Episode 52: Onderon Arc, Part 2

They never said revolution would be easy. In the final half of the Onderon Arc (The Clone Wars 5.4–5, “The Soft War” and “Tipping Points”) we see that Onderon’s rebels are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to throw off Separatist rule.

In our recap, we talk about the rightful king, Dendup, and why he’s the worst. (Steela Gerrera 4 Queen of Onderon.) We figure out how you can successfully make a gambit for neutrality between the Republic and Separatists — another reason why Dendup is the worst. And we talk about Ahsoka’s radicalizing moment, where she sees the Jedi Council do so little to stop the wasting of lives for a good cause.

Don’t worry. There are laughs, too, because HONDO OHNAKA is there and he’s doing the most.

Transcript

Sam: Welcome to Growing Up Skywalker. I'm Sam.

Anna: Hi, I'm Anna.

Sam: And today we've got the second half of the Onderon Arc. Season Five, episode four, “The Soft War,” and Season Five, episode five, “Tipping Points.”

Anna: Of the Clone Wars.

Sam: Yeah. Still in the Clone Wars for a minute. “Struggles often begin and end with the truth.”

Anna: That is the fortune cookie for “The Soft War.” Now buckle up, kiddos. There's a lot going on.

Sam: So we start off: The Separatists have sent reinforcements to Iziz, the capital of Onderon, and the rebels are slinking along. You can tell that they're rebels because they're the only ones wearing cloaks. And they set off an ambush. And in the wreckage of the ambush, holo-projectors go off all over the city. And Steela Gerrera, larger than life, gives her speech: “Do not be afraid, brothers and sisters, we mean you no harm.” And they are going to reclaim their sovereignty under the rightful King Dendup, which is kind of a dumb name.

Anna: More like Dandruff.

Sam: Aw, he's bald! So we cut to the throne room, and it's an argument between King Rash, who only eats the first bite of all fruits, General Kalani, who has a mega spooky voice, and General Tandin, who is an old dude with a mustache and beard who is the voice of reason in all these cases. And they reveal to the King that Lux Bonteri is part of the rebel movement, which lends at some legitimacy, because Lux Bonteri is the son of the deceased Senator of Onderon. So pretty scary stuff. However, Rash is angry, and so he's going to execute King Dendup tomorrow.

Anna: To break the back of the rebellion.

Sam: So back at the rebel bar, they're sitting, fighting over what to do. And the Steela's plan is to rescue the King during the execution, which is going to be a nightmare, because it's a huge crowd and there's going to be tons of guards. Saw is like, “This is a bad plan. I'm going to act.” And he storms off into the night.

Anna: As he does. That is his M.O. That is what he does.

Sam: And Steela tries to exert her authority. She orders him to stop, but he's like, “No.” And so she orders someone to follow him. Saw makes his way to the palace. He grappling hooks in. He talks with King Dendup. They have a pretty interesting talk. King Dendup doesn't really want to be part of this revolution.

Anna: He didn't even know that the rebellion was trying to restore him to the throne.

Sam: Yeah, because he's actually been truthful with King Rash this whole time. He's like, “I don't know anything. You keep me in literally a walled garden.”

Anna: But he gets pretty excited when he hears that they have the support of the Jedi. So Saw is like, great, let's head back to HQ.

Sam: So he shoots his grappling hook back over the wall. But the mosquito netting catches it, and the alarms go off, and they are in trouble and captured and tortured. The rebels are like, we need to go rescue Saw. And they all grab their guns. And Steela says, “No, we have to rescue the King. That's what Saw would have wanted.”

Anna: She makes a hard choice.

Sam: So Kalani — back at the torture chambers…[laughing] This is a kid's show…Kalani and General Tandin are torturing Saw Gerrera, and they're attempting to play good cop-bad cop. But Kalani is just straight bad cop. Until General Tandin is like, “You realize that he's our only link to these rebels. You can't just electrocute him to death.” So they cut to a room, and Tandin is giving him a cup of water, and they have this really interesting conversation about who's a patriot, who's a freedom fighter, who's a revolutionary. And it seems like Saw scores some blows. And Tandin is thinking, “Yeah, I don't know…Anyway, it doesn't matter, kid. You're getting executed tomorrow.” So we moved to the execution scene. We are about to execute King Dendup via laser guillotine when at the very last second, Steela alley-oops herself out of the crowd, snipes out the two droids, and it is on like Donkey Kong. Lux Bonteri smoke-bombs the executioner platform, punches General Kalani in the face, and they all start to escape when all of a sudden, there's enough battle droids to surround them all.

Anna: They're pinned in. They get a rebel right through the heart. And Dendup says, “Put down your guns. It's over. It's time to surrender.”

Sam: So now they're all getting executed. And Ahsoka starts moving through the crowd, and she starts pulling back her cloak, and she starts reaching for her lightsabers, when all of a sudden, coming down from his perch overlooking it all in the palace, General Tandin tells everyone to stop and brings his guards around.

Anna: Hauling butt down the stairs, army guards in tow, he grabs Rash in a chokehold, and the crowd goes wild.

Sam: And so this situation is completely escalated. The rebels escape with King Dendup, and General Tandin is sitting there with Rash in a chokehold. And Kalani is like, “You'll never escape.” And Rash is like, “You'll never escape” — when Ahsoka decides to act to save them both. She Force pushes over all the droids, triple jumps.

Anna: Catapults out of the crowd.

Sam: And then everyone escapes. And she says she calls base. She’s like, “Well, they for sure know that the Jedi are involved now. So, sorry about that.”

Anna: So Tandin can promise them the army, and Dendup agrees to lead the rebellion, to be their legitimate figurehead, show that they're restoring him to the throne. But, yeah, when Ahsoka calls home, Anakin and Obi-Wan can't promise any help. It's up to the Council. So we end on this uneasy note: what's going to happen with the rebellion?

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: And that's where we pick up in “Tipping Points.” Fortune cookie: “Disobedience is a demand for change.” So the rebels are continuing their work to gain the hearts and minds of the people of Onderon. As the episode opens, Ahsoka drops another hologram projector onto the ground in a market. And this time she's projecting Dendup into the sky.

Sam: It's a Dendup-gram.

Anna: He is the rightful king, calling on the people to join the rebellion. So she makes her escape. She hops on a beautiful Onderon dragon, which is called a ruping — fun Star Wars trivia. She hops on with Lux. They fly back to the new rebel HQ, which is out in the highlands. They're calling it The Nest. I find it completely delightful.

Sam: It is incredibly gorgeous. It's these massive pillars of stone, like narrow pillars of sandstone. And then they apparently are just dragon-riders.

Anna: Now, as soon as Ahsoka and Lux get back to The Nest, there is an immediate leadership change. Dendup hears the reason of Steela saying, “We need to bring this war out of the city, into the wilderness.” And he promotes her to commanding general rather than Tandin.

Sam: And Tandin is like, “…I will serve in this capacity,” which is interesting.

Anna: She celebrates by making out with Lux. And then she has no time for drama. She directs the troops to the battlefield. They are ready to go to war. Back in Onderon, back in Iziz, King Rash is feeling the tide of this war tipping against him. But Kalani is like, “Don't worry, we're going to send these Separatist gunships out to the mountains. They're going to attack the rebel nest. Everything's going to be fine.”

Sam: These HMP gunships are UFOs.

Anna: They look like flying saucers.

Sam: Yeah, and because Kalani has such a low robot voice, the fact that these big drones have a slightly higher voice amused me.

Anna: Yeah, let me say: They might look like flying saucers. That does not make them any less terrifying. This is a legitimate threat. So back at the rebel HQ, The Nest, Steela and the rebels are ready. And as soon as the Separatist droids start marching on them, they begin the Battle of Onderon. So at first, everyone is playing to their strengths, and they're getting hit after hit on the Separatists. Saw is commanding this death-from-air force on ruping-back, he's slinging explosives onto the columns of battle droids. Tandin has the cavalry on these, like, T-rex style reptiles. Steela is sniping everybody from a cliff. But then the gunships, the flying saucers arrive, and they break their line. It's like mechanics versus organics. They can't hang. Ahsoka calls home, begging for reinforcements again, but Obi-Wan stays firm. The Republic and the Jedi can't get involved. This is an internal job. And then Anakin says, who do we know with a bunch of missiles lying around and no allegiance to anybody? HONDO OHNAKA, ladies and gentlemen.

Sam: He says that to Obi-Wan off screen. So Ahsoka doesn't know that help is coming.

Anna: She doesn't know. Steela doesn't know. The rebellion doesn't know. So Steela is regrouping the rebels, giving them their new orders. And then a ship lands in their front yard and it is Mr. Hondo Ohnaka himself. Anakin paid him to deliver crate after crate of rocket launchers to the rebellion. And holy moly do they work.

Sam: Oh, yeah.

Anna: Saw grabs the first one. He aims. He takes down the biggest flying saucer in the pantry. Everyone cheers. But then a fighter radio is in. As they've been distracted with the gunships, the Separatists are also attacking Dendup back at The Nest, so Steela launches herself onto her ruping. She flies back to the Nest. She pulls a John Wick Two. She like, takes out one gunship with her rocket launcher. And then she slings it on her back and pulls out a different gun. And she snipes down all of the droids that are racing to get to King Dendup.

Sam: She gets there just in time because Dendup is running like a fool towards the edge of this cliff, being chased by commando droids. Which are really scary.

Anna: Yeah. So they're menacing him. They're forcing him to the edge of the cliff. She takes out the last droid just before they get to him. She takes his hand. And then Saw shoots down the last gunship and sends it careening in their direction. It falls. It explodes. It shatters the cliff that Steela and Dendup are standing on. He gets to safety.

Sam: She shoves him to safety.

Anna: She shoves him to safety. She falls and she's hanging onto the edge of the cliff with her fingernails. So Lux and Ahsoka get there just in time. Lux is racing down to help. He's trying to grab her and Ahsoka's like, “Get out of the way. I can do this.” She lifts Lux clear, puts him gently down on the rock and she goes back to grab Steela. Steela is in mid air, but that fallen gunship has a little bit of juice left in it and it aims. It hits the Ahsoka and the shoulder. She loses her focus. Steela falls to the ground below, smashes her body on the rocks, and dies.

Sam: Lux grabs Steela's rifle and rolls over and shoots the droid.

Anna: But it's too late. They lost their general. They won the war, but they lost their general.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: So flash back to Iziz: Dooku is not interested in prolonging this fight anymore. He can see that the tide has turned against the Separatists. He orders Kalani to withdraw the army. And then as his last move, Kalani shoots King Rash dead on his own throne. And the episode closes on a state funeral for Steela. The entire city has turned out to honor her. And in the midst of the ceremony, the funeral proceedings, Ahsoka tells Lux that Steela's death changed her perspective. She says, “You told me once that many lives are caught between the Republic and the Separatists.” But at the same time, Lux changed his perspective, too. Dendup appointed him the new Senator for Onderon. He says he's going to follow in his mother's footsteps and he's going to bring Onderon back into the Republic. He has totally changed his tune. And then at the close of the episode, Dendup lifts his hands into the air and says, “Remember this as the day Onderon became free again.” Da da!!!!

Sam: I cried a lot. I cried a lot. And it's probably not where you think.

Anna: Interesting!

Sam: Yeah, I cried at that last bit where Lux has finally become part of the Republic.

Anna: Say more.

Sam: So, watching Steela die in this like it felt kind of like how, if you walk outside and lightning strikes you, it's like, apparently you're supposed to die today. Steela took three events to take her out of the fight. And it was so sad. And watching Saw mourn her — and Saw blames himself because he fired the rocket that crashed the ship. But the fact that this is what made Lux change his mind shows that his character arc is complete. And being part of the Republic again, that the Republic is on the side of right, was really important for me.

Anna: I think that's the kind of big picture thinking that you have to do when you're thinking about a war. Otherwise you get so devastated and so piled on by the individual deaths, that if you don't peel back and zoom out and look at the big picture, you're like, “Why would anyone ever fight a war?” And I don't think that's…wrong. But when you look at the big picture, Steela's death was not necessary. But she did, with her life, enable the tide of the entire rebellion to change the minds of the people of Onderon.

Sam: For sure. I think something interesting would have been if Steela had lived, there would have been power struggles between this nascent rebel movement and the ineffective King Dendup. Because he talks when he's being rescued by Saw. He says, “This is all my fault, because I had to choose to join the Republic or the Separatist. I chose neither. And so whoever invaded us first got us.”

Anna: Okay, so I want to talk about that. I think this arc, especially the last two episodes of this arc, were kind of like more fodder for this debate — this conversation — we have again and again. And it's about the third way between the Republic and the Separatists. And there was such an interesting conversation between Saw and Dendup. Even when they're just walking, like, in the walled garden on the top of the palace, Dendup is saying to Saw, “I had to make a choice between the Republic and the Confederacy. They're both corrupt, but I had to make a choice before they made one for me. Except I didn't make a choice. I didn't choose either of them. I chose the people.” And then Saw later says to Tandin, “When Dendup did that, when he chose his people, the Separatists took us over because we let them.” So by not forging a more powerful stance, he left a power vacuum. He left the planet open for plunder. And I think that's what we saw with Satine in the Mandalore Arc as well.

Sam: Yeah. Neutrality does have a high price.

Anna: It does have a high price. You have to be willing to pay it. I think you also have to have a Plan B, which is that even if you're choosing neutrality, you're not choosing pacifism. You're willing to fight back.

Sam: Yes, that's very true. I'm thinking of Sweden and Switzerland. During World War II, Switzerland shot down American planes and Nazi planes. They're like, if you fly over, we're shooting you down because we have to. They were definitely like, hey, we'd prefer it if the Allies win, but we can't change our neutrality.

Anna: Okay. I was actually thinking of the Lurman, the lemur people from Season One, who chose pacifism and then got walked over, and then they needed the Jedi to help them carve a foothold again.

Sam: Yeah. So that speaks to the conflict that Ahsoka, Anakin and Obi-Wan had, and where Ahsoka says, “We have to do something or be wiped out.” And Obi-Wan says, “We have to learn from our lessons from this.”

Anna: That was a powerful line of Obi-Wan, because I think he was also trying to walk that line of neutrality without anything to back it up.

Sam: Right.

Anna: So Anakin is the one who's like, okay, if we're fighting a proxy war, we're fighting a proxy war. Who do we know who can help us to win this war? Who's not affiliated with us? What nonstate actor with a bunch of weapons do we know? Oh, wait, HONDO OHNAKA!

Sam: That is one of my favorite scenes, one of the best Hondo scenes, because Anakin lands on Florrum…

Anna: On Florrum!

Sam: …And on Hondo's base, he's got a bunch a bunch of Weequay, like, pointing laser slingshots at him, and he just calmly gets off the ship and Hondo’s like: “Oh, Anakin Skywalker, what brings you here?” “I'm here for business.” “Business. All right, we can work with that.”

Anna: “I understand business.”

Sam: “I understand business.” And Anakin says, “I know that you're the person to come to if I need a bunch of illegally delivered arms” and Hondo’s like, “Illegally?! Me?!”

Anna: “You?! A Jedi?!”

Sam: “That would be very expensive.”

Anna: So I actually thought Anakin was going to hire some of Sugi's bounty hunters in that scene. I was floored when he picked Hondo Ohnaka.

Sam: Has Anakin met Sugi? Oh, yeah.

Anna: Anakin met Sugi and her bounty hunters when they rescued Ahsoka at the end of Season Three from the death jungle.

Sam: And they also had met previously in “Bounty Hunters.” So actually, I feel like he knows Sugi better than Hondo. So it's surprising to me that he went to Hondo.

Anna: I think when a man holds you hostage in his cantina, you get to know him pretty well.

Sam: Also, when he was in that cantina, it’s like, there was probably a wall marked “Illegal explosives. Do not touch.”

Anna: Anakin's looking over, he's like, “That's going to come in useful in four seasons.” So what Anakin did, I thought, was so clever. It was minimalist. It was effective. Rocket launchers are powerful, but they only need one person, right? They are portable. They came in via a neutral party. I see now why so many countries choose this thing of using a non-state actor to fight their proxy war. It's really smart. It's hard to trace. It's really effective.

Sam: It's cheaper, and it's cheaper for the reason that Obi-Wan wants it to be cheaper. And the Jedi Council, too, in that the real coin you have to spend as a culture in war is your soldiers, but that means the will of the people. You might have all the money in the world, but you have a limited amount of will of the people no matter what.

Anna: Yeah.

Sam: And so Obi-Wan is like, yes, we can't actually spend more Jedi, because I can't get the Council to sign off on bringing another front into this war. Also, depending on the way this works, the front lines of the war may be such that Hondo would open a salient or something, where now it's something that has to be defended. Or maybe it's just not an area that the Republic had any fleets, so they couldn't do it without him. And this is what Dooku says, too. He's like, “I can't actually take over this plant without spending more resources that I'm willing to.”

Anna: Right. The rebels are dug into the mountainside. It's going to take time. It's going to take more reinforcements. “We have all the money we need. But is this a lost cause?” Like, when Dooku ran the numbers, I think, A, he didn't think it was worth it, and B, this is how he punishes people who let him down. He's like, “You had one chance to impress me, you failed, and now you die by super tactical droid.”

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: That is Dooku's entire jam.

Sam: Yeah. Because Dooku doesn't want to have to expend even a battalion of droids there, especially not since four of his new UFO gunships all got shot down.

Anna: And it is interesting because we're seeing the nature of the rebellion change, but it still doesn't seem like they should be as powerful as they are. So at the beginning of the first Onderon arc, at the beginning of the first half, they started with these guerrilla tactics because that's all they had. They had a couple of people, they seeded themselves through the city of Iziz.

Sam: Mhm.

Anna: And even when they were rescuing Tandin and Dendup, they were still doing sneaky guerrila tactics. But by “Tipping Points”, it doesn't feel like they have that many more rebels, but now they're organizing a battlefield fight. Like, one marching army on one marching army.

Sam: Yeah. And on top of that, Tandin is running a cavalry charge. Saw is running an air cavalry charge. It's really part of the spirit of Onderon, on which I think is really interesting.

Anna: Yeah. I think the rebels became more powerful because they were leveraging the resources that were native to Onderon. They had the rupings, they had those cool T rexes...

Sam: They had the terrain, because something like that is really difficult to take. It did need those gunships to chase them down, because they would just run down like a two-foot-wide canyon way and then be in a completely different valley.

Anna: So it was so heartening to see what is possible even for this scrappy rebellion. And this is such a beautiful Star Wars call-forward, right? This scrappy rebellion, even if they're outnumbered, even if they're overpowered, they are able to win. If they pull out all the stops, and if they're clever, and if they use the resources available to them, they can still overcome this larger force to the point where Dooku is like, “This is not worth it.”

Sam: “This venture…is no longer…profitable!”

Anna: Yeah, exactly!

Sam: I draw a lot of parallels as a call-forward to the current Ukraine War, because the magic sauce that the Ukrainians have is the javelin missile, which is an extremely advanced American missile. And also there's some very cool Swedish missile that they're using as well, which is ironic because Sweden is, in a sense, a neutral country. But they manufacture arms out the wazoo and sell them. And if you were to try to invade them, they'd be like, “You want to learn how good our arms that we export are compared to our local arms?”

Anna: #VeryMandalore.

Sam: Yeah. But in Ukraine, despite being exceedingly outnumbered by Russian forces, the javelin is a marvelous equalizer because you can take out a tank from 2 kilometers away. Very reliably.

Anna: Here's what the people of Ukraine have, but I'm not sure the people of Onderon have — because I love this comparison. The people of Ukraine have this righteous fury and a legitimate leader, and all of these forces and international support. Everything's bolstering them against the Russians, right, at this time of recording in May 2022. But the people of Onderon, I think, had a stronger leader when they were fighting for Steela. As soon as Dendup becomes the face of the rebellion, I found myself wondering, “Is this the guy you're dying for?”

Sam: Yeah. Because he let himself get taken over and taken alive, not made a martyr, all these things. He didn't seem like he was trying very hard.

Anna: Dendup was passive. He let the Separatists sweep in. He thought he was making a stand by choosing nothing, but really, he was leaving them open to infiltration and Confederate supremacy, right?

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: He can't defend himself. He's this frail old dude. He's like, running away from these commando droids.

Sam: It's because he eats the whole pear. Rash eats one bite. He eats just one bite of each fruit.

Anna: You gotta be hungry! You gotta be living on the edge. He — Dendup — wouldn't even get looped in with the rebellion until they literally saved his life. He's this old white guy, and I'm like, “This is the leader you want to stand behind?” Steela would have been a better queen.

Sam: Yeah. That's why she had to die, because otherwise it would have been an interminable civil war. I'm reminded of the American Civil War after Lincoln was assassinated. Then his Vice President, Andrew Johnson, became President, who rolled back all the Reconstruction efforts, which led to the Confederacy of States having an imprint on the world today, despite the fact that it was around for less time than the Backstreet Boys.

Anna: Oh, God, that's horrifying.

Sam: I mean, the Confederate State was around for less time than people go to high school. And it still has an imprint on the U.S. today because all the things necessary to build up the south after the Civil War were rolled back by Johnson. And so you had a weak leader follow the war leader, who died tragically.

Anna: So that's the flip side of hearts and minds, right? Hearts and minds don't always work the way you want them to.

Sam: Yeah, because you're going to…I mean, this is where the loyalists versus the revolutionaries purges began, and this is why revolutions are so nasty. And so the fact that this revolution all just turned out kind of okay is odd, because this is the kind of thing where you have secret police, family disappearing in the night, because you need to have ideological purity after this. Otherwise it's going to flip-flop back and forth over and over again.

Anna: So here's my headcanon. My headcanon — and this is totally, wildly unsupported by anything — but this is what I'm sticking to. My headcanon is that by the end of the first half of the Onderon Arc, when King Rash holocrons Dooku and he says “We need more reinforcements,” he's like, “Oh, don't worry. Not only am I going to send you more reinforcements, I'm going to send you Kalani, a super tactical droid.” My headcanon is that Dooku already sensed that Rash was not going to be able to pull this one out. So he sent Kalani with orders to scupper Rash from the inside, because there is no reason with a super tactical droid running the numbers, you would ever send your forces out into the country where the rebellion trying to overthrow you has an advantage. The logical thing to do is to hold up in your city, to use citizens of Iziz as living shields…

Sam: Mhm. I mean, that's what Tandin said they should do in the third episode. He said “We need to use the militia because the rebels are only attacking droids.”

Anna: Yeah, absolutely. So you hole up, you go to ground, you make the forces arrayed against you come to you. So I think the reason that it ended so neatly is, obviously, because this is Star Wars. It's a kids show. We needed a victory. We needed to set bigger things in motion. And that required a perspective change for Lux and a win for this rebellion. But I love the idea that Dooku was like, this guy's a dingdong. Let's just cut our freaking losses.

Sam: In the previous Onderon arc I talked about how this might be some example of a wild hair of Anakin's prescience, because if Onderon is a meaningless planet amongst all these planets, yet he sent himself — and needed this favor from Hondo, and presumably a bunch of spice or whatever Anakin used to pay for those rocket launchers — as part of this thing to be like “I need to instill the seeds of rebellion because I need people to have that fire within them.” However many years down the line, Palpatine was like, okay I need to snuff the fires of this rebellion and the best way to snuff the fires of rebellion is take the oxygen out of the room and make it so the rebellion just wins. We've also been reading “The Traitor Baru Cormorant,” so we might be seeing too many wheels within wheels.

Anna: So many wheels within wheels.

Sam: Highly recommend that book.

[ad break]

Anna: Okay, I want to talk about Steela Gerrera.

Sam: The coolest.

Anna: She is the coolest. She is my queen. The thing that I want to talk about first is that once again, we're seeing Saw Gerrera, her older brother, trying to chart the Rebellion's course. But Steela is just…better at it.

Sam: He finally does acknowledge it.

Anna: He does. But first, when Steela is saying “We can't have them take the fight to the city, we need to draw them out to the Highlands,” and Dendup is like, “You're amazing, you're a bae, I'm making you my commander general. Whatever. Tandin, I don't care.” And Saw, once again, is kind of butthurt about it, right?

Sam: Yeah, a little bit.

Anna: And here's something that I love about this episode. I think Steela is so good because, as we said, her power is that she can do it all. So in the Battle of Onderon, Steela is right where she needs to be. She is on top of a cliff. She's sniping away, and we see her point of view through the scope. She has this really tight focus. She's moving from one droid head to another. It's, like, almost claustrophobic, but this is where she needs to be. But we also see when she gets that promotion to commander general, she's equally good at seeing the big picture as the tight focus. She can do the detail work, the close-end stuff, and she can do the visionary work, too.

Sam: So the whole battle, once they start getting going, she's on her dragon, riding around, and Lux and Ahsoka are riding after her like they're her aides-to-camp. And it's very interesting. Lux actually says that. He says “She certainly leads from the front.”

Anna: I think Ahsoka says “She leads by example.”

Sam: Yeah. And so she's there for sure, doing all the things, doing the most, getting the kills, and in a way that dooms her as a leader.

Anna: Yeah. It is her greatest strength and her fatal flaw. She is the one who can do everything. So she does everything. And just like in life: if you try to do everything, eventually it will come back to bite you. It could be burnout, it could be exhaustion, it could be your relationships failing. It could be whatever. For Steela, she just did too much with no support.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: Like, I don't want to make light of her death. It was very affecting, and I want to talk about it because it was moving and meaningful for me for a lot of reasons. But this is like the picture that I see in my life.

Sam: Right.

Anna: Whenever you try to do too much, there will be a moment when it is…too much.

Sam: Yeah. I've reached a similar point several times in my life. I reached a point when I needed to get sober, where I had done too much and I needed to drastically change everything. But then a lot of things in my life, I've reached a point where I've been unable to continue further in this line, and I have to come around from a different direction because otherwise I'm just, like, grinding my feet to nothing.

Anna: Yeah.

Sam: And I don't think Steela was there yet. I think what we were seeing was the trope, the myth, of the hero who dies young after winning. I mean, it's Alexander the Great, right? Who got as far as anyone has ever gotten and then died of a nosebleed.

Anna: Yeah. Something so preventable and almost…not comedic, but ironic, in the tragedy of it.

Sam: Because you would have expected them to die nobly in battle or at, like, a ripe old age. And in a way, dying young heroically is a better end.

Anna: It's very Boromir.

Sam: Right.

Anna: You can be the greatest warrior of your country, but if a couple of orcs or a couple of droids are in the wrong place and overpowering you, it might take three arrows to take you down, but there's nothing you can do about it. They will take you down.

Sam: Yeah. What's interesting about that is how a death in battle adds such heroism to it.

Anna: Yeah.

Sam: I find that really interesting, because most deaths in battle are boring

Anna: Or brutal.

Sam: Yeah. But ever since World War I, most combat deaths have been from indirect munitions. You get bombed, you get an artillery shell, you're sleeping, and all of a sudden, you're in pieces. And so this, like, face-to-face, heroic, everyone-can-see-it battle is the heroic thing. And we imagine that all deaths in combat are like that when in reality, it's mostly not.

Anna: Well, that's kind of the big picture thinking that we have to do in order to stomach war. We put this narrative of glory and heroism on it. When in reality, Steela’s death wasn't really even a battlefield death. Either Saw caused it, by gunning down the last gunship and sending it her direction, or Ahsoka caused it by not saving Steela first. She counsels the rebellion — she says “Purpose comes before feelings,” and then she saves Lux, the boy she likes, before the commanding general of the rebellion.

Sam: This is true. Although he was also closer.

Anna: He was closer…she likes him…

Sam: He didn't have a grasp. He was actively sliding down the cliffside. So I feel like she made the right call in that instance. And she would have been able to save them both if she hadn't gotten shot.

Anna: interesting. I read that a little differently.

Sam: That's fair. It would have gone very differently if she had made the decision to save Steela first and Lux had died.

Anna: Right. So the hard thing, and this is hard for me, is that the next time we see Saw Gerrera, it is going to be in Rogue One.

Sam: No.

Anna: [shocked silence]

Sam: Yeah. Cool.

Anna: That is fascinating. That doesn't change my point. We will see Saw Gerrera in Rogue One.

Sam: Yes.

Anna: Okay. I'm going point by point to make sure this is still accurate. He is firmly entrenched as the leader of a rebellion.

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: But they haven't, to my knowledge, been super successful. And Saw has been labeled an extremist. You can't win the hearts and minds of the people and win them over to your rebellion if you're alienating them with your tactics. He didn't learn that lesson from Steela, or she died before she could really help him learn it. So he didn't learn the right lessons. And years decades later, he's not been successful.

Sam: What's interesting is, that is what General Tandin was telling super droid Kalani.

Anna: Yeah.

Sam: Because he's like, you can't just torture people to death and roll through fear. I'm surprised that your circuits don't allow that, your programming doesn't allow that. “It's unfortunate you cannot calculate a different approach.”

Anna: Yeah, totally. Totally. So things would have been very different if Steela had survived. And we don't know that they would have been better, but it's possible that they could have been better.

Sam: It seems to me that Steela was the emulsifier between the oil of Lux and the water of Saw.

Anna: Yeah.

Sam: Because Saw is, “Violence is its own tool,” and Lux is, “Violence is the last tool of diplomacy.”

Anna: And Steela was like, “Yes, both.”

Sam: Yeah. And by her not being there, it definitely seemed at the funeral scene that Saw and Lux were separating.

Anna: Yeah. Saw does storm off. He's like, “It's over now.” And he doesn't really say what's over now. Steela's life is over now. The rebellion is over now. Maybe my partnership with Lux Bonteri is over now. Maybe my association with the Republic is over now.

Sam: Maybe Saw's gonna hang up his rocket launcher that he kept, but I don't think so.

Anna: Or maybe not, as it were.

Sam: So I recently played Knights of the Old Republic 2, and one of the main planetary missions is on Onderon. And there is this really interesting back and forth between the Beast Rider culture and the local Onderon culture. And at some point, you have to make a decision whether you're helping out the more pro-Republic side or the more pro-local control side. No matter what you do, you are counseled that Onderon is losing a part of itself, a part of its history. It's interesting to me that although that's non-canon, the fact that they named the capital Iziz and the palace looks the same as it does in Knights of the Old Republic 2, which takes place, like, eight years before this episode. So they took a lot of touchstones from it. This idea of absolutely wild highlands jungle culture, and a big city surrounded by walls, the difficulties moving back and forth, is such a cool story to tell and can really — it's the fantasy of Star Wars, and I love it.

Anna: Also, the aesthetics over the course of this arc, but especially in “Tipping Points”, were really clever. Not only were they beautiful, they were clever. In the beginning of the first arc, we more or less see Onderon like it's supposed to be. It's colorful. It's beautiful. Even Iziz looks pretty ordinary. It's crawling with droids, but it looks like this lively town.

Sam: And dinosaurs.

Anna: There are dinosaurs everywhere. But by “Tipping Points”, everything is sooty and gray, and there are gunships swooping overhead, and there are columns of super battle droids marching through the streets. It is a city at war.

Sam: Yeah. There's burning buildings. you see smoke all throughout the city.

Anna: Yeah. So not only were the aesthetics completely gorgeous, but also there were these color palette changes and these dynamic and environmental changes where you're like, okay, I can see how people are getting afraid and getting desperate and ready to end this hold that this war has on their city.

Sam: I made a special note also of the faces of each of the players in this game, because, for example, when Steela runs over to smooch Lux Bonteri, and then Lux pops on his dragon, and Ahsoka punches him in the shoulder, and she's like, “you sly dog” — I was expecting, like, a single moment of something from Ahsoka, and I didn't see it, but the whole thing was telegraphed so clearly. Her smile had this, like, at least 98% genuineness to it.

Anna: 98% megawatts, but missing a little bit.

Sam: I mean, maybe. But the ability to see that in everyone's faces, and the sorrow at the end, even Anakin looking very serious in the holocrons the whole time — the artistic style of this arc is absolutely beautiful.

Anna: I noticed it actually most when Ahsoka says to the rebels, “Purpose must come before feelings.” And Lux gets this look on his face, and I think we would use the word “stricken.”

Sam: Yeah.

Anna: Like, grieving. And I found myself wondering what that phrase meant to him, “Purpose must come before feelings.” Because this is after there's a really interesting moment when Steela brushes him off. He comes to her. She's trying to plot the heist of saving Dendup from execution, and he's kind of hovering just outside of her peripheral vision. And she says, “Please don't look at me like that.” Not only is that what Padmé said to Anakin in Attack of the Clones, I picked up on that immediately, but Lux really takes it to heart. He gets a similar look on his face, and he starts going off with Ahsoka. And it kind of seemed like his feelings might be changing.

Sam: Mhm

Anna: And that's the kind of subtle body language and inflection that we're getting in these later episodes of The Clone Wars that are so nuanced and so detailed. You get the subtext.

Sam: Yeah, it makes the whole show really good, and I just love it. But you can't just start someone on the Onderon Arc because they'd be like, “How come they can't just put a bunch of Jedi on this planet?” And you're like, “Well, let me tell you about ‘Trespass.’”

Anna: “Who is this boy who’s weeble-wobbling between the two hot babes?”

Sam: “Let me tell you about ‘War on Both Sides.’” Yeah, you have to tell the whole story, to set the whole setting. And then after four seasons of that, you can start telling stories like this, where you have all of these subtle intersecting threads that are really meaningful. I spoke last time we saw Lux Bonteri, about how that's setting an event, this chain of avalanches, and how this is one of those how Lux ended up on Onderon performing this fight because he went to Concord Dawn, and he started hanging out with the Death Watch, and he's like, “No, this isn't the way forward. I'm going to follow a different path.”

Anna: Yeah. And we're seeing that it's a really different path than he thought. The second to last time he saw Ahsoka was at the end of “A Friend in Need,” and they were holding their palms up to the glass, and he was like, “We can't be together. I'm not throwing in with the Republic.” And the implication now is that he is throwing in with the Republic. He's changed his ways.

Sam: And it was because of Steela, not because of Ahsoka.

Anna: Yeah. So things could be different between them, or they could…not. We don't really get to X-ray Lux's head and be like, “Who did you like more?! Steela or Ahsoka?!”

Sam: Right.

Anna: The directors left it so open.

Sam: Yeah. Now, another thing that I really appreciate that makes this episode pass the Bechdel test is that Steela and Ahsoka have some really good conversations about trust and how Ahsoka has been such a useful and helpful adviser.

Anna: Yeah. They start backing each other up.

Sam: Yeah. And so, them working together shows the power of feminine friendship, which I think is really important as well.

Anna: Yeah, absolutely. Sisterhood, right?

Sam: Yeah. And the brotherhood that Lux and Saw have is around a woman. And now that that woman is dead, how are they going to, like…I feel like they have no choice but to separate because they disagree on almost everything, and they fight a lot, and they have this shared experience. But are they battle brothers?

Anna: That is one thing that I hate about people killing off their powerful women and then turning them into symbols: they turn them into symbols. They essentialize them. They boil them down to their actions or their deeds or their words. But then inevitably — this is how history works — you forget the real woman who is behind these things. So Anakin even says something like, “Her spirit will be a powerful totem or token for them in the future.” And I'm like, Yeah, but I think they'd rather have the woman. I think they'd rather have the general than this symbol that you can kind of, like, twist with your narrative and turn her into whatever you want her to be.

Sam: Yeah. That's an interesting thing to think about. Would you aspire to be a symbol remembered forever, or would you aspire to be a person known for just the rest of your life?

Anna: Yes, absolutely.

Sam: There's a saying that “Everyone dies twice. The first when you actually die, and the second the last time someone thinks of you.”

Anna: Yeah.

Sam: And so someone like Steela will last longer than Lux Bonteri.

Anna: Right.

Sam: Because it will be a history footnote. Lux Bonteri, last Republic Senator, yada yada, before the Age of the Empire. And Steela will have shrines for her. A kind of immortality, as long as Onderon exists.

Anna: Yeah. It is powerful. I'm not sure it's what I would want.

Sam: Yeah. I'm in a different camp. I struggle with meaning in my life, because I want to be a symbol, and I guess it's how I was raised or how I was taught or how I was inculcated as a child. But that's more important.

[music break]

Anna: The last big thing I want to talk about — and because the second episode of this arc was called “Tipping Points”, I think it's really perfect, because we talk a lot about radicalizing moments for characters in the Clone Wars. It's one of the best parts of the series, that we get to seed these moments so luxuriously over the course of the Seasons. I think Ahsoka had a kind of tipping point, a kind of radicalizing moment.

Sam: Do you think that that moment was being part of a sisterhood and no longer trying to pursue Lux, that she finally shed that part of her?

Anna: Not really. I think that was part of the fabric of what was going on, but I think what was more important was that she was part of something important and was able to see that the Jedi didn't go far enough for the Rebellion. Not that Anakin and Obi-Wan didn't come through for her, because they did. But the Jedi Council did not come through for her, and it cost the life of a person who didn't deserve to die, and who still had so much good to do. And she says it to Lux. She says, “You've told me many times that so many lives are caught between the Republic and the Confederacy,” and I can see her wheel spinning in her brain. How many times has that happened over the course of the war? I can't even count up how many lives were lost that were just as important as Steela's, just as worthy of recognition and to continue to live a good life. Like, she can't even count the number of lives wasted, and she sees that the Jedi could have done something about it and they didn't.

Sam: Yes.

Anna: I think it shook her faith a little.

Sam: I think so as well. In this playthrough of Knights of the Old Republic 2, that's actually one of the key aspects of those games, and I highly recommend them if you're a fan of old vintage games, but your characters are people who went to war against the Mandalorians back then against the wishes of the Council, because the Council said “If you go to war, you are no longer a Jedi” or something else. And your character is like, I had to. I had to defend billions of people. Otherwise, what's the point? So the idea of the Jedi Council being this apparatus, which is purely existing in this realm of ideological purity as opposed to pragmatic existence, is really interesting because that's, like, not true of any real thing. There's never been anything that's, like, actually ideologically pure.

Anna: Right.

Sam: It falls apart inevitably and rapidly.

Anna: Even Satine’s Mandalore, her pacifist Mandalore, has to be ready to flex their ideology to survive.

Sam: Yeah. So the shift of Ahsoka recognizing that the Council doesn't always have her back is interesting. One of the big themes of The Clone Wars is that Ahsoka follows such a similar path to Anakin, but ends up in such a different place. Because you don't have Darth Ahsoka. So how does this all occur? And this is one of the important moments. Not as important as some coming up soon, but.

Anna: Sam dangles the carrots. I am ready, Sam. We're almost there.

Sam: We're putting out these episodes as fast as we can.

Anna: The last Ahsoka thing I want to say is just, the little grace notes that she got in this episode in this arc were so fabulous. That moment when she punches Lux's shoulder is great. Love that. There's a moment when Hondo delivers the rocket launchers and then yeets himself out of the stratosphere.

Sam: “Oh, look at the time, time to go!”

Anna: And then she just, like, casually slings two rocket launchers across her back in one move, and I was like, “Holy moly, Commander Tano.” Like, you gotta have some compassion for the audience. Fanning myself.

Sam: Despite the fact that she's not the main character in this arc, it is an Ahsoka arc, which I appreciate.

Anna: Yes. Is it that time?

Sam: It's time for Bae Watch.

Anna: It’s time for Bae Watch!

Sam: Bae Watch!

[Bae Watch stinger]

Sam: All right, who's it going to be?

Anna: I think it's going to be fairly obvious after our conversation. My Bae is Steela Gerrera.

Sam: Steela Gerrera!

Anna: And I feel like I've spoken to all of her manifold attractions.

Sam: Right.

Anna: She was powerful. She was clearsighted. She was a big picture person. She was a detail person. She was a compelling leader. She would have been a phenomenal Queen of Onderon. We saw her in this formative moment where she was trying to balance different strategies and different tactics, when she was leading this scrappy rebellion, and she never misstepped. She never did the wrong thing.

Sam: And she would have been willing for her brother to die, which is, like, cold, but correct.

Anna: She was willing to make hard choices and say “Purpose before feelings. King Dendup, for our purposes, is more important than my brother.” And I think we didn't even talk about that enough in the episode, and how incredibly difficult that would be. And how we don't even see rebel generals in the future able to do what Steela was able to do. So it's Steela Gerrera. Her torch burned so brightly, it was snuffed out too soon. And they might be memorializing her in Iziz, and we're going to memorialize her on the Bae Watch power Rankings. So there. Who's your Bae?

Sam: I'm going to go with Ahsoka.

Anna: Interesting.

Sam: I think Ahsoka is very cool in the second half of this. Her character growth, as far as learning detachment, learning detachment and trust, in that she's like, “Yeah, Jedi aren't helping. I've been told to skedaddle if things fall apart,” and she is still supportive. I think that's a really interesting line to walk. And I think it's very cool that she can sit there and she's riding shotgun with Lux on a dragon the whole time, just back and forth, following Steela. But the one time that she draws her lightsaber, she saves the day for Tandin, which is probably the thing that allowed the rebels to have such a powerful, well-trained force.

Anna: Would you call it a tipping point?

Sam: I would, yeah.

Anna: Ahsoka was the tipping point.

Sam: Yeah. And then later on, she defends herself against some battle droids. But this is the type of thing where Ahsoka is acting as a Jedi.

Anna: Yes. Obi-Wan even says at the end of the arc, “This was quite a journey for our Padawan.”

Sam: Isn't it interesting that it says “our” Padawan?

Anna: Yeah! Oh, my God! I didn't even catch that! Ahsoka has two dads, and they are Obi-Wan and Anakin.

Sam: Isn't that interesting?

Anna: Oh, my God. I'm literally holding my face in my hands. I cannot with that.

Sam: But, yeah, the fact that going and helping out some rebels without going out and inflicting violence on people, only defending yourself, but acting as an advisor — although it seems like something that the Jedi Council wouldn't be about, it also seems like something that they're part of. That's why Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan in “The Phantom Menace” were on Naboo, because they're there to resolve a trade dispute. And that presumably would mean, like, you show up armed with lightsabers because this might get real hairy.

Anna: Yeah.

Sam: And it did. And that's, like, Ahsoka had to do that. She was fighting her whole own phantom menace alone.

Anna: And she was really stretched to her limits. Like, tested to her limits. Anakin built her to do this, to be in battle, to wield her lightsaber, and you can almost see her fingers itching to grab it.

Sam: Time after time.

Anna: Time after time, and time after time, she says, “No. Purpose. I'm remembering my purpose.”

Sam: And she shares that wisdom with others. And in the holocron calls she makes back to base, she gets wonderful advice every single time from Obi-Wan. And I think it's so important that this is one of the key bonding moments for Ahsoka and Obi-Wan, for her to learn from him how to be a Jedi.

Anna: Oh, I love that. More Obi-Wan-Ahsoka mentorship time. Please. Stick it in my veins.

Sam: I'll give you two thirds of that in our next arc.

Anna: Okay. Fabulous.

Sam: It's the Ahsoka mentorship arc.

Anna: Okay. This is amazing. This is amazing news. This is the best thing I've heard all week.

Sam: We are getting into a four-parter, which is the Ahsoka and Younglings Arc, and it's very cute. So if this one hits your cry-o-meter like it hit mine, the next one probably won't and it's very fun and very silly.

[Bae Watch stinger]

Anna: So next week we are covering the first half of the Younglings and Ahsoka arc. It is The Clone Wars Season Five, episodes six and seven.

Sam: So join us then. Speaking of those Bae Watch power rankings, you can find those on our website, growingupskywalker.com, under “Rankings,” and yeah, we'll have those up as soon as this comes up. That was asked of me this week, “Where are the rankings? You guys are always talking about them.” So that's where they are.

Anna: Handy dandy, right there on the website. You can also find us on social media. We're on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. You can find us on every major podcasting platform. You can listen to us on Goodpods if you like — that is an app that you can download on your phone and it helps keep us at the top of the Film and TV Podcast charts and the Indie TV and Film Podcast charts, and we really appreciate your support.

Sam: And send this to someone who has experienced significant personal growth lately.

Anna: Yeah, a little reward.

Sam: I mean that's true of Saw, and Ahsoka. Lux. It's true of everyone. It should be true of you too. Experience personal growth.

Anna: Are you the person in your life who needs personal growth? We support you. And we'll see you next Tuesday!

Sam: Bye.