This post is under the cut because of spoilers.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwktH2gGnPk

 

There is a comment on the clip from the last post of Satine’s death that says “It’s so satisfying seeing Palpatine beat the ever living s*** out of Darth Maul after this scene,” and it’s kind of true, but what gets me about this scene is how beautifully cinematic it is, score-wise, animation-wise, and plot-wise. I love the Clone Wars, but one thing I wish it did better was to make use of Star Wars’ rich leitmotifs. To be fair, The Clone Wars does do this cool thing where every time Anakin does something questionable, you can hear Imperial March play subtly in the background, hinting at his descent to the dark side, but other than that, I’d argue that leitmotifs are underutilized in The Clone Wars (*COUGH* Duel of The Fates *COUGH* )

To hear Imperial March accompanying Sidious’ arrival in this scene is just beautiful.

Plot-wise, similarly, to score-wise, I think a large part of what makes this scene, and episode in general, so darn impactful, is that it does indeed seem to be a culmination of themes that have been building up for years. Palpatine bringing up the Rule of Two is awesome. Savage dies as he lived, tragically and in his brother’s shadow. I can’t believe this episode made me shed a tear over a Star Wars villain named Savage Opress, but it did.

Animation-wise there is not much that can be said without me spending a lot of time on analyzing it and going over the word limit so I’ll just say that it’s COOL AS HELL. Once again can really tell the animators and writers went all out on this episode in general, and it’s absolutely amazing.

Something else I noticed about this scene that I thought was really interesting aesthetically and thematically was this not-so-subtle Picasso-inspired mural in the background.

It’s a Mandalorian “Guernica.” Whoever came up with this idea deserves THE biggest raise in my opinion. I’m a little bit TOO into Spanish Civil War history so I’m definitely biased on just how freaking awesome this is, but I really do think that it is freaking awesome. Most people view the original trilogy at least in part as a World War II allegory, so drawing a historical parallel between Mandalore and Spain works so, so, so well from my point of view. I can’t even express how cool this is and how well it works.

CLEARLY “The Lawless” is a seriously rich episode of The Clone Wars, and in my opinion, it absolutely deserves the title of highest-rated episode of the whole series. The Clone Wars was recently revived, and I can only hope that it will deliver climactic moments as well at this episode did.