RELEASED - S05E04 - LOYALTY AND FATE (v2.0)

RELEASE VERSION.
Our fourth episode of season five (the final season), and the final true episode of the season and series.
This one should be watched AFTER Revenge of the Sith.
Comprising the original episodes Shattered and Victory and Death.
Running 48 minutes.
DOWNLOAD LINK is in the tracker spreadsheet, PM me for access.
Note: It’s recommended that you download this before watching, rather than streaming it directly from Google Drive.

This is the final episode of my edit, comprising the final two episodes of the show, which play back-to-back almost literally shot-for-shot (we don’t need the second episode’s new establishing shot). It’s perfect, and there’s not much to say about it.

I technically could have used this episode’s opening scene (Ahsoka takes Maul to Bo Katan) as the conclusion of the previous episode. That would have been neater from a chronological perspective, and left another useful implied timeskip before Maul (now in a Jedi prison) is handed off from Bo Katan to the Republic. However, in this case, the previous episode’s ending (Ahsoka staring doubtfully into the future), and this episode’s opening, are just too strong.

Noteworthy changes:

The episode is titled ‘Loyalty and Fate’. I wanted something as punctual as the original ‘Victory and Death’, and I also wanted something with the same syllabic cadence. ‘Loyalty’ was key for me because it explicitly gives us the question overhanging Rex’s whole journey, but also references Ahsoka and her relationships, Rex with her, the entire story going on in parallel in Revenge of the Sith, and even Maul as he’s released. And ‘Fate’, naturally, is the fate of all these Clone Wars plot threads, the Galaxy, and most importantly here Ahsoka.
The opening text uses an alternate musical cue and structure from Shattered, with the usual TCW:R opening content added to it. We’re going maximum ominous tragedy now.
We transition completely smoothly from Ahsoka and Rex awaiting their door being broken down from the first episode, into their door being broken down from the second episode, without skipping a beat.
The only actual change to body content in this episode is the removal of two lines which implied that some clones knew the name ‘Darth Sidious’. That opens up too many questions, so we’ll just have the plot bypass that idea cleanly instead.
Before the end credits, I add this show’s only TCW:R/EddieDean vanity card, and thankyous for the artists, my supporters here on OT.com, and the viewer.
The end credits use the usual TCW:R conventions, but finally we play out to my beloved track Clones - Sad, which I’ve intended to include at this moment since before I made this show’s first edit. So do be sure to stick around after the thank yous!

Onwards to a little extra nugget of content - the Maul and Obi-Wan coda.