And so ends the second quarter of the Geonosian arc of Season Two, with Ahsoka and Barris Offee tasked with a covert mission to blow the power generator of the new droid factory that is building Super Tanks capable of withstanding every kind of artillery the Republic has at its disposal.

Master Luminara Unduli gives the padawans their assignment against Anakin’s better judgment. This seems to be the emotional crux of the episode. This is very good writing at work here, developing the relationship between Anakin and Ahsoka. Anakin is incapable of telling her that he loves her and can’t help but being protective of her and not want her to go on the more dangerous assignments any longer, but Ahsoka misreads that as a lack of faith in her abilities on Anakin’s part. It creates an interesting dynamic later in the story, when Anakin has to reveal pieces of those feelings to Master Luminara.

I’ve been talking all along about how much I love the dynamic between Anakin and Ahsoka and this episode is progressing it by leaps and bounds.

Barris Offee (Luminara’s padawan) and Ahsoka spend the middle part of the episode on their covert action inside the Geonosian underground complex and I have to say, it reminded me in a lot of ways (in very good ways, too, I might add) to some of “The War Years” episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, where Indy was a spy for the Belgian and French armies in World War I. The action was intense and thrilling, and I’m happy for that half of the episode. I’m guessing young girls will love this half of the episode, too. I mean, you have two female tweenage Jedi Knights who are the heroes of the day, they’re going to eat this up with a spoon.

Anakin and Luminara’s half of the episode, however, was pretty damned thrilling in it’s own right and is had, quite possibly, one of the most stunning displays of Jedi prowess in an episode yet. The new Super Tanks (which are virtually indestructible) are crossing a bridge and Anakin and Luminara take to setting bombs beneath the natural stone bridge to destroy them that way. Basically, they have to play monkey bars on uneven stone a mile high in the air to plant the charges. I actually gasped at one point when the camera came down to see the view below. It literally took my wind from me.

The episode culminates in quite a sacrifice. The Geonosians have taken the padawans’ method of blowing up the power generator by remote and so they have to do it by hand. In person. Knowing full well that it will cost their lives.

Needless to say, I was pretty choked up. Ahsoka and Barris were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to complete their mission and had the guts to prove it. They completed the mission expecting to die. Obviously, they lived, but this brings me to a broader point about the series and Dave Filoni. Last season there were a couple of moments I expected Ahsoka to be a goner and they pulled on my heart strings. Yes, tears formed in my eyes. Filoni (the supervising director) understands that Ahsoka is living on borrowed time because we know she can’t be in the series by the time Episode III comes to fruition. It makes a lot of sense for her to die, and add that fuel to the fire that turns Anakin toward the dark side in his quest to keep people from dying. And Filoni, like the brilliant puppet master he’s proving himself to be, keeps dangling that in front of us. We get choked up and are relieved when she’s not dead. And it’ll get to the point where that happens every time. We’ll still come close to crying, but it’ll all be okay. We’ll feel that she’s safe.

And then one day, she won’t be.

And that’s an episode I want to see. Not because I’m morbid, because it will be an incredibly important and well-told story. I can tell already.

As for this episode, though, this was also an incredibly well-told story, and I can’t wait to see the rest of the Geonosian campaign unfold over the next two weeks.

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