Tonight’s episode takes place on Kiros, a peaceful planet that pursues art and beauty instead of war and weapons. Unfortunately, the planet has been feeling pressure from Count Dooku. Yoda tries to reason with their leader and promises to send help, but the Separatists have already arrived, and the leader of Kiros hopes to reason with Dooku. Of course Dooku is not a man to be persuaded, and his lackey Darts D’Nar orders the droids to round up the planet’s citizens. Cue the “bad news” music!
Anakin and Kenobi are circling the planet, worried since the Kiros leader has stopped transmitting. They land with Ahsoka and several clones. The city seems abandoned, but the group soon encounters droids. After the area is secured, D’Nar asks for a meeting with Obi-Wan to negotiate surrender. Anakin is suddenly furious. Puzzled and alarmed, Ahsoka asks Obi-Wan why Anakin is upset, and Kenobi reveals that the Zygerrians are slavers like the ones who enslaved Anakin and his mother. Ahsoka promises to keep an eye on Anakin and Kenobi replies, “Yes, make sure you do.”
Of course the surrender meeting is a trap. Ahsoka and Anakin listen in on the comlink transmitter as D’Nar lays out his plans to Obi-Wan: he has planted bombs all over the city and will detonate them if Kenobi doesn’t surrender. When Obi-Wan tries to counter, D’Nar blows up an empty structure. There aren’t any colonists harmed, but several clones are injured. Anakin and Ahsoka set off to find and disarm bombs around the city while Obi Wan stalls for time. He offers to fight D’Nar – the result will either be finding the colonists or Kenobi delivered to Dooku in a cage.
Ahsoka and Anakin work methodically through the city while Kenobi gets pummeled. D’Nar is angry because the Jedis stopped the lucrative slave trade that the Zygerrians relied on. D’Nar receives word that the Jedis have disarmed the bombs. Furious, he pounds on his detonator, but nothing happens. There is still one bomb, however, attached to a droid that D’Nar throws at Kenobi. He throws the droid out the window as it explodes, but it’s up to Anakin to catch D’Nar’s getaway ship.
Anakin and Ahsoka jump on top of the ship and get inside. Ahsoka corners D’Nar, but he refuses to tell where the colonists are. Anakin comes this close to killing D’Nar when he says that his Queen is bringing back the slave auctions. He never reveals the people’s whereabouts, and the computer scans show no life on the planet. The people have vanished, and all seem to agree that this doesn’t bode well. As Yoda intones, “Slavery, a great tool it is for the rise of the Sith.”
We’ve seen flashes of Anakin’s dark side before, but when Ahsoka is troubled, we the audience are troubled. She’s thrown off by Anakin’s out-of-nowhere anger, though Obi-Wan has a good enough explanation for it. Are we entering the beginning of Anakin’s turn to the dark side? Or am I perhaps placing too much importance on this outburst? After all, Anakin and his mother were enslaved, and it only makes sense that slavers would evoke such a reaction from him. Again, I look to Ahsoka. As the padawan, she’s the character whose eyes we see through the most, and when she’s alarmed, I take my cues from her. The teamwork that she and Anakin share is awesome and amazing, which is only going to make it all the more heartbreaking when Anakin takes that inevitable turn for the worse.
If you missed the previous episode, be sure to read our ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Carnage Of Krell’ recap to catch up.
