Rejoice, Star Wars fans: The Clone Wars animated series is finally back…for one final season, anyway. Season 7 debuted on February 21 on Disney+ and is now two episodes in, beginning with a scrapped story arc from the show’s final Netflix season, all about a group of misfit Clone warriors called the Bad Batch.
Entertainment Weekly recently caught up with The Clone Wars executive producer Dave Filoni — who also serves as a producer/showrunner on The Mandalorian — and had him break down the first couple installments of this last season.
First, Filoni described the major difference between this season and the very first one, which aired way back in 2008. “If you go back to the original series, what we put out in 2008, it’s such a dramatic leap,” he said. “But then you realize it’s been 11 years since that show first aired, which is kind of striking for me that it’s been so long. So there should be dramatic improvements, visually. I think that facial animation, the fidelity of the expression — things like that — we were able to improve in the animation itself.”
"I really feel looking at this show now, it’s kind of how George [Lucas] and I envisioned it to look in the beginning. We just didn’t have the tools necessary to actually realize it then. But over time with a lot of training, you know, like any good Jedi I learned my way."
Another difference involved the pacing and dialogue. “I just thought the story was really dragging in the beginning,” Filoni recalled. “I felt like there was a whole lot of exposition, one too many scenes where they’re saying what they’re going to do instead of just doing it.”
"And then I wanted to add a better sense of personal stakes to the story. You know, part of the consideration I had to make when doing this was, how do people even know who Echo is? I’m imagining a lot of people will just watch these 12 episodes and maybe not go back and watch the previous, you know, over 100 episodes where Echo plays a moderate role."
Echo, for reference, is a brave Clone trooper voiced by Dee Bradley Baker. He appeared to die on the show, but was later brought back. “That [death], really more than any of the other ones, we all kind of noticed that people were like, ‘Oh, man, Echo,'” Filoni recalled. “And we thought it’d be interesting that the Techno Union — a creepy bunch of guys on the evil side of things — maybe there’s something to be done there. So we started to hatch a plan for if that would even be something that’s possible. But it wasn’t top of mind when we did the Citadel arc.”
We all look forward to seeing what original characters like Echo get up to in season 7, but Filoni has plans for legacy characters like Anakin and Padme Skywalker, as well. “When I looked at these 12 episodes, there was no Padme in them, and that seemed like a really huge oversight,” he said. “That was never the plan, because there were more episodes planned, but we ended up doing these 12. I just thought that was really unfortunate. I talked to the actress who played her, Cat Taber, and I think it was a bummer for her because she’d been so involved in the series over the years.”
So how did Filoni remedy that? Add in a new scene. “[This new scene] is important to the story and for people that might be walking into Clone Wars new,” he continued. “Having a scene with Padme actually interacting with Anakin was a very important moment. It also shows people where they’re at in their relationship. It shows that he goes to her for advice, that she really gets the relationship he has with Rex, that she needs to remind him that actually that was going out on a limb for him, so maybe you should take it on faith and go on this limb for Rex.”
"And also that she has a big influence over Anakin still and that he trusts her. And it also hints at the timeline. And that’s always a tricky one, I think, because you as the viewer have to remember that at this point in Star Wars, we know way more than the characters do.To be honest, I’d worked so much on Rebels, I had to go back and reread and watch a whole bunch of the Clone Wars era just to turn my brain back on. I had to upload a whole bunch of information to my drive because, you know, I guess I’m getting old and losing some of it, but it came back in time."
Speaking of Rebels, the last time we saw Ahsoka Tano — Anakin’s protégé and one of the most enduring original characters to come out of the show — she was departing with Sabine Wren to go find Ezra Bridger in the finale of that show. Will she show back up in The Clone Wars? “Well, you’ll see her in Clone Wars if you watch these 12 episodes,” Filoni laughed. “I told the truth! I had an answer for once.
That’s not really the answer we were hoping for, but I digress…
Finally, Filoni talked a bit about his work with Jon Favreau on The Mandalorian. “There are a lot of things that George [Lucas] had taught me over the years about live-action, and finally here I was in a place where I could apply it,” he said. “And I’m so fortunate to be working alongside Jon as another mentor and someone who is very experienced to help me through the questions and the challenges that you have in a different medium.”
New episodes of The Clone Wars air on Disney+ on Fridays!
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