Kidnapped is the first episode in a long time that brings us back to the primary Jedi of the show, the main conflicts of The Clone Wars, and what the Sith are up to. And let’s be honest, the Sith are up to no good as usual, though this plan might be worse than their normal business during The Clone Wars. They’ve teamed up with the notorious Zygerrian Slavers to pretty much enslave an entire planet of peaceful Togruta so that they may sell them at a new slave auction.
Having been a slave himself, you can imagine how Anakin reacted to the realization. It’s just as personal for Ahsoka, who is herself a Togruta.
After the setup, the episode splits off into two distinct stories. The Zygerrian left on the planet calls Obi-Wan to negotiate surrender in a high tower overlooking the colony. Predictably, it’s a trap. He’s set explosives up across the colony and unless Obi-wan surrenders he’s going to blow everything sky high.
Anakin and Ahsoka spend the rest of the episode defusing bombs while Obi-wan challenges the Zygerrian into an honorable fist fight, distracting him to give Anakin enough time to complete his portion of the mission. This might have been the single funniest element I’ve seen in an episode of The Clone Wars in a long time. And after the Umbaran arc, I think we all needed a laugh. But basically, Obi-wan is letting the Zygerrian feel like he’s got a chance. Anakin (my son, not the character) didn’t get that Obi-wan was purposely throwing the fight and started shouting at the screen, “Use the Force, Obi-wan! Dad! Why isn’t he just using the Force?”
Hilarious.
This episode really shows how Anakin and Ahsoka have grown into a team with a rapport to rival the one that he had with Obi-wan during Episode II and the first half of Episode III.
Eventually, when Anakin and Ahsoka defuse the bombs and the Zygerrian makes his move to get away. Since he’s a slaver, that’s not something that sits well with Anakin and he pulls a James Bond level stunt to take the slaver down. Seriously, it was right out of The Living Daylights and I was thrilled by it. They took “>this scene from a seriously underrated James Bond film and turned it up a notch. In the Bond film, he’s fighting a bad guy on a cargo net dangling out of the back of a flying airplane. In this, Anakin is fighting a giant squid like monster and it had me on the edge of my seat.
The best part of the episode, though, wasn’t all the fantastic action or the really cool droids (sniper droids? awesome!), but the emotional issues driving Anakin further and further to the dark side. He’s not dealing with issues relating to his past well. It’s no wonder he did what he did to the sand people because of his mother and it’s no wonder he did what he did as far as Padme was concerned. He’s a firecracker, and his threats against the Zygerrian slaver went so far that he shocked even Ahsoka.
I’m really going to enjoy seeing the dark places the set up for this arc takes us. There’s a hell of a lot of Togrutas missing and Anakin and Ahsoka are both pretty upset by it. Anakin in an angry sense, Ahsoka in a compassionate sense. I can’t wait to see them dealing with that.
There were a couple of specific spots of lighting on Obi-wan I really loved this episode, too. The first is when he realizes Anakin has defused all the bombs and no longer needs the aid of the ruse. His use of the Force to crumple the commando droids in the tower looked and felt amazing, both visually and viscerally on a story level. The other moment of lighting that just wowed me was the moment Obi-wan was running down the runway after the Zygerrian. The light of his sabers blade coming up and around in time with his running just looked fantastic.
And those are spots that just jumped out at me as being particularly great in an episode where everything seemed to stand out.
They proved tonight, once again, that The Clone Wars is one of the best shows on the air.