FILMEDGE REVIEWS THE CLONE WARS EPISODE 2.21 'R2 COME HOME' — AIRDATE 4.30.10

The beleaguered Jedi Knights have struggled against space pirates, zombie bugs, mind-controlling brain worms, giant monsters and more, all while dealing with the ever-present threat of attack by the evil Separatist forces — but despite all they’ve been through, their greatest threat is still before them. For future generations of Skywalker, the name of Boba Fett will live in infamy — but now, he is still but a boy bent on revenge, driven by a desire to make the Jedi pay for the death of his father. Things get personal in the heated ONE-HOUR season finale of STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS airing at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT Friday, April 30th on Cartoon Network. Part One of the finale finds Anakin Skywalker and Mace Windu's lives in peril as R2-D2 races for help with Boba Fett and the bounty hunters in pursuit.

Adversity is friendship's truest test.

Revenge! Boba Fett, son of the notorious bounty hunter Jango Fett, infiltrated a Jedi cruiser in an attempt to assassinate General Mace Windu, the man who killed his father. After a near miss at Windu's quarters, Boba was forced to destroy the cruiser and escape with the help of notorious bounty hunter Aurra Sing. Now, having lost contact with Admiral Killian when his doomed starship crashed, the Jedi search for survivors with the aid of a Republic rescue ship...

SYNOPSIS: Picking up where Death Trap left off, the Clone Youth Brigade is rescued from their escape pods while Jedi Generals Mace Windu and Anakin Skywalker fly their starfighters down to the surface of Vanqor to learn the fate of Admiral Killian and Commander Ponds amid the crashed wreckage of the Endurance. Landing on the planet, the Jedi order their R-series droids to scan the smoldering cruiser for survivors, with Anakin assuring Mace that R2-D2, his highly specialized droid, will get the job done. Mace discourages Anakin for allowing R2 to get too individualized for his own good (and for Anakin getting too attached to the robot), but Skywalker maintains his faith the the droid after all they've been through together. R2 immediately senses danger as two unseen gundarks lurk amid the starship debris littering the crash site, stalking the group as prey.

Searching inside the wreckage, the Jedi discover the bodies of two troopers who have been shot, clearly executed by some foe after the crash landing, and it wasn't by gundarks! Windu rightly assumes his would-be assassin has followed the ship down and searched for his body in the debris. While R2 and R8 make their way to the Endurance bridge, still mostly in tact atop the broken hull, the gundarks attack the droids and rip R8 to pieces. On the bridge, Mace and Anakin find no sign of Killian or Ponds, fearing the worst that they were sucked out into space when the ship crashed. Mace reports to the orbiting medical ship to leave and get the cadets to a Republic station for treatment. Anakin spots a Mandalorian helmet amid the debris of the shattered bridge and is about to pick it up to investigate when Windu suddenly makes the connection between Jango Fett and his son Boba. Mace pulls Anakin away from harm at the last second as the bomb-rigged helmet explodes! Though the Jedi survive the blast, they are hopelessly trapped under heavy debris from the destroyed bridge.

Watching from the hills nearby, Boba Fett watches with bounty hunters Aurra Sing, Bossk and Castas as his booby-trap destroys the Endurance bridge, and presumably Mace Windu with it. But Boba insists on confirming the kill and proving he's exacted revenge against the Jedi who killed his father. The bounty hunters balk at the dangerous task, insisting they only want to sell their hostages — Killian, Ponds and a nav officer — to Count Dooku for a quick profit. Aurra insists that bringing Dooku evidence of the Jedi's deaths would be worth even more credits, so they leave Bossk to guard the hostages while they search the wreckage for their trophies.

R2 finds Anakin and Mace trapped under the bridge debris but the little astromech is unable to free them. Anakin orders R2 back to the starfighter to signal the Jedi Temple on Coruscant for help. But the bounty hunters arrive at the wreck before R2 can escape, so he cleverly blocks their entrance into the bridge by showering cargo crates and wreckage on them as they ascend the tower, finally dropping a dead trooper's grenade down to force their retreat. The rain of crumbling wreckage crushes one of the gundarks sniffing around for the survivors. Despite Boba's protests, Aurra decides to blast apart the remains of the Endurance to ensure the Jedi's destruction and report it back to Dooku.

Making his way to the starfighters, R2 is confronted by the remaining gundark who he shoots with his suction cup and, attaching the tow line to Anakin's starfighter, launches the gundark through the air by remote control. Seeing the ship's explosion, the bounty hunters now assume Windu has survived and rush to the scene, jamming outgoing communications before he can signal the Republic. Now unable to send his distress signal as ordered, R2 launches Windu's starfighter and blasts off the planet. The Slave I follows R2 into space as Boba fires a fusillade of laser cannon fire. Yet R2's precise droid maneuvering avoids destruction and speeds toward the hyperdrive rings floating in orbit. With R2 about to rendezvous at the rings, Boba has only a moment to pick a target and destroy one ring. Boba Fett fires and blasts apart one ring just as R2 swoops around and docks with the other ring. The droid immediately jumps into hyperspace to Coruscant, leaving Boba and the bounty hunters behind. Aurra remains confident she can lure Mace Windu to her as she leaves the scene with her hostages.

Arriving at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, R2 hastily wheels his way to the Council room to deliver his rescue information to Master Plo Koon and Ahsoka Tano. Plo Koon orders an immediate return to Vanqor where he and Ahsoka pull Windu and Skywalker out of the wreckage to safety just before the bridge remains collapse in a fireball. Anakin thanks his trusted droid and Windu praises R2 for his unique devotion to completing his mission and saving their lives.

REVIEW: As middle chapter in the three-part Season Two finale of THE CLONE WARS, R2 Come Home continues the story from Death Trap but with an unexpected twist: focusing on R2-D2's importance as Anakin's trusted cohort, the cat-and-mouse pursuit episode centers on the theme of loyalty and trust, both qualities in short supply among the bounty hunters. Ultimately this opening salvo of the season finale underscores the stakes at risk upon Boba Fett's entrance into the series as symbolic of the larger themes defining both sides of the Clone War: civil justice and moral virtue versus anti-social power politics spawned by selfish greed.

Though Mace Windu is a little reluctant to rely on R2 to fulfill his dangerous rescue mission single-handedly, Anakin doesn't hesitate to trust the droid with their lives because R2 has earned his trust many times over. Skywalker even points out just how unique R2's extra "personality" is in this regard, which perhaps explains why Mace is slow to recognize this trait having lived among very unremarkable droids all his life. STAR WARS fans know what a crucial role R2-D2 plays in the generational continuity of the Saga and the Skywalker family story in particular, and this episode underscores that this result is no mere coincidence. R2's demonstrated loyalty and connection to faithfully serve Anakin is nearly hardwired into the astromech's programming to fulfill a given mission at all costs. Though Anakin eventually leaves R2 behind when he falls into darkness as a Sith Lord, R2 loosely maintains this family connection by serving Bail Organa after EPISODE III before serving his adopted daughter, Leia (who is secretly a Skywalker, of course). She ends up entrusting the future of the Rebellion to R2 in EPISODE IV, who then devotedly delivers her message of Obi-Wan Kenobi and ends up in the service of Luke Skywalker, completing the generational circle of service.

Such devotion stands in stark contrast to the self-serving, disloyal ethics of Aurra Sing, Bossk and her cadre of bounty hunters which young Boba Fett joins out of lonely desperation. Orphaned when Jedi Knight Mace Windu kills his father Jango Fett, Boba blindly seeks revenge on Windu and follows Sing to that end. But the boy quickly realizes that Sing and the bounty hunters are only devoted to one value: the credits promised for collecting their next bounty target. Existing alone and far outside the morality of established societies like the Republic, bounty hunters survive only by self-reliance and forming any emotional attachments to others only poses greater risks to them. When profit is the aim, money talks and loyalty to one or any side is a luxury bounty hunters can't afford. Thus Boba finds that Aurra nor the other outlaws have his vengeance or best interest in mind unless it serves their mercenary needs.

Likewise Darth Sidious, hidden behind the political guise of the Republic's Chancellor Palpatine, secretly conducts his surreptitious undermining of galactic peace and justice in his fabricated war with the Separatists. The Sith, now represented by Palpatine and his apprentice Count Dooku posing as the Separatist leader, utterly embody this immoral ethos of selfish greed and insatiable lust for power. As proven for centuries in their secretive, slow emergence from near-extinction, only two Sith can coexist at any time as their inherent distrust prohibits additional acolytes without risking assassination of the unfortunate third party. While bounty hunters like those surrounding Boba Fett live in the shadowy gray-area of amoral ambiguity in the galaxy, loyal to anyone who will pay, the Sith strictly inhabit the darkest extreme of the moral spectrum. Conversely the Jedi and most of the Republic's citizens occupy the side of light and positive morality, with the Jedi Knights acting in the extreme of selfless devotion to preserving peace and ensuring justice for others without personal gain. It is interesting to note how STAR WARS creator George Lucas places most of the Senate's bureaucratic politicians, supposedly representing the Republic masses, in the same amoral strata as bounty hunters, corruptly serving those who promise graft and power instead of the citizens who elected them to office.

Thus Boba Fett, shown as a somewhat sympathetic but misguided youth in these finale episodes, ends up a victim of the greedy, disloyal company he keeps, and his continuing failure to exact revenge upon Mace Windu exemplifies how he's misplaced his trust in the bounty hunters. Such results are thematically lightyears away from the trust Anakin places in R2 to fulfill his desperate rescue mission and save the Jedi's lives, laying the foundation for many future missions which R2 completes for those he serves so loyally.

Of course, knowing how the future plays out in the STAR WARS universe, it's most interesting to note that Anakin's trust and affection toward R2-D2 is also one more example of the personal attachments he's not supposed to form as a Jedi Knight serving the Republic. Once again, Supervising Director Dave Filoni and THE CLONE WARS storytellers show sublime cleverness in dramatizing the upside of Anakin's identifiable, human tendency toward personal connections, loyalty and even love, while barely hinting at his destiny when these same traits will — under Palpatine's twisted influence — cause Anakin's eventual downfall and destruction. Of course, by the conclusion of EPISODE VI, these same traits of love and loyalty prove to be Anakin's saving and final grace when he frees himself from Palpatine's corrupting bonds of Sith slavery to the Dark Side, and saves Luke from suffering the same fate. In this light, R2's heroism shines just as brightly in an ever-darkening galaxy, and this episode rightfully lets the little astromech take the spotlight before the last episode of the Season Two finale.

FILMEDGE ranks R2 Come Home as one of the better Season Two episodes, again as a character-developing episode which further sets up the larger thematic conflict to be resolved in the third installment of this finale. Aiming much higher and more ambitiously than a mere, typical animated television series, Season Two of THE CLONE WARS has really dug deep into STAR WARS mythology and mined it to reveal surprising new gems in character arcs and dramatic plots which enhance the franchise between the eras of EPISODES II and III. Within the confines of the series itself, the continued exploration of the bounty hunter subculture and how it influences Boba Fett's backstory will no doubt yield rich storytelling benefits in Season Three.

CONTINUE TO OUR SEASON TWO FINALE REVIEW OF EPISODE 2.22 'LETHAL TRACKDOWN'