Harsher In Hindsight / Star Wars: The Clone Wars

• Ahsoka's line in the pilot movie, "I'm a Jedi Knight! Or soon will be." In "The Wrong Jedi", she rejects the possibility of knighthood and leaves the Jedi Order.
• At the end of "Ambush", Yoda promises King Katuunko "Fail you we will not." Unfortunately, they ultimately did fail Katuunko in "Witches of the Mist" when Savage kills him. What's worse is that while Yoda stopped Ventress from killing him, he ends up being killed by the apprentice that replaced her and neither Jedi could stop him that time.
• During "Shadow of Malevolence," Grievous decapitates a battle droid and Dooku chastises him for wasting such a money-intensive resource via holagram. Hilarious, right? Well, yeah, until Dooku points out that the Jedi aren't that harsh to their own troops. Well, come the Umbara Arc...
  • Even worse, Pong Krell's endgame was becoming Dooku's apprentice.
• The Holocron arc becomes much, much harsher in hindsight after Rebels. Here, we see that the Inquisitors kidnap helpless babies with the intent of raising them in the ways of the Dark Side. And this time, the Jedi Order and the Republic aren't around to stop Palpatine's plans.
• In "Weapons Factory", Luminara tells Anakin that she is prepared to let her go of her apprentice Barriss in the event of her death, and asks if Anakin is willing to do the same with Ahsoka. Come "The Wrong Jedi", both of them are forced to let go of their apprentices for reasons that neither of them expected.
  • Also, the opening quote of the episode is "No gift is more precious than trust." That becomes pretty sad in light of the Fugitive arc.
• Luminara Unduli being held prisoner by reanimated Geonosian warriors in "Legacy of Terror" becomes a lot more disturbing when you consider her fate in Star Wars Rebels.
• Ahsoka fighting a brainwashed Barriss in "Brain Invaders" becomes this after "The Wrong Jedi", where Barriss is attacking Ahsoka of her own free will.
  • On a similar note, Ahsoka mentioning Clone Sergeant Slick's betrayal to Barriss in the same episode also becomes this when Barriss betrays the Republic and Jedi Order for similar reasons to Slick.
  • Also at the end of the episode, Ahsoka wonders whether she should've killed Barriss (who in a moment of clarity, even asked her to do it) because her mercy could've potentially jeopardised the lives of many others. Barriss ends up killing at least seven Jedi, at least two civilians, and injuring many others with bombing the Jedi Temple.
  • Additionally, "Brain Invaders" pits Ahsoka against an entire ship full of brainwashed clones trying to hunt her down, chillingly foreshadowing the events of "Shattered" and "Victory and Death", except in the latter case, she's not able to do anything to save them.
• "Grievous Intrigue" is centered around Anakin rescuing Jedi Master Eeth Koth, who is being held captive by General Grievous. The sentiment of the rescue is soured since, ultimately, Koth will die at the hands of Darth Vader.
• In "The Desterter", Rex goes down to a battlefield wound, prompting Jesse to rally the others to defend him. In the Grand Finale, it's Jesse who takes command of the 332nd and they do everything in their power to ensure Rex and Ahsoka don't escape Order 66.
• In "Clone Cadets", Bravo Squad's line "Time to watch the Dominoes fall" becomes this when you consider the ultimate fate of Domino Squad. Also in the same episode and deliberately invoked at the time of its airing, Hevy's promise to come back to 99 for his medal. Considering that the episode takes place before "Rookies", fans who have watched the episode beforehand know that's not going to happen.
• A mind controlled Ahsoka fighting Anakin in "Altar of Mortis" becomes harsher after Rebels when she confronts Darth Vader.
• Ahsoka saves Tarkin in "Citadel Rescue" from being killed at the hands of a Osi Sobek. In "The Wrong Jedi", he tries to have her executed for treason. And of course the whole "blow up Alderaan with the Death Star to make a point" thing.
• The Umbara arc puts a lot of emphasis on the clones learning the need to question orders and make their own decisions, which becomes a lot more tragic after the reveal about the inhibitor chips. Also, Fives nearly being executed by his fellow clones horribly foreshadows him meeting that exact fate in the Order 66 arc.
  • One of the worst incidents that Rex had ever experienced in Umbara was discovering that Krell had tricked him and his unit into firing upon their own brothers. In "Shattered", Rex finds himself forced to do the same thing all over again, this time protecting Ahsoka from his own men who have been brainwashed by Order 66.
  • Alongside Fives, Jesse was also almost executed by his fellow clones. This becomes cruelly ironic when Order 66 gets activated, with Jesse getting turned into an executioner himself.
• The Onderon arc features a group of Rebels fighting against the Separatists that Obi-Wan has minor doubts over whether or not their actions may degenerate into terrorism. The capital of this group's home world Onderon is named "Iziz", which is pronounced and spelled similarly to the real-world terrorist organization ISIS that emerged in 2014 (two years after the Onderon arc first aired). It gets worse when later works reveal that this group, under Saw Gerrera's leadership, became one of the more brutal rebel cells fighting against the Empire.
• According to behind the scenes material, the tally marks on Gregor's clone commando armor are a reference to the tally marks the Boston Bruins goaltender Gary Cheevers stenciled on his hockey mask, used to count the number of stitches he would have gotten had it not been for his protective equipment. In Rebels, Gregor does not wear any armor at all, and he gets killed from a single blaster shot to the chest in the final episode of the series.
• Maul's final fate in Rebels makes his return in The Clone Wars all the worse. He eventually (and permanently) dies at the hands of Obi-Wan, having lost everything; the Nightsister coven, his Shadow Collective, the Darksaber, and even his "apprentice". For all the misery and terror he caused he ultimately ended up accomplishing nothing and dying in despair, with the only faint hope that Luke will "avenge them all".
  • This is doubly sad when one considers that, for all his evil, this is a man who is just as much a victim of Sidious as the clones or the Jedi, having been kidnapped from his mother and "raised" (read: abused and tortured) by the Sith from infancy. It's just heartbreaking that he never gets to see a galaxy rid of his former master, or break free from the conditioning ingrained in him.
• In "The Jedi Who Knew Too Much", Anakin promises Ahsoka "I'd never let anyone hurt you." The last time the two see each other alive, Anakin, as Vader, rejects Ahsoka's attempts to reach him and decides to kill her.
• Both "Rookies" and "ARC Troopers" are about Republic military operations critical to the security of Kamino. The clones view the place as the closest thing they have to a home and are determined to defend it. Fives in particular is involved in both incidents and is invited to join the 501st and promoted to ARC Trooper in recognition of his heroism. But his treatment by the Kaminoans in the "Order 66" arc is appalling. Fives returns home to help a friend only to find the Kaminoans subjecting him to inhumane medical treatment, endorsing euthanasia, and participating in a conspiracy to engineer clone behaviour so they can be made to act against their will. Even in their government cover-up, the Kaminoan conspirators are still very open about how they view clones as "property" rather than people. They come into heated conflict with Fives and even coldly accuse him of causing the death of his own best friend. They eventually drug Fives, sabotaging his investigation and sending him on the run until he is killed and silenced, dying alone, desperate and afraid, even after everything he did for Kamino. And the only person he trusts throughout all of this is a droid.
  • The Battle of Kamino during ARC Troopers also becomes sadder when Kamino itself is destroyed by the Republic's successor, the Empire, on orders from Admiral Rampart. The one who gave him the orders? Admiral Tarkin, who in a further form of irony, participated in the battle, as revealed in Tarkin.
• In "Unfinished Business" (which was written in 2012, released as an animatic in 2015, and officially completed by 2020), Admiral Trench has a Plan B that involves blowing up Anaxes with a bomb. While the Jedi succeed in disarming the bomb in that episode, Rebels would show that the planet somehow got blown up after the war anyway, leaving behind an asteroid belt with only the Fort Anaxes military base and a nest of fyrnocks inhabiting it. The databank says it was destroyed in a cataclysm, but given everything else involving the bomb, it leaves one to wonder.
• Ahsoka and Rex race each other to the surface during battle in "Old Friends Not Forgotten", with Ahsoka saving one clone pilot from his plummeting gunship along the way. It's a welcome sigh of relief considering the low survivability rate of clone pilots throughout the series, until it is devastatingly counterbalanced by the crash of the Tribunal in "Victory and Death" with the loss of every single brainwashed clone formerly under Ahsoka's command onboard. Ahsoka manages to escape with Rex but is powerless to save anyone else.
• The later seasons delving into the theme of the clones' loyalty in the "Umbara", "Order 66" and "Siege of Mandalore" arcs cast a different light on earlier episodes like "The Hidden Enemy" and "The Deserter". These one-shot stories about clone traitors or deserters helped set the stage for these later storylines, so it's only natural that some aspects strike a new cord now than they did when they first aired.
• Ahsoka and Anakin are relieved to learn it wasn't a Jedi who bombed the temple in the first episode of four-episode arc of the fifth season finale. Anakin comforts Ahsoka that "There will always be Jedi who disappoint us, but as long as we know there are good Jedi who fight for what's right, it makes it all worthwhile." In-universe, Anakin becoming Vader and slaughtering the Jedi alongside Palpatine.
• The events of the Geonosis arc (where the Jedi invade and occupy Geonosis) appear much less triumphant when one considers that the Republic's occupation of the planet may very well have helped set the stage for the the Empire in regards to the enslavement and later genocide of the Geonosian race, as depicted in Rebels.
• In "On the Wings of Keeradaks", Tech briefly needles Wrecker for his acrophobia, telling Wrecker not to take him with him if he falls off the pipe they are traversing. This bit of humor at the time becomes darkly prophetic after the Season 2 finale of The Bad Batch, where Tech dies in a Heroic Sacrifice by willfully falling to his death so the rest of his team can survive, and it's Wrecker who begs him not to do so.

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