After retrieving Echo from the Techno Guild, Anakin and the clones must fight their way out and enlist the help of the native planetary species to escape.
…and that’s about it.
I’m not complaining because action has always been something that The Clone Wars has done well and the action in this episode… it’s done well. Anakin is out there all Jedi’ing, the clones are pew-pewing, and the Bad Batch are doing whatever it is that they do. “On The Wings Of Keeradaks” is a visual and visceral treat.
Okay, I said I wasn’t complaining… but here comes the complaining.
Too much action makes my butt numb and “On The Wings Of Keeradaks” was almost non-stop from beginning to end. Granted, as I said before, this is a show aimed primarily at kids so I give it some leeway as far as that is concerned, but when you pull a guy out of a coffin that he’s been in for years, his body mutilated and his mind violated, and then have him cracking wise only a scene or two later. After just literally saying that he was too weak to walk and then have him actively take part in an action sequence on a suspension cable thousands of feet in the air… you kind of get the feeling that nothing matters. The trauma doesn’t matter, the injuries don’t matter… even the fact that Echo literally woke up as a half-robot and it’s years later and he’s been plugged into a computer… doesn’t matter!
It just cheapens everything. We could have had a pep talk to get him on his feet. We could have had a scene where we see him mentally bury all of the pain and move on… but no. It didn’t matter.
The not mattering seemed to follow the clones to the Ewok Village… I’m sorry, I meant the Ewok Village…. Sorry… The Bird-Riding Ewok Village where, once again, a technologically inferior species of cannon fodder joins in the fight to turn the tide. This is a battle that costs the natives dearly and yet, costs the clones nothing.
Because nothing mattered.
Look, I’m not saying that this is a bad episode. It’s not. As I said, it’s got action and thrills and it looks really awesome, but that’s all it is… it’s shallow and meaningless at its core: The only time that the story seems to gain any sort of meaning is that haunting, well executed scene with Echo at the end when he obviously laments that nothing will ever be the same for him. War has changed him forever.
This, however, only makes me even more steamed as The Clone Wars shows that these moments that matter are easily attainable, but chooses not to bother itself with them.
Jason Gaston 