I love Star Wars day, don’t you?
To mark the celebration, I viewed one of the few remaining arcs of the Clone Wars I hadn’t seen yet — The Shadow Collective, composed of the following episodes: ‘Revival’, 514 ‘Eminence’, 515 ‘Shades of Reason’, 516 ‘The Lawless’.
It’s an epic trio of episodes, which I know not everyone enjoys since they are all about Darth Maul’s return and grasp to power via the taking over of several crime syndicates, the most significant of which is the Black Sun. Most long-time Star Wars fans should be familiar with the name, at least — it has weight in multiple Expanded Universe sources.
The crux of the conflict is on Mandalore — Darth Maul and his brother, Savage Opress (I can’t help but snort any time I have to write the name down) have come to an uneasy alliance with the terrorist Death Watch, which has long attempted to undermine Mandalore’s rightful ruler, Duchess Satine. Betrayal aplenty as the Death Watch and Maul execute their plan and then come to blows. Maul comes out ahead, but his actions attract unwanted attention – that of the Dark Lord of the Sith himself. The result is one of my favourite battles in Star Wars history, with Sidious at last making one proper appearance in the series, showing mastery in a different lightsaber combat style and being an all-around cackling menace.
There’s more than a touch of the tragic to this arc, as well — enter Obi-Wan and Satine’s relationship, which up to this point had been hinted at but here got a truly heart-wrenching conclusion. Knowing what was coming for Obi-Wan was part of the reason I took some weeks off from my rewatch – Kenobi’s one of my favourite characters, and I had some trouble seeing the scene I knew was coming.
I was happy to see more of Mandalorian culture; these are a people torn between pacifism and the notion of honourable war as a way of life, and I enjoy seeing more about them. With the connection between Clone Wars/Rebels and The Mandalorian, I’m curious to see how the Death Watch connects with the Mandalorians we saw in the live-action series of last year,
I know I’m seven years too late, talking about an arc originally aired this far off in the past when Season Seven has yet to air, but watching the latest season of the Clone Wars without Disney+ is a pain!
What did you do to celebrate this nerdiest of holidays?
The Grimoire Reliquary 
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