Review – The Clone Wars: The Final Season – “On the Wings of Keeradaks”
Anakin Skywalker, Captain Rex, and Clone Force 99 have located the captured ARC trooper Echo in the Techno Union headquarters on Skako Minor. Now trapped behind enemy lines and cut off from any support, the team must rely on their combined skills and resources just to make it out of the city of Purkoll alive.
As the forces of the Separatist and Techno Union leader Wat Tambor close in, Anakin and the clones are forced to seal themselves in the room where they found Echo, biding their time until Echo can be freed from the computer and they can find another way out. To make matters worse, Tambor orders a droid dubbed the “Decimator” to destroy any and all life signs in the room. With the droid breaking through their defenses, time is quickly running out.
Thankfully, Tech and Rex are able to free Echo from his technological prison. Having been released from his link to the Separatist computer, Echo is once again back to his old self, save for the fact that he can’t remember anything that has happened since his capture at the Citadel. He does, however, have a great deal of knowledge about the city, having shared his mind with the computer. The Separatists may have pulled secrets from his head, but it wasn’t just a one way street. Though he himself needed saving, Echo would now be their saving grace, leading them to safety through the cooling system. Before leaving, Wrecker destroys the equipment that had enslaved Echo.
The trip to ultimate safety would not be an easy one though. Having gone as far as they could in their current part of the city, Echo informs the team that there is a landing pad in the adjacent structure, and the only way across would be crossing a pipe spanning from one structure to the next. We’ve seen Anakin do things like this before, but it’s a long way to go, especially when it’s already been established that someone on their team (Wrecker) doesn’t do too well with heights.
Wrecker takes on the challenge like a champ, even putting himself on the line when one of his squadmates loses his balance and begins to fall off of the pipe. Unfortunately, their journey to the other side is cut short when battle droids emerge from the entrance ahead, blocking their path forward. Recognizing the impassable obstacle ahead, Anakin urges them to turn back, but when more droids come through the door behind them, they find themselves trapped once again, except now they’re all out in the open.
This time, it’s Tech that comes up with an escape plan. Thankfully, he had recorded the distress call of the keeradaks (the flying creatures that they encountered upon their arrival to the planet). Tech plays the distress call, and the winged beasts arrive and begin circling beneath them. Jumping onto the creatures’ backs, the clones and General Skywalker make their escape and head back to the Poletec village.
The Poletec leader is impressed with their ability to tame the keeradaks, but he is most upset that they broke their word, bringing the war to the planet. Rex intercedes, showing them what the Separatists did to his friend Echo, and explaining that Tambor had already brought the war to Skako Minor. The Techno Union had already chosen a side in the war, and now the Poletecs would have to do the same if they were to survive it.
The Poletecs decide to stand with the Jedi and the clones, and together, they are able to hold back the Separatists. As Anakin, Rex, and the others prepare to leave the planet, the Poletecs thank them and tell Anakin that the Jedi would always have an ally on Skako Minor. Before boarding the ship, Echo thanks Rex for coming back for him, and Rex tells him “that’s what brothers do”.
Every now and then, an episode comes along in a series that pulls on your heart strings with heavy drama and forces you to examine the very character flaws you see on screen within yourself. Those episodes are often the most talked about and the ones we go back to time and again in our reflection of how much we loved that particular show.
This story arc has already had some moments like this (particularly with the dialogue between Rex and Cody or the conversation between Anakin and Padmé in the previous two episodes). The third episode, however, is not one of these episodes. There are also episodes, especially in an action series like The Clone Wars, that come along and set the standard for the action and adventure that drew you to the show in the first place. This episode is one of these.
If you thought the assault on Purkoll in episode one was a great action piece, you haven’t seen anything yet. This entire episode took the excitement of that scene to another level. It is literally non-stop action, tension, and all out war throughout the entirety of the episode. Sure, at eighteen minutes it’s a few minutes shorter than the average Clone Wars episode, but not a second is wasted along the way.
I love the more intellectual moments in this series as well, but the action-adventure tone of this episode is what makes Star Wars what it is, and it’s rarely been done so well in any medium. A prison break, a high-flying acrobatic escape, a small village rallied against a superior army, and a victory owed to the power of the Force and pure heroics – there’s nothing more Star Wars than that. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but it’s one of those episodes that we like to see again and again and is great fun every single time.
(from Entertainment Weekly)
“Wrecker should not be the Hulk, even though we love the Hulk and those types of stories. That’s not what Star Wars is. So we had to keep it all kind of within the reality of Star Wars.” (via Entertainment Weekly)
My one negative is that I still think Wrecker is a little overpowered. After lifting an entire ship one-handed in the first episode and now throwing his teammates across great distances and high up into the air, it’s hard to take Filoni’s recent comment seriously (see quote above). I mean…if he had said “Wrecker Smash!” when he killed clankers in this episode it wouldn’t have really been out of character. That being said, who cares? He, along with the others in Clone Force 99, are a lot of fun to watch for their various personalities and traits, and I can’t wait to see them one last time in the next episode.
Though mostly action, the central theme of this story arc continues in this episode and is woven throughout. We can sit around and listen to characters talk about the theme through their dialogue, but as they say, actions speak louder than words, and that’s certainly true here. But just in case you missed it, Rex spells it out for us in the end in his brief conversation with Echo. This episode is about brotherhood. Friendship. Family.
Having found out Echo was still alive, there was no length that Rex would not go to to find him and bring him home. This episode built even more on what so many other great clone-centric episodes in this series have already done, establishing the humanity of the clones. They are not just copies of organic material that are programmed to follow orders. They are people. They are individuals. And they matter.
This is a theme that we should all take to heart. Rex’s only regret was that he couldn’t save Echo sooner. Let that sink in as well. Love your friends, love your family, stop at nothing to put their needs above your own, and do whatever you can to make the best of the time you are given with one another.
Rating: 8.5/10
Star Wars: The Clone Wars – The Final Season is streaming weekly on Disney +. This week’s episode,“On the Wings of Keeradaks”, is now available!
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.
