Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Season 6 Episode 13: Sacrifice
What is it ? : Under instructions from the Priestesses at the Wellspring of the Force, Yoda travels to Moraband, a dusty world filled with tombs of former Dark Lords of the Sith. He leaves R2 behind, and travels alone walking for a distance through the dust storms. Sitting down to meditate, he is surrounded by snakes, which form into a Giant snake to try to scare him away, but he denies them and fear, and they cannot hurt him.
He goes into a tomb and is confronted by the spectre of Darth Bane, who threatens him, but Yoda realises it is just an illusion so ignores it's attack as a staircase heading down opens underneath Bane's tomb.
The Priestesses manifest, and tell him he is heading into one of the most Dark Side places in existence, a place where the ancient Sith tortured and killed Jedi.
Heading inside, Yoda finds Sifo-Dyas, who begs Yoda to free him and tells him that he knows the secret identity of the Sith Lord. Sifo-Dyas then challenges Yoda to admit to his desires, but Yoda believes him to be another test of the Sith. However, across the Galaxy, Palpatine has felt this intrusion into the world of the Sith, and has used Dooku's blood to forge a connection with Yoda to tempt him towards the Dark Side.
As Yoda denies Sifo Dyas, he changes into Darth Sidious, and Yoda finds himself aboard a LAAT/i with Anakin and some Clone Troopers. They are on a mission to catch Dooku and his master who have been tracked meeting on Coruscant. They challenge the Sith Lords, and Yoda watches as Anakin beheads Dooku, in the same fashion as he does in "Revenge of the Sith".
Anakin and Yoda battle Sidious out onto a bridge, which begins to collapse, and when Sidious knocks Anakin unconscious, Yoda ends up defending from Sidious's attacks, and using the force to stop Anakin's unconscious body dropping to his death, even as Sidious challenges him to drop him, as that would allow him to defeat Sidious without distraction. Yoda refuses the temptation, and saves Anakin, but Sidious is about to escape. So Yoda collapses the entire bridge, and as they fall he struggles with Sidious to uncloak him and reveal his identity.
When Yoda finally pulls back the hood as they plummet towards the surface of Coruscant, the robe is empty, and back in reality, Palpatine tells Dooku that they have failed to break Yoda.
The Priestesses manifest and tell Yoda he will train with Qui-Gon Jinn to keep his personality after death, and Yoda sees the future, hearing his final words "There is another Skywalker".
Heading back to Coruscant, Yoda is met by Mace Windu and Obi-Wan, and tells them they have a path unknown to the Sith that could lead to long term victory over the Sith, far better than the Clone Wars.
High Points : The writing has improved since the last episode, with them coming up with a far better temptation for the Dark Side to lure Yoda with, his need to discover the identity of his opponent, the Sith Master. Putting him in a situation where Anakin is already tainted by the Dark Side by killing Dooku un-necessarily, then asking Yoda to sacrifice Anakin to attain his goal is a good one. Yoda has sacrificed many Jedi through the Clone Wars, but doing so this callously could be a step towards the Dark Side for the old Jedi.
The Lightsaber battle better Sidious and Yoda is great, much added to by the tension when Yoda is struggling to keep holding Anakin aloft through the force, while holding off Sidious's attacks and force lightning. A great moment, which demonstrates Yoda's power far more effectively than the acrobatic flips he does in Attack of the Clones or Revenge of the Sith, here is real power, fighting the Dark Lord of the Sith, while busy saving someone's life.
Low Points : If there's some kind of link between student and master, as Palpatine exploits in this episode, couldn't the Jedi have been using this to track Dooku all this time, or spy on him. And given Yoda has trained virtually every Jedi in the Galaxy, doesn't that make him the most vulnerable Jedi in the Galaxy with so many links to attack him through? I don't object to this idea, but it's kind of come out of nowhere in the final episode of the series.
The ending of Clone Wars is incredibly downbeat, which given what is to come is understandable, however having Yoda accept that the only way they're going to beat the Sith is by being massacred and living on as Force Ghosts, is way more downbeat than I ever imagined. His other way of beating the Sith, is literally by being slaughtered, but using this new training to live on as a spirit.
And just as a nitpicker, the tombworld of the Sith that Yoda visits in this episode is called Moraband, which apparently is another name for Korriban. But couldn't they just have just had another planet, since it's stated here that it's the original homeworld for the Sith, which Korriban wasn't! It was where they buried their dead Sith Lords, while they lived on Ziost. But given Ziost was where the Sith emigrated to after being chased away by the Jedi, and where they interbred with the Massassi, Moraband could easily have been introduced as their original homeworld, or a later world of the Sith.
Whatever this world is, Darth Bane is buried here. Given Bane died after the end of the Sith vs Jedi war, and had imposed the Rule of Two (only a master and an apprentice Sith should exist), it doesn't sound like he had a load of followers to build him the massive tomb shown in this episode . . . so where did it come from? Maybe he turfed an older Sith Lord out, and replaced him.
So what do you really think ? : This was a good episode, I enjoyed it, and it wrapped up the series on a really down note, but it didn't satisfy me. While it fills us in on how the Jedi gain the ability to create force ghosts (which apparently they teach Vader at some point for some reason), I actually feel the early Clone Wars series ("Clone Wars" rather than "The Clone Wars" if you know what I mean) had a better ending, leading directly into Palpatines kidnapping and the start of "Revenge of the Sith".
Final Words : Well, although that's all the broadcast episodes of Clone Wars watched and reviewed, I'm not finished with the series yet. There's some 8 unfinished episodes of the series which were released onto Youtube when the series was cancelled. Rather strangely, these episodes are considered Canon, when the earlier "Clone Wars" series isn't. So I'm going to watch these, and keep following "The Clone Wars" right to the bitter end.
Score : 8.5/10
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