- Time
- Post link
[Hopefully a week and a half is enough to let everyone catch up, so I can talk about all the episodes here without spoiling them for anyone]
The third and final edit of this show, and I’m sad to see it end. Like the others, I’ve grouped the season’s episodes by what feel like the most appropriate story arcs, and made two versions of each to accommodate the individual season’s alternate logo – as I like to differentiate, like my work with ‘The Mandalorian’.
There are a few surprises in this season though, I’ve found opportunities to link the three seasons together through flashbacks from archive footage that I’ve created to tether the show together as a whole. Like other flashbacks/flashforwards I’ve put in other projects, I’ve made the anachronism as visually distinct as possible from the rest of the story there, with having zero colour saturation and a vignette filter.
.
.
.
For clarification: the arcs numbers here are based on, and following on from, the edits of the first 2 seasons I’ve done– 7 from Season 1, and 9 from Season 2 with the arcs themselves and the standalone episodes I added the alternate logo to. Those episodes came with the “[V2]” label of course, as will be the case here too for the same reasons.
The colour of the alternate logo this time around is more off-white – but more like a very light gold colour, since just the off-white was a little too close to the original grey to be actually visually distinct, especially from across the room.
.
.
.
Arc 17: “A Fresh Start”. Episodes 1 “Confined”, 2 “Paths Unknown” and 3 “Shadows of Tantiss” all grouped together. They were all released together and worked perfectly well together (probably by design), so having them as the first arc was very easy and made a lot of sense.
.
The name has a few valid references in the 3 episodes: Omega adjusting to Tantiss, what Project Necromancer could mean if it’s ever successful, Hunter and Wrecker’s search, the Clone Cadets they rescued from the jungle planet Setron – and Crosshair and Omega’s escape & what it could spell for them going forward.
.
Finally, in the second episode, when H+W are walking through the jungle with the cadets they’ve found, there’s a small flashback all the way back to the end of Season 1, which I think works well and ties things together in a good way.
.
.
.
Arc 18: “Cross-Purposes” – episodes 4 “A Different Approach” and 5 “The Return”.
.
I slightly changed the chain of events in episode 4 to, I think, improve the story somewhat. A fair bit of episode 4 feels like it’s bulked out by people going out of their way to be self-centred assholes and – I don’t know if it’s just lingering frustration from Season 2 with all the Cid missions that always yielded no results – but can the good guys just win UNconditionally for once??
.
Now, after Omega wins the money gambling, Imperial Captain Mann doesn’t fleece them, undoing their progress – he just gets the transmission about the shuttle crash and leaves to investigate immediately. Secondly, when the duo discover Batcher’s been kidnapped, the street urchin now tries to bribe the information out of them, but Crosshair intimidates him and he immediately relents, telling them where the Imperials went. I think ideally, I would cut the kidnapping out if I could because the captain’s just being an annoying sore loser and it bloats and segues the plot when the duo already have a shuttle they can bribe themselves onto. But that doesn’t match the vessel they eventually steal and escape with, and the background doesn’t match the commercial shuttle depot, so I can’t “invent” a firefight there instead and kind of must keep the kidnapping and such for consistency reasons.
.
Later, on Barton IV, there are 3 very brief flashbacks to the episode “The Outpost”. This is very much deliberate because this is a site of a major event in Crosshair’s arc in the last season, it makes sense that when he returns there, it would be stuck heavily in his head every second he’s there – hopefully this conveys that effectively.
.
.
It does feel like the first 4 episodes work well as one giant story instead, but that comes to 1 hour 40+, even with the last episode slightly shortened somewhat. This feels very long – especially with the show already having 1 “mega-arc” already with the first 3 episodes of Season 1. So having this duo instead feels like it works better as a more Crosshair-themed story – as with the name: “Cross-purposes”.
.
To be specific, “Cross-purposes” is an expression where 2 or more people are at odds and have different goals/methods concerning the same thing. This feels very apt for CROSShair and Omega having to work together after their shuttle crash, and Crosshair with the squad on Barton IV learning to work together again and getting to the bottom of things between Crosshair and The Empire. In the latter episode, there are some flashbacks to the previous season – they’re very short, but hopefully with the way I’ve crafted them, they each have a big impact in making the shot/scene deeper.
.
.
.
Arc 19 is split into two versions: a four-episode story from episodes 6-9, and two self-contained two-parters, because I find the four episodes actually work very well in both formats. As usual, you download and view whichever you agree with the most and works well with the rest of your collection. Also, just having the former could apply here if you like the latter half, but disagree with the choice to muddy the waters with how the ‘Dark Disciple’ novel left things on the Ventress front, so excising the latter half works better for you.
.
The four episode arc: “All That Counts” is all of E6 “Infiltration”, E7 “Extraction”, E8 “Bad Territory” and E9 “The Harbinger” as one long sequence. There’s a brief flashback to Season 2 when ‘M-Count Targets’ are being discussed with Phee from Pabu, and that’s where the connection across all 4 episodes comes from, as it’s a consistent thread through them all.
.
The name “All That Counts” is a play on the M-Count aspect of course, but it also as other meanings it can apply to in the four episodes. The Clone Assassin has to silence his own brother for silence’s sake and recover Omega for Hemlock – that’s all that counts, no matter the setback or the injuries. Wolffe has a clear change of heart when he meets Rex again, hears his story, and the reality of his orders sinks in: hunting a child – being loyal to his brothers, doing the right thing, and letting the target go as a show of both is all that counts, no matter the consequences. When Hunter and Wrecker meet Fennec Shand again after Pantora, the past doesn’t matter, only the present and them needing each other’s help does: the mutual benefit, especially for Omega’s sake, is all that counts. Lastly, when Ventress appears on Pabu, there’s a lot of distrust for obvious reasons, but the squad need answers and help and she’s the only one who can give it to them – all that counts is that they trust her and let her do what she needs to do.
.
.
The first two-parter: 19a – “Teths of Patience” is just E6 “Infiltration” and E7 “Extraction” back to back, no flashbacks. The name is another play on words, because in these two episodes we see a few characters going through TESTS of patience of one kind or another at the old ruined B’Omarr Monk Monastery. Mostly the members of Rex’s Clone Underground trusting Crosshair in their presence, and the Clone Assassin trying to complete his objective despite some setbacks and injuries.
.
The second two-parter: 19b – “New Allies and New Information” is just E8 “Bad Territory” in Space-Florida, and E9 “The Harbinger” with Ventress back to back, containing a short flashback in the former. The name ties into the first two-part story featuring Fennec back in season 1 “More Enemies and More Opportunities” as a kind of deliberate mirror. The allies (even just situationally) and information are both pretty self-evident with Fennec & Ventress, and everything they need to learn about this ‘M-Count’ phenomenon that’s presented itself.
.
.
.
For the remaining episodes of the season: numbers 10-15 essentially create one long unbroken chain of events where each episode leads very comfortably right into the next. But this obviously creates one giant story that has a very dragging runtime of at least 2h40m, which is a huge story for a series which was made for TV and not film, and was designed to fit into ~22 minute chunks from the start.
To this end, I broke things up into smaller stories – à la The ‘Liberation of Lothal’ in my “Rebels” edit – to make the home stretch of the season, and show, much more easily digestible.
.
.
.
Arc 20 begins with E10 “Identity Crisis” and goes right into E11 “Point of No Return”, and continues with E12 “Juggernaut”, before finishing with E13 “Into the Breach”.
.
Conveniently, I’ve found the episode title ‘Into The Breach’ actually works very well for the entire arc for one reason or another. First, we see the moral ground Emerie finds herself on with the subjects that arrive at Tantiss, and the fact that they’re just children. Secondly, there’s the TK’s mobilising and disembarking on Pabu and the subsequent fighting and recapture of Omega after that small battle. Third, there’s a stealth-op with The Squad and Phee going to a secure Imperial world to recover a former Imperial asset, with very few options left on either side at that point. Finally, there’s going to Coruscant at the heart of The Empire to get Wayland’s co-ordinates.
.
As stated above, episode 10 onwards is just 1 giant chain that runs unbroken, so having a self-contained Tantiss trilogy right at the end to keep everything very grounded and straightforward was good, and these 4 episodes before fill the gap well by proxy, so it all works out well.
.
.
.
Arc 21: “Ground Zero”. The last of the show, consisting of E14 “Flash Strike” and the double-length E15 “The Cavalry Has Arrived”. It’s named as such because it’s the last trilogy’s worth of episodes self-contained to Tantiss itself and the last mission, which I think is a very fitting name.
.
There’s only 1 version of this arc, since the all-grey logo from the finale, to reflect the paint-blasted armour they adorn themselves with from E13 onwards, looked great and felt greatly relevant to include. Including this for the final arc felt like a no-brainer.
.
This arc does include the epilogue attached to the end this time. This is because it doesn’t contradict anything that chronologically comes afterwards in animation terms, as far as I know at least. The Rebellion pretty much began as soon as Saw Gerrera disagreed with The Empire on the very day of its founding, which we saw in the very first episode of TBB, which obviously precedes Rebels and Andor by a way, so there’s plenty of wiggle room for where the epilogue can fit in the timeline with everything else.
.
.
.
.
Footnote: I’m merely a self-taught or VFX artist here, so some areas are visibly mostly good as I have to be realistic with the footage in front of me and what I can do with it. If you do have any particular notes and feedback, feel free to give me your thoughts, but please be constructive and don’t be an ass about it.