I thought season two of the Clone Wars really started off with a bang. With my short attention span I was ready to throw in the towel after the first ten minutes. It starts off with Ashoka disobeying an order to withdraw from battle. She is assigned to guard duty in the Jedi Archives, essentially a library with Jedi secrets. Darth Sidious is seen hiring Cad Bane, the new bounty hunter villain, to steal something from the archives.

It’s all pretty yawn worthy until you find out that the secret that Cad Bane has been hired to steal is a list of all the Force sensitive children in the galaxy. I think that’s a fantastic idea. Think of all of the potential! Will Darth Sidious get a chance to corrupt a young child? Many young children? Will we get to see one or several of these children degenerate to an evil Sith Lord? We’ve never seen these things before and I do hope they capitalize on it.

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The action on the cartoon was as always solid. My usual complaints lie with the oh so tired cliché of Ashoka or Anakin becoming impatient and ruining the mission. In fact, Jedi Knights being idiots in general gets on my nerves. It’s come to a point where the Jedi are just trained swordsmen. Yoda senses an intruder in the Jedi temple and not only do they jump to the wrong conclusion about his intentions, but also fail to stop him. At one point Anakin makes the baffling statement, “I know he’s dead but, I still feel his presence.”

Wouldn’t that make said character alive and not dead at all? I also wonder how Cad Bane is so powerful that the Jedi seem incapable of stopping him. The most troubling scene was when Cad Bane just opens fire on the Jedi and survives. If we’ve learned one thing about Jedi is you simply don’t shoot at them . . . ever! It’s pretty much the only rule in the Star Wars universe. But Cad Bane seems too ignorant to know that and fires recklessly with a big smile on his face no less.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing how they would develop Cad Bane and I’m hoping he doesn’t become overused too fast. If he’s going to be the new villain on the block, it’s not enough for them to just decide that he’s powerful enough to hold his own against the Jedi. I think they need to come up with some clever reason as to why he is able to defeat them again and again. If they’re just going to have him shooting at them, well, I’m afraid we won’t have a very convincing villain. And the moment they give him a lightsaber I will write him off immediately as a credible bad guy.

Otherwise a great start. I really look forward to see what they do with this story arc. I hope they don’t waste it.

p.s. “Cargo of Doom” must be the funniest title for anything ever made.

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