Review – The Clone Wars: The Final Season – “Deal No Deal”
Deal No Deal, this week’s episode of The Clone Wars, takes a page out of Han Solo’s book when Rafa, the older sister of Ahsoka’s new friend Trace, is hired for a job transporting unrefined spice from Kessel. She has zero experience running spice and the client is the Pyke Syndicate on Oba diah, but I’m sure everything will be fine. Or not. Spoilers ahead…
At the start of the episode, Ahsoka and Trace are in the shop working on Trace’s ship, the Silver Angel, a name that gets a couple of raised eyebrows from both Ahsoka and Rafa. When Trace asks Ahsoka how she knows so much about being a mechanic, she says she studied it at the “Skywalker Academy”.
When Rafa shows up to tell them she has been hired for a new job, she asks Trace and Ahsoka for help. Apparently, the pilot she had hired for her crew backed out on her and now she needs Trace and her ship. Trace is not too happy being her sister’s second choice, but it soon becomes clear why Rafa only asked for her sister’s help as a last resort.
Rafa is hush on the details, but soon, they’re off. However, the job gets off to a rocky start when Trace flies into a restricted military lane while trying to leave the planet. They are quickly hailed by Admiral Yularen, who threatens to have her license revoked. Trace is surprised to learn that a license is apparently something you should have when flying a starship. The self-proclaimed best pilot around is turning a darker shade of green with every passing moment. Fortunately for the trio, Ahsoka’s old master, Anakin Skywalker, is aboard the Republic cruiser and senses her presence, allowing them to pass.
When Ahsoka discovers that they were on course for Kessel, she becomes immediately concerned. She asks Rafa what they would be transporting and Rafa tells her that “medicine” is their cargo. This whole thing isn’t sitting right with Ahsoka.
When they arrive on Kessel, they head to a more beautiful part of the planet than we’re used to seeing. They are welcomed by a Twi’lek man named Kinash Lock, the majordomo for the planet’s King Yaruba. He hosts a banquet in their honor, promising a nice contract for them if their job was successful. He reveals more details about the job, details that Rafa obviously knew but chose to keep quiet about. The three of them would be shipping three containers of unrefined spice, and this new information cements Ahsoka’s fears about the job. “Many things can be made out of spice and they’re not all good,” she says.
Leaving the palace, they head to the spice mines of Kessel, and the atmosphere dramatically changes around them, revealing the price the planet has paid to support the wealth of King Yaruba and his subjects. Trace is amazed at the number of droids being used in the mines below, but Ahsoka points out that she wasn’t seeing droids. They were people.
If there was any question as to whether or not these workers were there out of their own free will, the presence of the Zygerrian taskmaster seems to answer that. Once they are loaded up with the spice, the situation becomes infinitely worse when Rafa reveals that they were shipping the spice to Oba diah. Ahsoka warns that the Pyke crime syndicate were not people you want to be dealing with. The gangsters were notorious for their ruthless methods.
Ahsoka urges Rafa to rethink the deal, but the woman tells her that she can’t pay off her debt with Ahsoka’s morality. As Rafa and Ahsoka continue to argue, Trace dumps the entire shipment of spice on a whim in an attempt to stop the fighting. Both Rafa and Ahsoka are dumfounded. They may not see eye to eye, but they both agree that was literally the worst thing that Trace could have done. Now they were headed to the Pykes who were expecting a shipment of thirty thousand credits worth of spice, and they had nothing to show for it.
Ahsoka comes up with a plan, albeit a very risky one. Upon their arrival to Oba diah, the three of them push three large containers onto the landing platform. The Pyke in charge has their money, but he wants to see inside the containers first. Ahsoka then uses the Force to persuade him to give them the money and let them be on her way. The ruse is successful, but the irregularity of the situation doesn’t sit well with one of the Pykes.
The three of them try to get out of there as quickly as possible, but the suspicious Pyke has already blasted open the empty container and ordered patrols to converge on them while the tractor beam locks onto their ship. Now stuck between a rock and a hard place, there’s nowhere for the three of them to go. Ahsoka’s fears about this mission gone wrong have now been realized in the worst way imaginable.
Coming off of the Bad Batch arc and last week’s set up episode, I get the feeling that a lot of the show’s fans are not going to love this episode. Maybe I missed one, but I don’t recall seeing a single blaster go off this entire episode (well, except for when the Pyke used one to blow the lock on the container). There were no lightsabers. No space battles. So if that’s what you want more of in your Clone Wars experience, just know this episode doesn’t have any of that.
However, I still enjoyed this episode quite a bit. I love a good blaster fight as much as anyone (and that’s certainly coming sooner rather than later), but I also like seeing how characters with opposing views interact with each other in tense situations. That’s what this episode was all about. Ahsoka, who is infinitely more experienced than Trace and even Rafa, tries to warn them about the dangers of the mission, but they refuse to listen, pushing forward in their willful ignorance. Well, Rafa’s is willful – Trace may just be ignorant.
I like Trace. She’s sweet. She has dreams. But my lord is she stupid. And while I respect Ahsoka’s decision to be mum about her Jedi past and to try and pursue a different life, a simple “I used to be a Jedi and have dealt with this type of scum and villainy before” would have gone a long way in convincing Rafa the whole job was a bad idea. Ahsoka has been content to allow Rafa to lead up until now, but it would be great next week to see her finally stepping up to the plate in the crisis situation they now find themselves in. You can take a girl out of the Jedi Order, but you can’t take the Jedi out of the girl.
It was also fun to see Yularen and Anakin in this episode for a brief moment, as well as the sunnier and greener part of Kessel. But I have to say Trace’s actions in this episode, like when she forgot to disengage the airbrakes while flying or when she somehow thought that dumping a load of spice and indebting them all to the Pykes was a good idea, were really some Jar Jar Binks level blunders. The sisters are just in no way ready to play in the big leagues, and Ahsoka is now forced to bail them out of their situation.
In spite of their ignorance, the Martez sisters are good people, and I still want them to succeed and to learn from this huge mistake. I’m looking forward to seeing how they will make it out of this ordeal with Ahsoka’s help, and I get the feeling that her Jedi past will become very apparent to them all in next week’s episode.
Score: 7/10
Deal No Deal is available to stream now on Disney Plus.
Jordan Pate is Co-Lead Editor and Senior Writer for Star Wars News Net, of which he is also a member of the book and comic review team. He loves all things Star Wars, but when he's not spending time in the galaxy far far away, he might be found in our own galaxy hanging out in Gotham City or at 1407 Graymalkin Lane, Salem Center, NY.
