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This is what we’ve all been waiting for, and Dave Filoni and company do treat it as a special event. “Old Friends Not Forgotten” kicks off the final story arc of the final season of the Clone Wars, the Siege of Mandalore story arc, the one that connects the TV series with Revenge of the Sith, and also launches Ahsoka Tano into her post-Clone-Wars adventures.
From the moment we got the “Lucasfilm Ltd.” opening to the red text “Part I” title screen, and the jump into the narrator’s opening without a moral/fortune cookie before it, we know we’re in different territory. And as the episode progresses, we can see the cinematic scope and scale to which this arc is rising.
I will say – and I’ll say it in detail in today’s episode – that I’m having a bit of a challenge with the moment that is supposed to be the BIG emotional moment in this episode. It’s based on reasons we’ve discussed in previous episodes, but let’s talk about it and see whether it’s just me, or whether you were feeling the same way. That said, as usual, there’s a lot to recommend the episode. The action is great, and there’s nothing in the episode that feels like it didn’t need to be there to tell the story. And that includes the opening sequence, which doesn’t bear on the story arc itself (at least, as far as we can guess), but certainly re-grounds us in the nature of this war and its Jedi players. Punch it!
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Help me out:
Not sure why there was the thought that only a few weeks had passed from Ahsoka leaving the Order to her returning and greeting the troops with masks newly painted.
The beginning of the second arc does make it seem like she goes from walking away from Anakin to diving down into the bowels on her speeder bike, but I think significant time had passed between the two. She is indeed wearing her new outfit (the modern blue one) whereas when she leaves Anakin she has her older maroon one.
Plus- she left at the end of Season 5 and there was an entire Season six that had passed.
I think it has been significantly longer from her leaving to her returning than you think!
Thanks for the most awesome podcast !!
-Paul
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Hi Paul,
Thanks for the comment and the kind words about the show!
I think what it comes down to is, how much time do you think passes during Season 6? There are four arcs: the Fives clone chip arc, the Clovis arc, the Mace/Jar Jar 2-parter, and the Sifo-Dyas/Yoda Force arc. For me, the first three seem to go very quickly from an in-universe time perspective. The last one seems to be one of those ones where, like the Mortis arc, has elements that could have happened “outside of time,” so to speak.
The Fives arc seems to be the longest one, with a couple of days at Ringo Vinda, a couple of days at Tipoca City, and a couple of days on Coruscant, with transportation time in between. I think two weeks is generous.
The Clovis arc, for all we know, could take place within the Fives arc. Anakin isn’t in episodes 2 and 3 of the Fives arc, so he could be dealing with Padme and Clovis during that time. But even if it’s concurrent, the Clovis arc happens in bang-bang fashion. The first episode spends three or four days on Scipio, travels to Coruscant for a couple days, and then back to Scipio for the climax. I think two weeks is solid here as well.
I’ll say a week for the Mace/Jar-Jar episodes, with travel time. As for the Sifo/Yoda arc, with the mission to Oba Diah, and Yoda’s time on Coruscant and Dagobah, for round numbers I’ll say three weeks, which puts us at two months total. And I’ll stick by my guns that the final two episodes of that arc take place outside of normal time. đŸ™‚
And then, how long do we give the Bad Batch arc to play out? A week or two? Yoda wasn’t in that arc, so he could also have been off on his adventure during that…
So for all the non-Ahsoka characters, it doesn’t seem like it could have been more than three months at most. That does seem longer than I initially discussed in the episode, so there’s that. But it still doesn’t quite feel like it was long enough for the way it was treated – for me, at least…