Western Animation / Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Season 7)

Spoilers for all of Star Wars: The Clone Wars preceding this season are left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

Witness the end.

"As a Jedi, we were trained to be keepers of the peace, not soldiers. But all I've been since I was a Padawan is a soldier."

— Ahsoka Tano

Star Wars: The Clone Wars returns for a seventh and final season. Created by George Lucas and directed by Dave Filoni, the series initially aired for six seasons up until 2014 and was then revived in 2018 with a 12 episode season.

Following up on the events of the previous seasons, the Clone Wars continues to wage across the Galaxy. The clone troopers (Dee Bradley Baker) continue to fight for the Republic, while former Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein), still reeling from her departure from the Jedi Order, struggles to adjust to civilian life, all before the war comes to an end.

The seventh season premiered exclusively on Disney+ on February 21, 2020 and concluded on May 4.

Previews: SDCC '18 Trailer, Celebration Chicago 2019 Trailer, Official Trailer, Squad 99 Trailer, Official TV Spot, Final TV Spot

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Alright, Tropers. What's so important you brought us all the way back here?

• Ascended Extra: Presumably because the majority of the clone troopers part of the principle cast are either incapable of accompanying the main heroes or dead by that point, Jesse ascends to a fairly prominent role during the Siege of Mandalore arc.
• Advertised Extra: Obi-Wan falls victim to this, as he has a very prominent position on the main poster, but only appears in four episodes of this season, with a limited amount of screen time and lines in each one.
• The Alleged Car: Ahsoka's speeder starts to break down only a minute into "Gone With a Trace", forcing her to crash land onto Trace's workshop.
• Anachronic Order: As explained by All There in the Manual for "Deal No Deal", the Ahsoka's Journey arc chronologically takes place before the Bad Batch arc, as Anakin's presence stationed at Coruscant in the episode means he hasn't yet left to fight in the Outer Rim Sieges that the events of Bad Batch arc are part of.
• Art Evolution:
  • As a result of Disney gaining more experience from working on Rebels and Resistance, receiving advancements in animation technology, and wanting to create consistency between all the series, the art style and animation of The Clone Wars are much more polished in this season. The models of recurring characters are updated to have smaller, yet more detailed and expressive eyes instead of the larger animesque ones. The designs in general are more realistic, pulling away from the clay-like skin texture, wiry body shapes and angular stylization that The Clone Wars initially emulated from Legends' Clone Wars micro-series.
  • Character animation is a lot smoother, likely through Motion Capture that replaces the hand-animated style of the previous seasons that evoked Stop Motion animation with jerkier movements and more static poses. Gravity feels more consistent with their acrobatics and there is more personality in their martial arts style. This is in conjunction with slicker camera movements that is more willing to move and hold on the action.
• Armor Is Useless: Played with in "Victory and Death". When Maul manipulates a clone into shooting at his squad mates, they go down rather quickly. However, in the same scene, he uses a fallen clone trooper's helmet to block incoming blaster bolts before throwing it at another trooper.
• Badass Boast: Mace Windu gives one to a group of battle droids in "Unfinished Business":
  Mace Windu: My name is General Mace Windu of the Jedi Order. At this point of the Clone War, I have dismantled and destroyed over 100,000 of you type 1 battle droids. I am giving you an opportunity to peacefully lay down your weapons, so that you may be reprogrammed to serve a better purpose than spreading the mindless violence and chaos which you have inflicted upon the galaxy.
• Big Bad: Darth Maul serves the role as the main antagonist of the Siege of Mandalore arc (with Chancellor Palpatine/Darth Sidious as the Greater-Scope Villain, of course), as well as being behind the Pyke Syndicate, making him the closest to being this season's main villain.
• Call-Back:
  • In "Gone with a Trace", Ahsoka has to deal with a Type 2 binary loadlifter droid on a rampage, a situation she previously faced in the Forces of Destiny short "The Padawan Path".
  • In "Dangerous Debt", Trace and Rafa mention the Senate hostage crisis that occurred in "Hostage Crisis" while explaining to Ahsoka how their parents died and the fact that they now came to distrust the Jedi after discovering that they accidentally killed them, something that wasn't shown in that episode.
• The Cameo: In "Old Friends Not Forgotten", Depa Billaba and Caleb Dume attend Yoda and Mace's meeting via hologram, which is also joined by Aayla Secura, Ki-Adi Mundi, Plo Koon, Commander Bacara, and Commander Bly.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The Bad Batch and Ahsoka's Journey arcs are lighter in tone and have their fair share of comedic moments, and the beginning of the Siege of Mandalore arc in "Old Friends Not Forgotten" also starts on a lighthearted note. However, once Maul makes his entrance, the lighter tone is dropped entirely and the series immediately veers into much darker territory all the way until the end. Interestingly, unlike his past appearances, this is less due to Maul himself and more due to his knowledge and fear of what's coming, serving as a reminder to the audience of the Foregone Conclusion.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: After the Bad Batch arc, Kix suddenly disappears from the series. As described by The Crimson Corsair and the Lost Treasure of Count Dooku, this is because he got captured by the Separatists for following Fives's trail regarding Order 66, resulting in him getting stuck in stasis for the next several decades. As the season doesn't focus on the 501^st cast again until the Siege of Mandalore arc, there's no room to explain Kix's disappearance for the rest of the season.
• Close on Title: Unlike the previous seasons' Title, Please! approach, the titles of the episodes of this season are displayed early in the end credits, taking a cue from Rebels and Resistance.
• Continuity Nod:
  • Clone Force 99, the Bad Batch's official name, is named after the late defective clone 99.
  • Fyrnocks can be seen in the background on Anaxes.
  • Anakin and Obi-Wan are fighting in the Outer Rim Sieges.
• Cutting the Knot: Tech tries to hack the back door into the Cyber Center, but Wrecker decides to bust it open with brute force instead.
  Wrecker: Haha! You take too long!
• Demoted to Extra: Obi-Wan, Padmé, Cody, and Kix don't do a whole lot in this season. Obi-Wan and Cody appear in a few episodes and are quickly sidelined by plot events, Padmé is in one scene that doesn't last particularly long, and Kix downright vanishes after "A Distant Echo" ^{note (Spoilers!)}  Although it's justified in Kix's case because of what happened in The Crimson Corsair and the Lost Treasure of Count Dooku.
• Distant Finale: The very last scene of the series takes place years later, well during the reign of the Empire, where Vader discovers Ahsoka's lightsaber in the ruins of the Venator.
• Downer Ending: We all knew it had to end with Anakin falling to the Dark Side, Order 66, and the birth of the Empire, with Palpatine/Darth Sidious achieving complete control of the entire galaxy. In "Victory and Death", Maul escapes capture during the chaos of Order 66 and causes the Venator that Ahsoka and Rex are on to crash on a remote moon. Ahsoka and Rex are able to make it out alive, but Jesse and the 332nd are killed in the crash despite the heroes' best efforts to subdue them non-lethally. The two pay their respects to their friends with a burial before going into hiding.
• Dramatic Irony: Maul's offer of joining forces with Ahsoka to destroy Sidious nearly has her, until he tells her that Anakin must also die or he will fall to the Dark Side. Ahsoka refuses to believe that is true, though the audience knows very well that it is.
• Due to the Dead: Despite Order 66, Ahsoka and Rex bury their dead comrades and leave them a memorial.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: Anakin and Kix change hairstyles in this season, with Anakin now sporting the "Jedi '70s mane" that he will chronologically have in Revenge of the Sith to signify that the series is approaching the end of the Clone Wars, while Kix grows out his hair in a style that's similar to most of the other clones.
• Fantastic Flora: Anaxes is a planet covered in glowing red plants that shatter when Separatist tanks pass by them. Since the planet's native Fyrnocks are Silicon-Based Life, it's likely the plants are too.
• Futureshadowing: In "Old Friends Not Forgotten", Ahsoka contacts Anakin using a subspace frequency called "Fulcrum". She would later use the title as a code name for the Rebellion in Rebels.
• Grand Finale: This is the final season of The Clone Wars, ending a story 12 years in the making.
• Greater-Scope Villain: While he was the Big Bad for the series' pilot movie and first six seasons, Palpatine has been relegated to this role with Maul being a more direct threat to Ahsoka. The most we ever hear of Palpatine is him getting captured by General Grievous and executing Order 66 from the background.
• Hearing Voices: In "Shattered", Ahsoka realizes something is terribly wrong when she hears Mace Windu's confrontation with Palpatine and Anakin killing him through the Force.
• Killed Offscreen: During the Siege of Mandalore arc, a significant amount of characters who appeared in The Clone Wars are killed off in the context of the series as a result of the aforementioned arc taking place concurrently with Revenge of the Sith.
• Kill the Ones You Love: Rex and the other clones universally adore Ahsoka, even painting their helmets with her face colors to honor her. Order 66 forces them to attempt to execute her. Rex is faced with this again when his chip gets removed and he's faced with the prospect of having to kill his clone brothers to protect his closest friend. Both situations leave him in tears, the first one as he tries to resist the Order.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • Ahsoka standing next to Bo-Katan in the SDCC '18 trailer gives away the latter's Heel–Face Turn that happened back in the fifth season.
  • The Celebration Chicago trailer is filled with major spoilers from the previous seasons, such as Ahsoka leaving the Jedi Order and the deaths of Fives, Echo, and Hevy.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The trailers have a few nods to the series being uncanceled.invoked
  • Ahsoka tells Anakin that "It's been a while".
  • Rex says this to Ahsoka:
    Rex: Glad to have you back, Commander.
• Madness Mantra: Clones affected by Order 66 keeps repeating to themselves "good soldiers follow orders".
• Metaphorically True: Ahsoka dances around the truth regarding her Jedi past. For instance, when Trace asks Ahsoka where she learned to fight in "Gone with a Trace", she says she got it from her older brother (likely referring to Anakin).
• Mind Rape: In "The Phantom Apprentice", Maul does this with the Force to a captive Jesse in order to obtain information about Ahsoka.
• Missed Him by That Much: Season 7 puts into context just how close the Jedi Council came to uncovering Sidious and stopping him for good; Maul outright told Ahsoka than Anakin was Sidious' prized pupil, and Order 66 was initiated while Ahsoka was on the way back from Mandalore with Maul in captivity.
• Mythology Gag: In "Old Friends Not Forgotten", Obi-Wan mentions that Shaak Ti was guarding Palpatine during the invasion of Coruscant, which was first depicted in Legends' Clone Wars micro-series and was canonized again in a guidebook by Pablo Hidalgo. He further mentions that Mace Windu has lost contact with Shaak Ti, referencing how Grievous jammed her group's communications in the non-canon Clone Wars micro-series.
• Newsreel: As with the previous seasons, the Opening Narration of every episode is styled like this. It gets averted for the final three episodes, where they immediately cut straight back to where the previous episode left off.
• Non-Standard Character Design: The Bad Batch team are clones like the rest of the Republic army but have various mutations from the cloning process that were deemed valuable, making them unusual in both physical appearance and armor next to the regular infantry. While clones have a number of variations in appearance you can tell instantly that they are from the same Jango Fett template. While there is a light similarity the Bad Batch are different enough to make other clones question if they are really clones (Wrecker is noticeably bigger and Hunter has a Rambo-esque long hair and bandana but their features make them appear somewhat related to the standard clone, while Tech and Crosshairs are much different).
• The Oner:
  • In the SDCC '18 trailer, the camera follows an LAAT flying to Fort Anaxes, presents Anakin, Rex, and Hunter walking outside the base, and finally pans to a humongous Republic fleet that's above them.
  • The sequence of Hunter, Tech, and Wrecker fighting their way into the cyber center in "The Bad Batch" is all done in one shot, starting from when Wrecker opens the back door to the squad taking out the Separatist droids in the command room.
  • After the end of the opening narration in "A Distant Echo", it opens with a shot similar to the one from the 2018 SDCC trailer following an LAAT flying into Fort Anaxes before bringing us to Anakin, Rex, and Hunter inside the hangar.
• Poorly Disguised Pilot: The Bad Batch story arc doesn't really build up to the series finale unlike the other episodes, and comes across a pilot mini-series advertising the titular squad so they can get their own spinoff show. And sure enough, it ends up being the case.
• Precious Photo: Rex has a group photo of Cody, himself, Fives, and Echo in "The Bad Batch", with the latter two dead. However, it's later revealed that Echo is still alive.
• Recycled Trailer Music: The SDCC '18 trailer uses the same music from The Force Awakens' second trailer.
• Resolved Noodle Incident: After years of teases (starting with Rebels), the Siege of Mandalore finally appears in its full entirety.
• Retcon: A few are done to the Ahsoka novel:
  • In the novel, Ahsoka's lightsabers were described as being the original blade colors of green and yellow. In the series itself, they now have blue blades because of Anakin tinkering with them.
  • The events that involve Ahsoka and Maul trash-talking each other about how the former isn't a real Jedi and the latter is only a "half a Sith" as well as Maul getting trapped by ray-shields are not presented in "The Phantom Apprentice".
  • Rex removed his control chip before Order 66 in the novel and was able to aid Ahsoka in escaping the clones. In "Shattered", he still has it inside of his brain and therefore turns on Ahsoka when Order 66 is enacted.
• Rule of Symbolism: The final events of the series show a Republic cruiser crashing, with Ahsoka and Rex taking the time to scour the wreckage and bury all the clones who died, despite the fact they were trying to kill them. Anywhere from several weeks to months later, an Imperial team lead by Darth Vader and the new Stormtroopers investigate the wreckage now buried in snow. The end of the Republic, the Jedi and the Clones all happened in the same day, to be supplanted by the Empire.
• Saved by Canon: Thanks to the existence of Sequel Series Rebels, we know that Ahsoka, Rex, Maul, and Bo-Katan, none of whom had this guarantee in the series' original run, are all coming out of this season alive.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift:
  • Anakin and Obi-Wan now fully adhere to the appearances they will have in Revenge of the Sith.
  • Ahsoka switches from her Jedi attire to a civilian jumpsuit after leaving the Jedi Order. Come the Siege of Mandalore arc, she swaps the jumpsuit for a blue Mandalorian-style combat outfit.
• Simultaneous Arcs: The Siege of Mandalore arc takes place concurrently with the events of Revenge of the Sith.
• Special Edition Title: Done in the Siege of Mandalore arc, which is the final story arc in the entire series.
  • The opening uses the Lucasfilm logo from the initial pre-Special Edition run of the Original Trilogy at the beginning of each episode, and The Clone Wars logo is swapped from yellow to red to signify Maul's return, similar to when he appeared at the end of the fourth season.
  • "Old Friends Not Forgotten" also exchanges Kiner's take on the main theme for the original John Williams scoring, showing that it and the following episodes mostly take place concurrently with Revenge of the Sith. The following episodes ("The Phantom Apprentice", "Shattered", and "Victory and Death") have only a single, ominous chord from the strings.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: From the unfinished version of "A Distant Echo", Clone Task Force 99 AKA the Bad Batch has a provocative pin-up of Padmé as their shuttle's nose art and Wrecker makes a Double Entendre about it, and all Anakin can say to Captain Rex is that the nose art isn't staying.
• Time Skip: The seventh season takes place a few months after the end of the sixth season.
• Tragic Keepsake: One of Ahsoka's blue lightsabers ends up becoming this for Anakin/Vader, as he was the one who made it that color in the first place, and as Vader, he eventually discovers it at Ahsoka's false grave in the far future.
• Vader Breath: The Trope Namer himself is how we hear his entrance in the final scene of the entire series.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Maul is still a dangerous foe but his injuries and the distraction of trying to lead Mandalore from the shadows has left him waning from his peak, in addition to the Clone Wars accelerating the skills of everyone else. Maul went from challenging two legendary Jedi in The Phantom Menace, nearly killing both, to struggling against a single Padawan, however well trained and experienced she is. Ahsoka points this out herself during their duel, saying his attempt at trapping both Obi-Wan and Anakin were shortsighted at his current capabilities. This is consistent with further degradation in Star Wars Rebels.
• Wham Line:
  • In case the viewer hadn't learned beforehand, in "Old Friends Not Forgotten," Obi-Wan reveals just when the Siege of Mandalore is going down...
    No, it's Coruscant. Grievous has attacked the capital.
  • In "Shattered", Captain Rex is summoned for a briefing while heading to Coruscant. The wham part isn't just from what the line is, but rather who the recipient is.
    Palpatine: Execute Order 66.
    Captain Rex: Yes, Lord Sidious.
  • The moment before also has one in voices of Ian McDiarmid and Hayden Christensen.
    You must choose, Anakin!
    It's not the Jedi way!

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"Every choice you have made... has led you to this moment."

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