Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Season 7, Episode 6 - "Deal No Deal" Review
Warning: this review contains full spoilers for Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Season 7, Episode 6. If you need a refresher on where we left off, here's our review for Season 7, Episode 5.
ore and more, it's beginning to feel like the final season of The Clone Wars would have been better off structured as three feature-length films rather than 12 episodes. Within each story arc, the episodes flow so closely from one to the next that there's little point in even interrupting them with credits sequences. A feature-length approach definitely would have helped with this arc. Ahsoka's new team-up adventure picks up quite a bit in Chapter 2, but it's a shame we had to deal with such a forgettable setup episode first. Even the way Admiral Yularen's narration recaps the events of "Gone With a Trace" highlights how empty and dull that episode is. It served its purpose as far as putting Ahsoka in the path of sisters Trace and Rafa Martez, but that's about it. But again, now that the setup is out of the way, the series is able to do something much more exciting with that partnership. That includes revisiting Kessel, a world we've heard about for decades but only recently saw brought to life in 2018's Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Episode 6 also helps further develop the Ahsoka/Trace/Rafa dynamic quite a bit, enough that there's now more incentive to care about the two sisters and their struggle for a better life. There's a sense of unease building around what's clearly a toxic relationship between Trace and Rafa. Rafa talks a big game about family and sisters needing to look out for each other, but it's clearly all a noose designed to trap Trace in a life of grift and bad decisions. It helps that Ahsoka isn't simply played as the angel on Trace's shoulder here, but rather a negative influence in her own, well-meaning way. With Rafa urging Trace toward a life of crime and Ahsoka naively arguing that the drug cartel's precious shipment should be hijacked to make medicine, you can't really blame Trace for snapping and sending it all hurtling into hyperspace. Ahsoka may be woke these days, but she's not exactly wise yet.In short, this episode is a much better followup to what was a pretty lackluster debut. That said, the strongest scene in this episode revolves more around the broken Ahsoka/Anakin bond. Ahsoka's close encounter with Anakin is a lot of fun to watch, both in how it offers silent acknowledgement of their friendship and in how it calls back to iconic Original Trilogy moments. Seeing a Clone Wars-era riff on the Endor approach from Return of the Jedi is a welcome treat. It's telling how Anakin so consistently steals the show despite playing a relatively smaller role in Season 7. Even more than reconnecting with Ahsoka, the real joy of this final season has been in seeing him drift further down the path toward becoming Darth Vader.
Verdict
Warning: this review contains full spoilers for Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Season 7, Episode 6. If you need a refresher on where we left off, here's our review for Season 7, Episode 5.
Episode 6 also helps further develop the Ahsoka/Trace/Rafa dynamic quite a bit, enough that there's now more incentive to care about the two sisters and their struggle for a better life. There's a sense of unease building around what's clearly a toxic relationship between Trace and Rafa. Rafa talks a big game about family and sisters needing to look out for each other, but it's clearly all a noose designed to trap Trace in a life of grift and bad decisions. It helps that Ahsoka isn't simply played as the angel on Trace's shoulder here, but rather a negative influence in her own, well-meaning way. With Rafa urging Trace toward a life of crime and Ahsoka naively arguing that the drug cartel's precious shipment should be hijacked to make medicine, you can't really blame Trace for snapping and sending it all hurtling into hyperspace. Ahsoka may be woke these days, but she's not exactly wise yet.In short, this episode is a much better followup to what was a pretty lackluster debut. That said, the strongest scene in this episode revolves more around the broken Ahsoka/Anakin bond. Ahsoka's close encounter with Anakin is a lot of fun to watch, both in how it offers silent acknowledgement of their friendship and in how it calls back to iconic Original Trilogy moments. Seeing a Clone Wars-era riff on the Endor approach from Return of the Jedi is a welcome treat. It's telling how Anakin so consistently steals the show despite playing a relatively smaller role in Season 7. Even more than reconnecting with Ahsoka, the real joy of this final season has been in seeing him drift further down the path toward becoming Darth Vader.
Verdict
While the latest Clone wars story arc got off to a disappointing start, things pick up considerably in the second chapter. "Deal No Deal" does far more to flesh out Ahsoka's dynamic with sisters Trace and Rafa and illustrate how ignorant our well-meaning heroine is about the realities of the galaxy. This episode also delivers enjoyable, meaningful callbacks to the Original Trilogy era. Between a revisit to Kessel and a remix of a critical Return of the Jedi scene, the series knows just how to deliver a proper homage.
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