Right then, that’s the Onderon arc reviewed. This’ll become the finale of season three, also bringing the Lux mini-arc to a close. I don’t think it’s a super strong arc, with fairly low emotional stakes for our main characters, but it does wrap up a few themes of this season, and the presence of Saw Gererra and the initial seeds of rebellion give some value, especially since we revisit Saw’s rebels in the Bad Batch.
Each episode is split from the others by a time skip, so there were a few ways to cut this, but I think thematically it works best as two sets of two episodes.
In my first episode, we’d have the Republic secretly training the rebels, up until the point where the rebels destroy the power generator and begin to win popular support. I think I’d trim out the droid attack in the jungle, the entrance to the city, and a little of the montage sequence, just to get us from training to the first (clumsy) rebel action in a bit more of a streamlined way. I’ll keep all of the training since it’s decent character work and one of the main things referenced in the Bad Batch. This’ll probably end up around 40 mins.
In my second episode, we’d have the conflict between the two kings, the popular uprising, and the separatist attack on the rebel encampment. I think the split works well here because at the start of episode three of the original quadrilogy the rebels appear much more competent. There’s not much to cut here, though I will look for a few trims because to me this episode does feel a bit slow. I’ll shuffle around the scenes of the Separatist king a little between my first and second episode, so that it’s only this episode which has the focus on the Separatist angle and the internal politics, and to remove a little redundancy. I’ll trim one scene of Hondo where we see his base, because in my chronology it’s destroyed (or under repair) at this time and I don’t want to mention that in my opening text as it’ll spoil his suprise arrival. That scene can be cut without impact though, as it’s explained in dialogue around it exactly what’s happening/happened. This’ll probably end up around 50 mins.