I think the ordering you presented is brilliant, especially with the balancing of character development and the thought you’ve given to Ahsoka’s arcs and how each one shows different aspects of her character. I do think the idea that certain Domino Squad arcs could be used as flashbacks could work well, provided the pacing still works. Really excited about all the ordering and where things lie currently!
Sorry, I missed this earlier. Yeah, I’m still trying to work out what to do with Domino Squad. It could go later in the series and use ‘Near the beginning of the Clone Wars’ for Rookies, up to ‘Present Day’ in time for ARC Troopers. You’d lose that early suprise that the clones actually can have really interesting stories though, but you’d gain the benefit of having clone development be a bit more focused towards the end. And you could group it either as:
- All three arcs together, though time is implied to pass in these episodes so it doesn’t quite work.
- Rookies, then Clone Cadets/ARC Troopers
- Rookies / Clone Cadets, then ARC Troopers
- Rookies / Clone Cadets, then Grievous Intrigue / ARC Troopers (like Smudger did, making the kidnap of Eeth Koth be part of Grievous’ plan to pull Jedi from Kamino)
Right now I think having people realise ‘oh nice, that hit me harder than I expected a clone story to’ is more valuable than maintaining a familiar memory of the characters (since they don’t have huge or powerful character arcs so much as that they reoccur) and it’s more valuable to get that good set up and payoff of Rookies/ARC troopers as close together as possible. So I might go for that later pairing - Rookies/Clone Cadets then GI/ARC Troopers as a two part episode at the end of my ‘season one’.
(*Note: I’m not going to release it labelled as ‘season one’, the seasons I’m using in planning are definitely just for my internal pacing.)
Speaking of Grievous, my current ordering/selection has a side benefit of minimising uses of Dooku and Grievous where they come off as weak or cheap, which is cool, so we only really see them when they’re either coordinating things or giving themselves new levels of threat (sometimes above what we see in the movies, which adds value). I still like the idea of switching the owner of the Malevolence from Grievous into Trench, and the main threat of it being that he’s an escape pod killer rather than the goofy looking EMP weapon.
That just leaves the Jedi Younglings arc, which I’m not quite sure about. I think it’s cute and fun, but I don’t know if it works tonally in a show that’s trying to be a bit more focused on the tragedy of the Clone Wars. It’s another easy Grievous beat, and quite a cartoony one, plus it focuses heavily on a bunch of kids. The kids are pretty good for kids (they’re not really cringey), but still, it’s much more of a caper than an adventure or a moody escalation. We also cover Ahsoka’s ability to train and inspire in the Trandoshan arc and the Onderon arc. That said, it’d be nice to frame it as a recognition of her successes in the Trandoshan arc. I’ll watch this one again.