S02E04-08 - The Second Battle of Geonosis Arc - Important
This one’s the lower end of Important since it doesn’t add value to wider media beyond some good Ahsoka development (including Barriss) and setting up Clovis, but it is very good. (And yes, it returns us to a movie location and sets up Rebels’ reveal of the Geonosian genocide, but this doesn’t add value to that.)
The first episode, Senate Spy, starts with some lovely believable Anakin/Padme romance followed by some good tension in their relationship. We could maybe get through this episode quicker in a couple of places but for a low action episode there’s a lot that’s compelling.
The next two are some good battle episodes, but in contrast to the comparable Ryloth and Malevolence arcs, there are a lot of meaningful character moments within the larger scale combat.
The final two are a great zombie romp with more character development for Ahsoka. They do belong together, but a bit of interleaving might improve the pacing. I’d probably split these two off from the prior episodes, ending the prior two with Ahsoka’s believed death, for a bit of a cliffhanger.
I think this episode works best a little later in the series. If we take the point where the character models get updated as a natural breakpoint, then we can treat up to then as the establishment of the war and the core relationships, of which th maturation of Ahsoka is our emotional focus. Putting this episode right up against the character model update gives us an episode where Ahsoka seems her most competent and matured, and a little healthy trauma can justify her upcoming choice of costume change.
We also see Anakin being aggressive in order to protect Ashoka. A nice dark moment (that belongs a little later in the series) which also means we get this concept in a better way than when he angrily tries to save R2 in that arc.
And, a major battle seems a good high stakes era ending. I think in my crawl for this I’d tie the creation of the new droid factory as a direct response to the failiure of the Separatists to destroy the Kamino facility, now necessitating more forces to survive the ongoing conflict. As much as possible, I’ll try to emphasise the ebb and flow of the war in the text. My Star Wars geography is one of my weaker points so I might see about mapping it all out once I’ve got the episodes in a good order.
Speaking of which, after the character model update, we have to dive straight into the Nightsisters arc, to get the Maul plot kicked off as quickly as possible.