The first step to correcting a mistake is patience.
As Anakin and Ahsoka's strike team returns to the Resolute empty-handed, one clone trooper notices something suspicious and points it out to Rex, who promptly calls Anakin over: drops of green blood on the floor of the Sheathipede-class transport shuttle, a colour that humans and Togruta don't bleed. Ahsoka, meanwhile, grows concerned about Denal, who's acting odd... for a reason: it's Cad Bane in disguise, but as Anakin leaps to stop him, the bounty hunter is able to steal a V-19 Torrent starfighter and its accompanying hyperspace ring and escape. Trying to find the bounty hunter and his stolen data, several Jedi meditate through the Force to see what he's going to do next. As it turns out, Sidious has hired Bane to kidnap four children from the list to be brought to his facility on Mustafar for a vile purpose. Although the Nautolan child Mace Windu saw on Glee Anselm has already been kidnapped, Anakin and Ahsoka rush to Naboo, where he saw a Gungan child named Roo-Roo Page in danger, and Obi-Wan rushes to Rodia. However, the Jedi Master is just slightly too late to prevent Bane from escaping the jungle planet with Wee Dunn. Anakin and Ahsoka's ambush of Bane on Naboo goes flawlessly as they capture the bounty hunter. However, the two kidnapped children are still unaccounted for, and it's a race against time for the Jedi to rescue them and retrieve the stolen holocron and data crystal, especially since they don't know who the mastermind is...
Tropes:
- Alien Blood: Duros like Cad Bane have green blood. As getting injured by Denal before killing him, he bleeds a little onto the floor of the Sheathipede-class transport shuttle. This actually gets him caught out, as one of the clones notices it and Bane's wounded arm gives him away to Ahsoka.
- Asteroid Thicket: Bane's hideout, Black Stall Station, is located in one.
- Booby Trap: Black Stall Station is booby trapped, and while the Jedi realize right away that the place Cad Bane has led them to doesn't contain the children they seek they do see the holocron and end up setting off the explosive trap when stepping towards it, allowing Bane to escape while they avoid the deadly setup and nab the holocron.
- Call-Forward:
- Sidious instructs Bane to "take care" of the children.
- Sidious' experiment is to take place on Mustafar. Anakin dismisses it as a little-known mining world. On top of that, the secret base where the children are taken looks very much like the Separatist Council's hideout.
- Anakin reports that he and Ahsoka "tore the ship apart" when they searched for Bane, but he escaped.
- Clothing Switch: Bane performed this using 2 dead clone troopers (whom he killed in the previous episode). He put on the armor of one of the dead clones and then put his own outfit on the body of the other.
- Collapsing Lair: Sidious has the nanny droids manning the Mustafar base turn off the gravity supports so the facility, and all the evidence, will fall into the lava. It works perfectly, leaving the Jedi with nothing to go upon.
- Continuity Snarl: When the holocron is seen again at Black Stall Station, it's fully closed, when only a Jedi should have been able to do that.
- Curb Stomp Cushion: It happens offscreen, but it's fairly clear that Denal actually managed to wound Cad Bane before getting killed by him.
- Destroy the Evidence: When the gravity projectors are turned off, the base on Mustafar falls into the lava, erasing any evidence as to the identity of the mastermind behind the kidnapping plot. Just as Sidious intended.
- Dramatic Irony: Anakin's conversation with Palpatine where they talk about whoever might be behind the plot to destroy the Jedi is absolutely dripping with this trope, considering that the audience knows full well that Sidious is behind the plot. This is taken up a notch with the fate of the Younglings in Revenge of the Sith.
- Escape Pod: Bane gets away in the one attached to his hideout.
- Faking the Dead: Bane was revealed to have done this in the previous episode. At the end of that episode, he was cornered by 2 clone troopers and seemingly killed. As it turns out, Bane killed both troopers. He then stole the armor of one of them (Denal) and placed the other in Bane's clothes before shooting him, making it look like Bane had been killed. After being shuttled aboard the Resolute along with the other clones, Bane stole a V-19 Torrent starfighter and escaped.
- False Friend: Palpatine's insidious side is in evidence despite him playing the part of a kindly old politician.
- False Reassurance: Sidious coos that the Wee and Zinn's cries won't last much longer, by which he means they'll be experimented on and either dead or implanted with a mind control device that will allow him to silence them.
- Faux Affably Evil: Sidious cooing at Wee and Zinn would be adorable, were he not planning to turn them into slave super-soldiers.
- Forced into Evil: Sidious plans to turn the Force-sensitive children into his brainwashed darksider slaves, or at least experiment with a potential way to do so and see if they survive it before grabbing more kids to experiment on and find a way to enslave them the way he wants.
- Forgot About His Powers: At Black Stall Station, Obi-Wan and Mace Windu don't think of using the Force in order to retrieve the holocron and thus prevent Bane's escape.
- Goomba Springboard: Anakin lets himself fall towards one of Sidious' nanny droids as the facility falls into the lava in order to jump off of it towards the door, saving himself and the baby he's carrying while shoving the droid into the lava.
- Human Shield: The evil nanny droids at the Mustafar base use the kidnapped babies as this while fighting Anakin and Ahsoka, although the two Jedi are eventually able to get the upper hand and retrieve the children safely.
- Indy Hat Roll: Mace Windu drops and slides through the closing door of the exploding Black Stall Station, and then turns and pulls his dropped lightsaber to him just as it slams shut.
- Innocuously Important Episode: Sidious' plan to turn Force-sensitive children into Dark Side soldiers through torture appears to be an odd one-off idea that doesn't get revisited; come Star Wars Rebels, in retrospect, this appears to be the beginnings of the Inquisitorius.
- Mugged for Disguise: Bane is revealed to have killed clone trooper Denal and stolen his armor in order to get onboard the escape shuttle.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- When future Jedi are at risk of being kidnapped and turned to the Dark Side, Obi-Wan doesn't have time to be polite and soft-spoken, even with Mahtee, whose child has just been taken by Bane.
- There's also Obi-Wan, Anakin and Windu basically Mind Raping Bane with three Jedi Mind Tricks at once, an act that is just a hairs breadth away from being full on torture.
- Outrun the Fireball: Obi-Wan and Mace have to nab the holocron and flee Cad Bane's exploding base, which they manage to escape Just in Time.
- Pun: "You've certainly stepped in it this time!" — Obi-Wan to Mace after he steps off the platform they were standing on and sets off Bane's security system.
- Refuge in Audacity: Bane kidnaps Wee by disguising himself as a Jedi and informing the baby's mother, Mathee, that he has to take the baby because impostors posing as Jedi have been abducting babies.
- Restraining Bolt: Sidious orders his nanny droids to implant the children with slave drives, which will allow him to control their emotions and harm them/blow them up from afar if they disobey. One of the droids, RO-Z67, informs him that such young subjects will not likely survive the procedure and Sidious responds that he has nothing to lose if the experiment fails.
- Revealing Injury: Bane gets wounded by Denal, and ends up bleeding a bit of green blood onto the floor of the escape shuttle while in disguise. Given as how no one who was supposed to be on the shuttle has green blood, it's a dead giveaway.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: The three Force-sensitive children that are featured in this episode are very adorable.
- Running Both Sides: While Palpatine/Sidious is running both sides in every episode it is especially blatant here, with him giving orders to Bane and then expressing his false concern for the Jedi.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Anakin saves the Younglings. Too bad we already know what he does later...
- Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Sidious' plan to make lifelong brainwashed slaves of the children he paid Bane to nab is treated as quite depraved even compared to his other actions, and the Jedi are willing to use methods and actions they normally avoid in order to try and rescue them.
- Spotting the Thread: Bane erases the navicomputer of his Xanadu Blood to hide that he'd travelled to Mustafar — but he doesn't think to do the same to the fuel computer, and he forgets to clean off the volcanic ash that had accumulated on his ship.
- Strapped to an Operating Table: The babies, courtesy of Sidious.
- Superhuman Trafficking: Sidious is paying Cad Bane to kidnap and deliver Force-sensitive children.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Bane escapes after the security systems of his hideout are activated, making his way to an escape pod.
- Voice of the Legion: The Jedi sound like this when they join forces to employ a mind trick on Cad Bane.
- Would Hurt a Child: Sidious has Bane kidnap Force-sensitive children for brainwashing experiments, all of them barely toddlers. Bane even exploits this to get Wee Dunn via disguising himself as a Jedi and warning his mother of kidnappers dressed as Jedi to get her to release her son to him. Bane doesn't care what happens to the babies so long as he gets paid and Sidious is planning to do some nasty things to them.
