S03E12-14 - Nightsisters Arc - Vital
Onward to the when the show starts getting more consistently great.
I’m opening with this arc because i think we want to hit the Maul plot as early as possible. It’s vital to set up lots of what comes later, but luckily it’s also fantastic.
Bad guy on bad guy action (in about four different flavours), a villain made sympathetic, the introduction of the Dathomiri factions. All great.
The only issue I can see someone having with this is, if they’re a real purist, the idea that it introduces these Nightsister magics which behave quite differently to established force powers. But you really have to roll with it (and at they’re great fun in the story and visually) so it’s best to accept them. The reasons we don’t see more of these kind of powers later is also dealt with within this series.
The first episode starts with a great space battle and a continuation of Anakin/Obi-Wan/Ventress sass, which has always been fun to watch. Ventress’ fall is super, and the stealthy attack on Dooku is fun- but the fact that he forces them to rethink is good too.
The changed plan, which introduces Savage in the second episode, is good- though you could probably trim some of the combat trial in the middle. At first I was less of a fan of Savage but he really is brutal and I think it’s very effective at evoking Maul plus adding in another good wildcard to an otherwise known storyline.
The third episode shows Savage’s training and early kills, and Anakin and Kenobi’s investigation. It moves incredibly fast, though I don’t know if you’d want to slow it down with any interruptions. The only negative here is the Toydarians, but this is unavoidable. We end on an incredible five-way fight with changing allegiances all over the place.
In terms of the pacing, you could imply Savage works for Dooku for a little longer than just one episode- though I think getting to the Maul hint is more important.
You could also put the opening battle at the end of a prior episode, to imply that Ventress spends longer in space, if that could work.
In terms of this episode’s usual fanedit presentation, it’s often merged with the arc which follows a season after (and after Savage’s implied search), with the actual return of Maul. Obviously that serves a specific purpose and is a perfectly valid way of doing things. But for the purposes of this project, two observations: Firstly, this episode moves FAST and a LOAD of things happen in it- it’s not overwhelming but keeping this pace up much longer might be. And secondly, for an audience wanting their Maul, this ends on the mission to get him, plus by now you’ve had some solid third parties introduced to make the Clone Wars interesting on its own merit.
Ahsoka isn’t in this episode so her radical character model update doesn’t require consideration here. But Anakin’s and Obi-Wans basically just strip off their armoured overlayer in favour of full Jedi robes - which I think does give you some leeway in the ordering. You wouldn’t flip Ahsoka ‘across the line’ but I think you could get away with the others.