OK yeah, really happy with the Storm/Liberty plan. My rough cut feels like a single coherent journey, with the stakes on the ground enhancing the drama in the skies, and the final conclusion bringing it all together. I’ve reviewed all the franchise’s Cham/Ryloth content, and Liberty gives you everything you need to set that up, so we don’t need to use Supply Lines.

These things are always subjective, of course, but personally I think this is the best narrative one can make from the best moments of the Ryloth arc. Excited to get this one done.

Of course, this’ll mean no need for a second Ryloth episode, but hey. Quality first.

Anyway, feeling like this’ll work nicely has me just throwing some thoughts together about what comes next. There’re two little considerations here.

In my (new) reordering, I was going to follow up Ryloth with my Nightsisters arc, because that way you get all of the main early battles (up to Sullust at the beginning of Nightsisters), then we get two Coruscant episodes (Death Watch on Coruscant, then the Holocron arc) to imply that both big factions are taking a breather as they bed in for what they now realise will be a long war.
- (I was also thinking of slightly explaining away Obi-Wan and Anakin’s costume change in Nightsisters by saying they’d been interrupted while meditating with the other Jedi on the future of the war, which might emphasise the ‘long war’ angle.)
That prior idea also originally had the little bonus of showing King Katuunko being killed in Nightsisters by Savage at Dooku’s command, immediately after showing Katuunko deciding to side with the Republic and aid Ryloth in my Ryloth episode. But, Katuunko doesn’t now appear in my Ryloth plans, so that’s no longer something to consider. (Episode quality without Katuunko trumps the value of including him in just for that soft pairing.)
However, I should also consider Ahsoka’s discipline. In Ryloth she’s disobedient at a cost of lives, but unpunished. At the start of Holocron, there’s the short Felucia intro where Ahsoka is again disobedient at a cost of lives, but then the council assign her to guard duty, which’ll pay off later in the Holocron arc.
I could (as Smudger did in his movie edits) shift the discipline so it’s instead referring to her Ryloth disobedience. This’d benefit us (1) because it’d allow her discipline to linger longer, until the finale, adding weight to her punishment, and (2) because it’d explain why she’s out of play during the Nightsisters and Death Watch on Coruscant arcs.
If I do do that, though, I don’t think the scene belongs at the end of my Ryloth episode, since that’s a happy peak. But it could begin the Death Watch on Coruscant episode, where our characters all return to the planet. The impact of that though, would be putting Death Watch on Coruscant next after Ryloth, and Nightsisters afterward. That’ll probably be fine, but it does mean a little more of a gap where we don’t see Ventress, a little more of a gap where we don’t see Maul, and it means that Sullust in Nightsisters comes after the return to Coruscant, so I can’t quite play up the angle of having many military strikes before a larger breather.

Thoughts?