Well, it’s been fun (spoiler alert: it hasn’t) but it’s time to say adieu to Raffa and Trace, two of the most grating and unlikeable characters that we’ve met in the Clone Wars series and, mind you, this is a series that has Gungans in it.
Imprisoned again (which means that the entire last episode didn’t even need to happen), Ahsoka dupes the Pikes into letting Raffa and Trace go as she remains behind to sabotage their factories and discover the shocking and yet predictable identity of the guy behind it all.
Given that I have been extremely vocal in my overall dislike of this season of Clone Wars, especially this particular arch, I gotta hand to to them that this episode was a complete 180. Where the previous installments had characters being stupid for the plot’s sake (looking at you, Trace, dumping all the spice into space thinking it would solve all your problems), “Together Again” has these same characters making smart decisions and thinking on their feet.
The true fun of the episode comes from Ahsoka simply being Ahsoka. Although there is a eye-rolling moment that opens the episode where we start in on what seems like the 15th morality speech from Ahsoka in this story arch, it is quickly dropped and mostly we just have Ahsoka going ninja to bring down the Pike’s empire.
This sequence, with Ahsoka parkour’ing around, silently moving about, and being a complete boss was so much fun. This is the Ahsoka I wanted to see this entire time.
Even Trace and Raffa showed some brains for once as they hatched a plan to rescue Ahsoka who they didn’t even know was a Jedi. Did their initial plan work out? No… but with a little murder, everything was fine.
This is on Disney Plus, by the way.
This brings me to one of the few things that this collection of episodes got right: Ahsoka has been basically lying to Raffa and Trace about her identity as an ex-Jedi since she learned that the Jedi were basically responsible for the death of their parents. It’s been set up to be the “liar revealed” cliche which has been done a million times before and is one of the laziest and most predictable story tropes in history.
When the truth comes out, there is shock, but instead of the cliched “You LIED to me!?” scene, we get something rather refreshing where Raffa and Trace were actually grateful that Ahsoka was the kind of person they wished that Jedi could be. What a wonderful sentiment. I really dug it.
So, this story arch has been a complete mess. Uneven, stupid, and annoying but, amazingly enough, “Together Again” is not only the strongest episode of the arch, I would even argue that it’s the strongest episode of the season.
Don’t get me wrong… I’m glad it’s over because, as I said, this story arch has been an unholy, uneven mess… but I am glad that something of value come from it.
Jason Gaston 