowledge the weird tension between him and Ahsoka and Ahsoka and Steela and that love triangle situation.

Sam: He is very chill about all of it. For someone who is like, I don't know, 17.

Anna: 18-19 years old, for someone who passionately bid goodbye to his semi- quasi-girlfriend and dramatically held up his hand against the glass and was like, “We'll see each other again. I know it.” And then all of a sudden, two months later, she shows up on his planet and is like, “Yeah, I'll help your rebellion.” And he's like, “I don't know. I don't think I'm interested anymore. And also I don't think that I'm interested in even engaging in the ramifications of my actions, that I'm making you uncomfortable by making eyes at this, admittedly, very cool, sexy sniper babe.”

Sam: He's made two points, and one of them is that throughout his last arc, and the other one is at the beginning of this arc, which is that he's like, “Ahsoka you, to me, represent the Republic.” And that's kind of all we talk about, because Ahsoka is like, “Can you join the Republic? Can we be friends now?” And he's like, “No, I can't join the Republic. The Republic has always been wrong in my eyes.”

Anna: Yeah, okay. I admire a man with a plan, a man with conviction.

Sam: And then the other thing, he's also like, “Okay, and the Jedi can't bone.”

Anna: No one has ever said that in the Clone Wars specifically.

Sam: Yeah, but dems da rules. You can't form attachments. And so he would be setting himself up for a broken heart if he's like, “I'm going to form an attachment with a Jedi, especially because she's in and out. Like, I see her for two days here, two days there. Whatever it is, it's always this hair raising adventure.”

Anna: So I think that is true. I also think that none of that has any textual support on the screen or on the page. So I'm purely going off of the way that Lux is acting and the things that he's saying in the episode. And I think he is ignoring this awkwardness.

Sam: He definitely is ignoring anything.

Anna: And that is a very boy move. And I'm like, Ahsoka, we do not have time for boy men and their games. We deserve better, Ahsoka. Do we not?

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: There's, like, a righteous fury for teenage Ahsoka where I'm like, Ahsoka. This boy is not worth your time. He is a boy. You deserve better. End of story.

Sam: He's a boy. Also, Lux is expanding his skills. He is learning how to kill droidekas. He's learning how to blow up tanks.

Anna: He's busy, but he's not so busy that he can't stand suspiciously closely behind Steela and be like, “No, this is how you throw a droid popper.” Steela does not need his help. Steela is a very capable warrior. She could figure this out. She just needed to blow off a little steam and come back and try again.

Sam: Yeah. And it did seem that this whole episode, Anakin is twigged onto this.

Anna: Okay. Yes. Anakin was the best this whole time.

Sam: Because as soon as Ahsoka is, like, eyebanging Lux, Anakin is like, “Stay on target, Snips.”

Anna: Okay, here's the thing. He checks in with her multiple times.

Sam: He does.

Anna: He looks over at her when she's first noticing this weird catfight like side-eye energy between Ahsoka and Steela and Lux. And he's like, “Are you losing your focus, Snips?” He can tell. And he checks in with her, and he does it multiple times over the arc. And I found myself thinking of all the Jedi, Anakin and Obi-Wan are probably the two that are best equipped to empathize with Ahsoka and know what she's going through. But Anakin is the only one who actually makes that overture to her.

Sam: Which makes sense, because Anakin is her Jedi master.

Anna: Right. But also as a Jedi who has romantic entanglements himself, I think he really empathizes with her. Ahsoka is not that much younger than he was when he met Padmé in Attack of the Clones.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: Maybe two years. Three years.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: I think he really gets it, and I think he's really kind about it. He doesn't do it in an embarrassing way, and he doesn't step on her toes. He does it in a really compassionate, empathetic way.

Sam: Yeah. It's funny to me because it is very much a “Do as I say, not as I do.” And that is the kind of advice that is often, like, the best, if you don't know that they're doing the opposite behind their back.

Anna: Right.

Sam: You get surprisingly good advice from hypocrites, is what I'm saying.

Anna: I think hypocrites give the best advice.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: Because I am very much a person who can dish out phenomenal advice. Do I take it?

Sam: No.

Anna: Not so much.

Sam: Well, it's difficult to take your own advice.

Anna: Yes.

Sam: And that's the thing.

Anna: I think that is very much at the heart of this.

Sam: Yeah. And it shows that Anakin is actually a really good Jedi in many ways. Is he a good Jedi in this arc?

Anna: Do you think Anakin is a good Jedi in this arc?

Sam: Anakin is pushing the boundaries of what being a Jedi means. He is aware of but usefully counseling one way or the other of Ahsoka's emotional dalliances. He is pushing the boundaries of this war. Now, you asked earlier, why is he pushing the boundaries of this war? Why does he want to open up another front in this war? I think that's an extremely interesting question. With the benefit of foresight, I think that this is purely a deep Anakin move. I think that this is not a Palpatine working through Anakin move. I think this is a deep Anakin move.

Anna: Like, this is coming from Anakin and his core priorities?

Sam: I think this is Anakin's active rebellion. I think Anakin is getting a lot of messages subliminally, or sort of pulling them from the zeitgeist of “The Republic is in danger of falling,” and the forces of justice of rightness as Anakin sees them, need to be the victors.

Anna: So you think his rebellion is also against the Republic and is arming the third way?

Sam: If the Republic Army had been set up with civilian oversight as opposed to Jedi oversight, they'd be like, hell yeah. Let’s send a bunch of dudes. Let's have a groundswell of hearts and minds blowing up the battle droids from wherever. We'll put droid poppers in Happy Meals. But because it's being run by the Jedi, it is a rebellion by Anakin against the Jedi.

Anna: I don't know enough about Anakin to know what I think about that.

Sam: You've reached the point of your Star Wars career that you've seen more of Anakin than people who just watched the movies by a long shot. We've seen Anakin at his highs and lows at this point. Well, we've seen him at his highs. He's going to keep rising. And with this benefit of foresight, maybe one wild hair of a long foresight, he's thinking, I need to be on this planet and start this fight.

Anna: Interesting. I do love that theory. I love Anakin's precognition. Yeah, I think we even talked about this last episode of Asajj and Maul arc. I love his precognition. I love all Jedi precognition. I love visions. I love people acting on their gut and their impulses. And I love the idea that Anakin is like, yes, this is something that I have to do.

[music break]

Anna: There's something really funny about this arc, and it's that this arc is about siblings. And it comes so hot on the heels of our big arc about brothers.

Sam: And Nightsisters!

Anna: And Nightsisters.

Sam: The Brothers Opress.

Anna: And I can't believe it took me five seasons to Google whether or not George Lucas has siblings.

Sam: Does he?

Anna: He does. He has three sisters.

Sam: Wow.

Anna: I never once in my life thought to question whether George Lucas made everything about siblings because he has siblings. And yes, he does. He’s the middle child.

Sam: He does kind of carry his heart on his sleeve, because to go slightly off topic, in the Indiana Jones movies put together by Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas, some of them have just really extremely problematic female leads. And it's because in that time period, George Lucas or Steven Spielberg or both were going through extremely bad divorces. And that, of course, can't not come out in their work. But they're, like, women are super untrustworthy.

Anna: Okay. I have a lot of thoughts that I'm not going to mention here, because I think it is probably the easiest thing in the world to not have misogynistic tropes in your feature film movies. But I don't want to talk about that.

Sam: Fair enough.

Anna: Not on topic. What I do want to talk about is the dynamic between Steela and Saw.

Sam: Yes.

Anna: So our big brother/sister dynamic is this kind of classic, sort of loving, sort of toxic brother-sister energy. That is very familiar to me. But I think it's familiar because this is how we often see brothers and sisters portrayed.

Sam: Yeah. Especially because Saw is ostensibly older.

Anna: Saw is the older brother. Steela has eldest daughter energy to me. I don't know if they have a younger sibling who's not interested in their rebel shenanigans.

Sam: He’s a Stormtrooper.

Anna: Yeah, totally. Oh, God. Dark sheep of the family. But I was contrasting it in my head to the Luke and Leia sibling relationship because it's a very different vibe.

Sam: Yeah. Well, Luke and Leia didn't know that they are siblings until they're 20.

Anna: They didn't, but they still had that sassy, but more loving, less explosive sibling energy, even when they didn't know they were siblings. But the Steela and Saw dynamic is really different from that.

Sam: Now, to open up personally a bit, I see deeply Saw as the oldest because I'm the oldest brother, and then in any type of shared leadership role, I feel like, of course, I should be in charge. I’m the oldest. My sister, who's two and a half years younger, is more capable than me in a lot of ways. And she has to exude that oldest daughter energy, and it would be real. And she has a very high level job. She is a very high level person. So seeing that as like, of course, she's the one who's going to be in charge, and I'm going to be salty about it. Like Saw Gerrera. I'm like, man, this hits me right in the feels.

Anna: That's so interesting because it might be familiar to you, but I hated it.

Sam: Yeah. You're the sister.

Anna: Yeah. I'm the youngest daughter.

Sam: Yes. And you have an older brother who also puts out these primary primogeniture vibes.

Anna: So Saw Gerrera, to me, has this volatile older brother energy that I hate because of what it does to Steela. Steela is a very high functioning person. She's very capable. She can hold her own. She can hold her own against people who are smack talking her, against people who are shooting at her. She's a capable warrior. She's a capable tactician. She's a leader. So I don't appreciate that she has to be so much to everybody.

Sam: And that she has to not meet expectations, but outshine her brother to be the leader.

Anna: Absolutely. So she is leading the troops in “Frontrunners.” She's the one who jerryrigs the tank. She has this phenomenal line. She's like, “Yeah, this needs a woman's touch.” And I'm like, yes, girl, get it!

Sam: Because you can't figure out how to steal this tank.

Anna: No one can figure out how to steal the tank except for Steela. She is trying to lead a rebellion. She's getting her flirt on with Lux. She is following after her brother, who storms out in a fit of pique. Because he's upset that she's good at everything.

Sam: She's making sure Ahsoka is not getting her flirt on with Lux.

Anna: She's doing everything. She is this classic modern Superwoman, the woman who can do everything. And I think that is such a nefarious and toxic standard to have to live up to. Do you know that famous quote, “Everything Fred Astaire did, Ginger Rogers did backwards in heels?” That's Steela Gerrera. And I hate that for her.

Sam: Oh, wow.

Anna: I got so in my feelings about Steela having to be everything to everybody and also clean up after her brother, who doesn't even try.

Sam: I feel like we should have this episode again with your brother and my sister.

Anna: I would hate that. There is nothing I would hate more than that.

Sam: I think it opens up a really interesting thing. That family dynamic is, I guess, what turns out to be the B plot of this. It is more important.

Anna: The love triangle was there, but I think the sibling dynamics were more important and more compelling, too. And Star Wars is about family.

Sam: It is, right.

Anna: And it's about complicated families.

Sam: And this is a complicated family.

Anna: Even with just the Gerrera siblings. We don't have parents. We don't have Stormtrooper younger brother. (That is now my headcannon.) But, yeah, they're complicated enough.

Sam: I'd like to point out that the action in these episodes ramps up incredibly. And because we as the audience…I mean, if you've only seen the feature films, you're like, okay — or even if you've seen the feature films post Mando — you're like, okay, so I know who survives 20 years from now or a few years from now, but I don't know about Lux. I don't know about Steela. And I am scared for them.

Anna: I am very scared for them.

Sam: The action is extremely tight and close in, and it's amazing to me, it speaks to the youth of the characters because Anakin and Obi-Wan jump out, they skip out. And so we're left with, like, four teenagers.

Anna: Yeah.

Sam: And they have these emotions. They have these familiar, complicated relationships, and in a way that makes it more relatable. But also more tense because you're worried you're like, oh, man, teenagers are going to do something stupid.

Anna: I know. And Anakin and Obi-Wan say specifically, like, Ahsoka, don't step in. They need to learn how to do this by themselves. And I'm like, intellectually, yes. But also, these are teenagers. Do they know how hard it is to overthrow a government and then restart it after? There is so much work to be done in the next 44 minutes of The Clone Wars.

Sam: Circling all the way back, that is something I love about these four-parters, is that we've got 88-ish minutes, which is a comfortably sized feature film, to tell a Star Wars story.

Anna: Yes.

Sam: And I've said ever since I watched The Clone Wars movie, that this is my favorite way to watch Star Wars, because you can have these….like, the planet Onderon, they ride around on dinosaurs. The rebel base is a temple, and it's in the middle of, like, some weird jungle where all the plants are crazy multicolored. The city has a palace. It's, like, a mile high. It's nothing you could make without the CGI budget of a medium sized country.

Anna: And a million years ago, we talked about the changes in animation over the years in The Clone Wars, and everything jumped forward, because now we're in Season Five, and everything is more beautiful. I want to give a quick shout out just to the fact that the weird purple ferns in this episode made me go back to “Ambush,” the pilot of The Clone Wars, because that's what it reminded me of. And I wanted to see how far we've come. And the difference, my friends, is very significant. It is very large. Everything is deeper and richer. The galaxy has more stars. The pelts that they're carrying in at the end of “A War on Two Fronts” are, like, richer and denser and layered. And the way the fabric falls is like, you can see it ripple in the wind, and it's soft and flexible.

Sam: Something else I noticed, and it's subtle. But Ahsoka has gotten a little bit of a character upgrade. Her montrals are a little bit higher, a little bit more pronounced.

Anna: Interesting.

Sam: And she moves with more intentionality. And I think she's taller.

Anna: That is extremely cool. I want to give the fastest shout-out to Ahsoka, because the moment that Anakin, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka introduced themselves to the rebels, she throws back her hood. She says, “I'm Commander Tana. We're here to help you take back your planet.” And I'm like, “My baby. She's all grown up and calling herself Commander.”

Sam: Commander Ahsoka Tano.

Anna: I love that. I love my big, strong baby. I love her so much.

Sam: Speaking of characters we love, is it about that time?

Anna: I think it's time.

Sam: All right.

Anna: It's time for Bae Watch! It's time for Bae Watch!

Sam: Bae Watch.

[Bae Watch stinger]

Anna: Sam, I have a controversial choice.

Sam: Is it the super tactical droid Kalani? I know you love tactical droids.

Anna: It would be a real upstart victory. Like, that would be out of left field.

Sam: No lines, 10 seconds of screen time, just a menacing silhouette.

Anna: My bae…

Sam: Oh, it's not Kalani. Okay.

Anna: It's not Kalani. My bae, with 18 question marks after it, is Anakin Skywalker.

Sam: Wow.

Anna: Yes.

Sam: Okay, a couple of points. First of all, a while back, you said Anakin would never be your bae. You have gone back on that and chosen Anakin a few times.

Anna: As we all know, I put my foot in my mouth more often than you would think and have to eat my words many times over, pretty much every episode, by the time we get to the next episode.

Sam: You're a yoga teacher! Okay, tell me more.

Anna: There are three times that Anakin checks in with Ahsoka that I think he did beautifully. So the first one, when she sees Steela and Lux making heart eyes at each other, he turns to her and he says, “Are you losing focus, Snips?”

Sam: Mhm.

Anna: And I think that was a really elegant but also compassionate way to get at the real question, which was like, “Are you having trouble maintaining detachment from this situation, Snips?”

Sam: “Would you like to share this note with the class?”

Anna: No, that's the opposite of what he's doing. I think that would be really rude and embarrassing and inappropriate, and I think it would alienate Ahsoka from him. But instead, he is so subtle with her. The moment when he and Obi-Wan are going back to Coruscant, he turns to her, and he's like, “Do you want to stay or do you want to go?” And he says it with this little smile because he knows what the answer is going to be, but he wants to give her an out if she really is uncomfortable.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: And I think that is such a great mentor move, to give you a choice. Because you know what they're feeling, but you know them well enough to be like, “I know what you're going to pick, but I want you to know that you have options. You don't have to stay in a situation that makes you uncomfortable.”

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: And then the final one is that when he's leaving with Obi-Wan, he turns to Ahsoka, and he just says, “Remember your purpose.”

Sam: Yes.

Anna: He doesn't lecture her. He doesn't say, “Remember, you're a Jedi. You can't form attachments. This is bad. This is wrong. You're a bad Padawan.” He just says, he implies, “I know what you're going through, and that's not the advice I'm going to give you.” The advice is like, “Keep your eyes on the prize. Remember your purpose. Remember why you're here. I trust you to deal with this other stuff when you deal with it.”

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: “But the important thing is not that you're doing something inappropriate or you're doing something bad. The important thing is that you do what is needed at the end of the day, and we can deal with the rest later.”

Sam: That also ties in with the complexities of their orders. And that Ahsoka cannot bring the fight to the enemy.

Anna: Right.

Sam: She can only defend. There's a scene at the end where Steela is on top of an obelisk — I was going to say “stele,” which is the word for it. I'm just not sure how to pronounce it exactly. Because it's ancient word.

Anna: Like a “stele?”

Sam: Yeah. But she's shooting a bunch of droids, and then a whole bunch of droids flank her and Ahsoka assumes her stance and is defending them, and you can tell she's about to run towards them and doesn't.

Anna: Yes, she does a great job.

Sam: She does follow her purpose.

Anna: Yeah. So Anakin is my bae. I don't feel 100% great about this decision, but I want to give him the nod. I think he was the right person for Ahsoka in this moment.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: Not that he was the only person. Aayla Secura has also given Ahsoka really good boy advice, but I think he was a good dad.

Sam: That was years ago,

Anna: I know. That was years ago, she was such a baybee. Now she's all grown up and throwing back her hood and declaring herself to the rebels.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: So great. Who's your bae?

Sam: I'm going to go with Steela Gerrera.

Anna: Interesting.

Sam: First of all, probably highest kill count, question mark, in the whole episode.

Anna: I would say yes.

Sam: Because she has this heavily modified sniper rifle.

Anna: And she's a crack shot.

Sam: Aces enemies. We've talked at length about those B2 battle droids and how they're actually quite scary. And if you're up close to them, you can lightsaber them, but otherwise you have to hit them, like, right in their heart and Steela does not miss.

Anna: If Steela Gerrera was sniping at me from a rooftop, I would just roll over and play dead. Like, if I had time to even react.

Sam: I don't think you would.

Anna: I think if Steela Gerrera wants you dead by sniper rifle, you are dead by sniper rifle. R-I-P.

Sam: Yeah. And she also gracefully is able to take on that mantle of leadership. And be like, I do have to talk my brother down and let him cool off. And her and Ahsoka make up. I think Ahsoka was able to let go, and Steela was like, all right, I can get over the fact that you have a complicated history at this point. But it took her a while, but when she came around, they worked really well together.

Anna: They had a nice bonding moment.

Sam: I really appreciate her confidence. She is confident throughout the whole thing, and as we kind of came to the conclusion, or at least I came to the conclusion, that she had to outperform so in every way to assume that mantle of leadership, and she did, it sucks that she had to, but it was cool that she did.

Anna: And she's confident without being arrogant, even when she's like, “I'm going to have to jump into this tank and jerry rig it, because no one else knows how to.” But she doesn't really rub it in their faces. I think she's just kind of, like, owning the fact that she did that. And then she's moving on to the next thing, because there's no time to wait around for people to say “Steela Gerrera, great job!” She's like, “No, I did the thing that I needed to do. I did great. And now I have another thing to do.”

Sam: So I want to paint a picture of the first battle. So basically, as soon as the Jedi land, the battle droids twig onto them, they send out some infiltrated droids, and track them down. And they're doing target practice, and Steela is sitting there, and she's sniping at droids, and Ahsoka says, well, it's easy when they're standing still. And she uses the Force to wave around a droid head, and Steel shoots the crap out of it as it's flying along. And then she adjusts her scope, and she sees a battalion of battle droids walking through the forest towards her, and she says, “I think there's something over there.” She doesn't start moving until Anakin and Obi-Wan, like, pull her back. She just keeps firing, and each shot is a kill, and then they pull her back. Then, as things are going a little haywire in this battle, she points her gun at the Jedi and says, “Duck.” Shoots right over their heads. One shot, one hit on the paddock lock, and all of the animals get free, and they use that to escape, which is, like, the perfect set of distractions, situational awareness. It's an extremely cool scene. It's not even Steela’s coolest scene in this arc.

Anna: It's not.

Sam: But it is tactics and execution and the awareness and perception, and that is really important in a leader.

Anna: Yeah. Did I love that the makers of this episode pitted the two strong women in it against each other? No. Do I love that they made up and helped each other to accomplish what they needed to? Yes, I do love that. And I think Steela is a really worthy choice. Good Bae Watch.

[Bae Watch stinger]

Sam: All right, that about wraps us up. Join us next week for the conclusion to the Onderon Arc — Season Five, episodes four and five, featuring the Onderon oppressors and soon to be appearing super tactical droid Kalani, who will haunt Anna's nightmares now that tactical droids have been rendered kind of moot.

Anna: Horrifying. Just when I was getting over my hatred of tactical droids, we get a super tactical droid.

Sam: If you're a new listener after our last episode with Tim, we're really grateful to have you here, and we love all of our listeners. So shoot us an email, a holocron, a carrier pigeon, an Onderon dinosaur-gram, however you get messages to us. And you can find us on Patreon at Growing Up Skywalker.

Anna: And you can find us on all of the social medias and get our podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Please make sure to like us on your podcast app and subscribe, so you can follow along. And send this episode to your sibling. Whether or not you have a great relationship. Will I be following my own advice? No.

Sam: I’ll send this to my brother-in-law. But probably not my sister.

Anna: And we'll see you next Tuesday!

Sam: Bye.