5x05 Tipping Points

7.8/10. You can only do the tragic and heroic sacrifice so many times before it starts to lose some of its force, but nevertheless, I still liked Steela dying for her cause, even if it stemmed from a pretty contrived setup where the day is saved, but an unexpected blast suddenly has everyone doing the whole "hang perilously off the ledge" routine. Still, Ahsoka being unable to help directly, but still play her part, and yet nonetheless be unable to save someone is a big growing moment for her, and Steela was a fully-formed character over the last few episodes, so her death means something.

The final battle with against the droid army has the usual "primitive force vs. technological force" Star Wars vibe that we witnessed in Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace, but there's some cool shots of rebels swooping in on off-brand pterodactyls and attacking the separtist forces. And it also felt very in character for Anakin to be nominally obeying the rules while finding a way around them, and having Hondo deliver weapons to the Ondoran rebels was a nice way to solve that problem which involves characters and activities the audience is already familiar with. (Though the Jedi already gave the rebels some weapons, so it's unclear why they had to go through Hondo to deliver those surface-to-air missiles, which gave me flashbacks to Charlie Wilson's War.)

On the whole, I liked this quartet of episodes' theme of how inspiring the will of the people can effect change. It's Clone Wars, so a lot of those lessons were on the nose, but the way the people rioting in the streets alongside the rebel army was what convinced the Separatist to bail on King Rash was a nice finale to the idea, and while it's a little easy, the idea of Steela dying but becoming a symbol of her people works well with that concept. I'm still not a big fan of Lux as a perfunctory love interest for Ahsoka (though she had a surprisingly chill attitude about him kissing Steela), but I am a big fan of Ahsoka maturing and having experiences that complicate her journey to adulthood, and her actions bringing Ondoran to the Republican (through Senator Lux's influence) after everything she's seen, making her see the good and the bad and the difficulty of this struggle, is a win.

(As an aside, I did have a laugh at the line "Today Ondoran is free again" coming from a monarch who regained power. Though if Naboo is any indication, maybe Ondoran elects their king and we have a democracy rather than a monarchy? Still amusing though.)