Right! Of my Onderon arc, the first part (Rebels of Onderon) is rendering now, and I just need to put the presentation polish on the second half (Kings of Onderon) so that shouldn’t be far behind.

I’m glad, because in the end I did manage to find some trims to my second episode:

Firstly, I sped up the transition between the rescue in the royal square and the arrival back in the wilderness, so that now having saved the King the rebels immediately flee the city, rather than conducting a few more operations within it first over a number of days. The action now happens over a single day, with King Rash immediately pursuing them into the wilderness with his full force, so it feels a lot more tense.

Secondly, as much as I love Hondo, I removed him altogether. Previously the attack on the rebel base was conducted in phases, with enough downtime during them for Ahsoka to call Anakin, Anakin to fly to Felucia, Hondo to fly to Onderon, and Ahsoka to distribute the rockets. This added implied hours to the battle. Now, the rebels already have the anti-air rockets, and once their own assumed air superiority gets challenged by the new droid airships, they quickly move to fetch and distribute the guns. It’s no less tense, and this worked out suprisingly smoothly. There’s still a good amount of battle though since it’s a visually interesting one in an otherwise quite political episode.

As always in line with my editing goals, I strove to retain all of the emotional beats and character work, whilst keeping the jeopardy high and the pacing quite tight.