Dave Filoni Teases the End of ‘The Clone Wars’ with Entertainment Weekly
“Will he finish what he begins?” The eagerly anticipated conclusion of The Clone Wars begins on Friday. For fans it’s the long awaited finale to a beloved series, but for Dave Filoni it’s something more. It’s the chance to return to the series that started his journey at Lucasfilm over a decade ago and have a sense of closure as he guides the series to an end. Ahead of the show’s premiere on Disney+, Filoni spoke with Entertainment Weekly to discuss the show’s final season and tease what lies in store.
When Dave Filoni first started working on the series with George Lucas he didn’t expect it to have quite the impact that it did on both the fans and the entire Star Wars franchise. “I thought Clone Wars, like most animated series, was going to be a two-year [or] three-year job maybe, where I would learn a lot, have a great experience, and then be back in Los Angeles,” Filoni told EW. Instead the series lasted for five series on Cartoon Network, received a sixth season, dubbed The Lost Missions, on Netflix, and Filoni went on to become one of the most influential people at Lucasfilm where he currently oversees all of Lucasfilm Animation’s projects as well as serving as a director and executive producer on The Mandalorian.
The Clone Wars is returning for just 12 episodes, far less than the two and a half seasons originally planned out before the series was cancelled. Because of this, the final season of The Clone Wars is a balancing act. “I tried to do things that honoured what we had been doing on this series when I was working with George,” he told EW. “At the same time, I knew this had to have a sense of completion.”
The first story arc, The Bad Batch, was the closest to completion when the series was cancelled. So close that the animatic story reels were previously released for fans to watch. Because of this, Filoni has said before that this arc remains the closest to the original vision. Whilst we don’t know yet how much the story has been tweaked for these final episodes, we do know they’re going to look a lot better when they hit Disney+. “We have tools and capabilities that we did not have in the beginning of the Clone Wars,” Filoni said, “just because animation’s come so far. There are many things that we can render with nuance and detail that we just couldn’t before.”
Ahsoka’s story arc was originally to play out across three story arcs. For this final season that journey has been compressed into two, but Dave Filoni is still drawing from the lessons of George Lucas to craft her story. According to EW Lucas told Filoni that the core of Star Wars is the struggle between selflessness and selfishness.
“It’s really the backbone [of the Star Wars saga]. It’s that personal journey. [We saw that]] with Luke Skywalker, and we’ve seen Rey going on this journey. But for me now with Ahsoka, she’s been the student Jedi the whole time, and she’s finally being challenged by what she will do with her knowledge and her training and her abilities when faced with the ultimate test – which is what you’ll see at the end of Clone Wars here.”
As The Clone Wars comes to an end it faces a very Star Wars conundrum. How do you tell a compelling story when viewers already know how it ends? The Clone Wars has always been leading to Revenge of the Sith but now, thanks to Rebels, even the fates of original characters like Ahsoka and Rex are no longer as shrouded in mystery as they were when the series originally ended. Everyone who has seen one of Filoni’s panels knows he likes to tease the fans without giving anything, so it’s no surprise that his answer to that question was simply “We know what happens, [but] you don’t know precisely how it happens.”
For that we’ll have to watch the final season when it begins on Disney+ this Friday.
SOURCE – Entertainment Weekly
Chris is a lifelong fan of Star Wars, Disney, and super heroes who can’t quite believe this golden age of movies and TV we’re living in. Having written blogs dedicated to Disney’s Aladdin musical and Star Wars Celebration, Chris is excited to be part of the SWNN and MNN teams.
