Review – The Clone Wars: The Final Season – “Together Again”
The Siege of Mandalore, the final story arc of The Clone Wars epic is nearly upon us, but before we head back to that near inhospitable dustball of a planet, we’ve got to wrap up the story of Ahsoka, the Pyke Syndicate, and the Martez sisters. Honestly, Ahsoka’s return in the middle arc of the season has felt a little bit like filler so far (especially after the last episode ended exactly where it started), but the final chapter of this four-episode run was a pretty darn good Star War. Read on for the full spoiler review of episode eight of The Clone Wars’ final season – Together Again.
At the start of the episode, Ahsoka and the Martez sisters – Rafa and Trace – are back in their cell, arguing about who was to blame for their current predicament. Rafa blames Ahsoka for convincing Trace to dump the spice, but Trace sides with Ahsoka that if Rafa had never taken the job in the first place, they wouldn’t be in this mess. Nevertheless, Ahsoka has a plan to get them out; they would just have to trust her.
When the three of them are bound and taken before the Pyke leader, Marg Krim, Ahsoka puts her plan into action. She tells Krim that the sisters were hiding the spice offworld and that he should allow them one rotation to go get it and bring it back to him. For leverage, she tells Krim that should they fail to return with the spice that she would sell out the location of their family to him (Krim doesn’t know that they are orphans and have nothing to lose). She only asks for her percentage in return for helping him.
Deperate to get his hands on the spice, he agrees to Ahsoka’s proposal. The sisters are allowed to leave in Trace’s ship, the Silver Angel, and Ahsoka is taken back to her cell. When Krim is alone with his men, it is revealed that he is terrified of not getting the spice because “He” will kill him if he doesn’t. Someone is pulling Krim’s strings, and we can only assume that he is talking about Maul, the leader of the Shadow Collective that the Pykes were a part of. Apparently, the Collective is still going strong despite Maul’s recent setbacks.
After three episodes of not trusting Ahsoka, Rafa is finally impressed with Ahsoka’s willingness to sacrifice herself. There was nothing keeping them from jumping ship and leaving her behind, but Rafa refuses to let Ahsoka one-up her and decides to find some spice and come back to rescue her. Her plan – to steal spice from the Pykes themselves to use as ransom.
Back on Oba diah, Ahsoka breaks out of her cell using the Force. Now out on the street, she finds some timed detonators in a storage area and sets out to do a little damage to the syndicate’s operation while she was there. Meanwhile, Bo-Katan Kryze and a couple of other Mandalorians have been keeping tabs on Ahsoka, watching her from the shadows.
Inside the spice production facility, Ahsoka begins to set the explosives, but she is stopped in her tracks when she witnesses Marg Krim on a catwalk above talking to Maul via hologram. While eavesdropping on their conversation, Ahsoka is forced to hide when Maul seemingly senses her presence. Maul threatens Krim, warning that if he allows any more delays to take place that Crimson Dawn would be happy to step in and run their operation.
Ahsoka accesses the facility’s transmission log in an effort to trace Maul’s location, and she discovers that he is currently on Mandalore. Unfortunately for the ex-Jedi, the Pykes discover her and surround her location. Krim realizes that she is a Jedi when she attempts to defend herself, but she is outnumbered and once again taken captive.
Things are going smoothly for Rafa and Trace as they convince the hapless Toong (we haven’t seen these guys on screen since Ben Quadinaros’ pod racer exploded in The Phantom Menace) that were working for the Pykes that they were there to pick up a special shipment. The lead dock worker is alarmed by the fact that their shipment does not show up anywhere on the manifest, but Rafa’s persistence causes him to load the containers of spice anyway. However, things get a little more difficult for the sisters when the Toong’s Trandoshan boss shows up.
Unable to convince the giant lizard-man of their legitimacy, a fight breaks out. However, the Trandoshan is a little bit too much brawn for them to handle, and things quickly spin out of control. Rafa fights the boss on a lifting platform, and Trace smashes the controls, sending the platform high into the air and arcing out over the abyss next to the landing platform. The enemy may be too tough for her, but he’s all brawn and no brains, and she is able to climb up to the hook and detach the platform, sending the Trandoshan to his death.
Spice in hand, the girls now head back to Oba diah to save Ahsoka. However, afraid now that Ahsoka was a Jedi spy sent by the Republic, Krim has no intention of honoring their agreement. The sisters are once again trapped with Ahsoka, only now they too know the secret of her Jedi past.
Right on time, the detonators Ahsoka had placed in the facility explode and cause enough of a distraction for them to escape. They make it to their ship, and Trace manages to outmaneuver the Pyke fighters sent after them while Ahsoka shoots them down. When their gun is damaged and the rear deflector is out, Trace turns their nose back to the last remaining fighter and plays chicken with him, causing him to peel off and smash into a cliff face.
Ahsoka and the Martez sisters escape Oba diah and head back to their shop on Coruscant unaware that Bo-Katan is following them. The sisters are upset at first that Ahsoka didn’t tell them about her past, but they come to understand her reasons and tell her that to them she represented what they had always hoped the Jedi were like.
Soon, Bo-Katan and her Mandalorians show up at the shop and Ahsoka goes on the defensive. Bo tells her not to worry. Death Watch was no more. But they do share a common enemy and she needs her help. Ahsoka is very hesitant to go with her, telling the sisters, “If I go down this path, I’m afraid of where it might lead.”
She knew that her agreeing to help the Mandalorians would mean a return to the life she thought she’d left behind, the life of a Jedi. Rafa tells her to go, that it was what she was meant to do. Still reluctant, Ahsoka agrees, but before she goes, she tells the sisters that she would leave her speeder with them just in case.
It may have felt like a long time getting here, but this episode was a very entertaining episode of Clone Wars. It hit all the right notes with the characters and the action while setting up the final arc in the series. We finally get the payoff of Ahsoka’s time with the sisters as she gains Rafa’s trust and firmly establishes her friendship with them. This time, it’s not just Ahsoka trying to bail out the sisters; they’re looking out for each other.
With the reveal of Maul (which shouldn’t have been a surprise, but I didn’t expect to see him until next week’s episode), Bo-Katan’s presence on Oba diah begins to make more sense. Her motives are not explicitly revealed, but it appears that she and her compatriots have been plotting to sabatoge the Shadow Collective and take Mandalore back from Maul. It was also really cool to hear that Crimson Dawn is now a player in the collective, making this the earliest mention of Maul’s criminal organization from Solo: A Star Wars Story in the Star Wars timeline.
When we last left Maul in the show, he was the man behind the curtain, using the former Prime Minister Almec as a puppet through which he could rule the planet. While some rebelled, Death Watch came under his control and all was going well for the former Sith lord until his old master showed up to put him in his place. A comic mini-series later (see Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir) and it appears that Maul has once again set his sights on Mandalore.
This is without a doubt the best episode of this story arc, and it did a great job setting up things to come in the final chapter. Even if you haven’t been on board with the Martez sisters up to this point, there’s still a lot of Star Wars here to love in Together Again.
Score: 8/10
Together Again 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.
