7x12 Victory and Death

Another emotional gut-punch of the highest quality that shows Dave Filoni should be given the keys to the Star Wars franchise for as long as he wants. He gets these characters, has a perfect ending - and that payoff with Vader witnessing the aftermath of the crashed ship, and hits all the feels of an epilogue-heavy finale that wraps up loose ends after the more impactful penultimate episode. It's a quieter episode - yes, you know Ahsoka, Maul and Rex are going to escape because they have to - but the show finds a time to throw in one last homage that reminds audiences that the Clones were the characters that made this story as special as it was. Seeing Ahsoka look at the helmets of the dead Clones wearing their Tano-coloured armour was heartbreaking and a devastating final conclusion to her arc.

It didn't need to be an epic; and arguably the quieter touch makes this one feel more impactful because of this. We got the last stand of Ahsoka and Rex in the previous episode, so again, their escape was a formality here. I did like Rex being proud of how efficient the soldiers under his command were even though they were trying to kill him. I love that Rex becomes such an instrumental part of Rebels later; along with Ahsoka. It just feels right.

As finales go, Victory and Death is one of the best.

[8.5/10] What did it all mean? You live your life according to a set of ideals. You fight the good fight. You go through hell but come out the other end alive and stronger. You see the world. You see people struggle. You see people living high on the hog. You question yourself. You make tough decisions about the road ahead. You try to be a good soldier, a good citizen, a good person.

And sometimes it still ends in a makeshift graveyard, staring over friends who’ve turned on you, for reasons beyond yours or theirs or anyone’s control. Sometimes it all comes to nothing. Sometimes it just ends in tragedy anyway.

It’s hard not to be affected by the final images of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The episode’s final moments are wordless, focusing on the iconography and emotion of the moment rather than trying to explicate it with the sorry light of language. Ahsoka doesn't need to speak her pain. Rex doesn't need to voice his loss. Even Darth Vader doesn't have to utter one grim pronouncement for this scenes to land. They are something we feel, in their looks, their gestures, and the living and dead symbolism that surrounds them.

But before The Clone Wars closes its seven season, twelve-year run on such a somber note, it delivers one of its most thrilling, stakes-filled action set pieces ever. Ahsoka and Rex escaping a Republic ship full of troopers programmed to kill them should be difficult, especially with a former Sith lord running around and causing trouble. “Victory and Death” doesn't shy away from that, or make our heroes’ survival too easy or too inevitable. Those who’ve seen other works in the Star Wars canon know that the pair survive, but that doesn't stop the show from evoking genuine fear and concern for their lives and safety through all of this, which is an achievement in and of itself.

Part of that is from the existence of a simple ticking clock. The scene of Maul destroying the shi’s hyperdrive is cool in terms of prue imagery. The way he ruthlessly neutralizes the clones in his way, rips apart these massive mechanisms, and uses them to sew more death and destruction, displaying his raw strength and fury. But it also serves a clear purpose in the story, making it impossible for the good guys to simply wait things out or come up with another plan. The fact that their ship ends up caught in the orbit of a nearby moon, doomed to crash, requires them to act now, before they go down with the ship too.

So Ahsoka and Rex spring into action. Ahsoka force pushes a blow-torched door at her pursuers. Rex stuns his brothers into submission with his blaster. Their trio of droids report on the ship’s status and help open the bay doors. Ahsoka repels oncoming fire with a flurry of lightsaber deflections. Rex rushes from place to place trying to avoid being swept up in the same laser blasts. Their progression from med bay to hanger bay is a strong one, full of each member of this makeshift team pulling their weight.

Except that then they have a choice to make. Ahsoka’s plan to escape on a shuttle falls apart when the lifting of a door reveals that the clone were waiting for them. It’s one of the neatest little touches in the episode. The clone troopers fought alongside Ahsoka and Rex for ages. They know their tricks. As Rex says when he discovers they locked down the shuttles, if they weren’t trying to kill our heroes, you’d almost be proud of them.

So the only way off the ship is through more of their brainwashed former allies, amassed in such numbers that they can’t be subdued by less lethal means. So Ahsoka has to make a choice. She can either kill them in the hopes of escaping, or she can draw a line in the sand and be unwilling to let innocent, brainwashed people she used to fight alongside die at her blade. She naturally chooses the latter, and it is simultaneously both the most Jedi and least Jedi thing she’s ever done.

It’s the least because time again, we’ve seen Jedi use the clones as cannon fodder, disposable soldiers. And it’s the most because being Jedi means understanding the life that flows through all things in the universe and recognizing it even in those trying to kill you. Ahsoka is, as she’ll eventually declare, no Jedi, but she has taken the best of their teachings and shed so much its damaging baggage, becoming someone moral, capable, and steadfast in the process.

It’s the kind of choice she makes again in the episode, desiring to save her friend Rex, even if it means letting Maul go free. Ahsoka has allowed herself to have attachments, to Rex, to her former master, and to this haner full of clones, that matters more than the mission given to her by a Republic that no longer exists, or even her own skin.

Of course, there’s still battles to be had. The fact that Ahsoka doesn't want to kill her enemies makes them all the more interesting, as our heroes have to find ways to neutralize their foes without just blasting or slashing away at them. The trick with the elevators is clever; the race to the shuttle is a thrill, and the poor departed droids who aid in the mission help make that workaround involve some kind of loss.

It also results in some absolutely ripping action. As Ahsoka and Rex blast and deflect their way to the shuttle, the light show and twists in the fight keep you on the edge of your seat. The Force pull with Maul is momentous, and Rex holding onto Ahsoka during the fight is symbolic of their bond even in the hardest of times. The explosive disintegration of the Republic ship plays the looming disaster that it is. And Rex’s race to rescue Ahsoka as she plummets and drifts around in the moon’s upper atmosphere is perilous and triumphant, playing like a dark echo of their descent to Mandalore in the first episode of the arc.

In the end, they survive. They lose Maul. They lose their brothers. They lose Jesse, the clone trooper who lived through General Krell’s carnage and so many other big moments on the series, a symbol of how little it mattered after Sidious merely had to flip a switch. Years of fighting, years of camaraderie, years of war, over in a crash and escape and uncertain life ahead.

This war was a waste. It wasted the lives of so many good people, represented by those helmets on sticks in some godforsaken moon. It corrupted the life of Anakin Skywalker, who finds his Padawan’s lightsaber, sees the bird that represents her essence flying overhead, and leaves behind one of his last few connections to his humanity and compassion in a snowy grave.

What did it mean? It meant that Ahsoka Tano came of age, enough to chart her own path away from the war, to bond with Rex and others, and leave behind the Jedi when she realized they’d failed to live up to their ideals. It meant that she would start on a journey that would lead her to helping the beginnings of the rebellion that would set things right again. It meant that she transcended her training and her order, finding a connection to the Force and to the light, that even Darth Sidious could not stamp out.

But it also meant unfathomable pain and suffering for so many. Ahsoka lives. Rex lives. And yet their master and commander is dead, surviving only in his black-clad shell of a former self. So are scores of the men they served with, nothing more than broken helmets covered by snow. After a whole show’s worth of adventures, the Clone Wars are finally over, and the damage it did, to the Jedi, to the clones, and to a shaken but still standing former padawan, is immeasurable.