"Escape from Kadavo" Review

Loktok, fellow Underworlders! It's been a long time since my last post here on the blog (we can thank an annoying 5 week break of no new Clone Wars eisodes for that), but now the show has returned in full force! "Escape from Kadavo" was a great episode in my opinion. Definitely the best of the slaver arc and hoding its own against the Umbaran episodes. I really can't have imagined a finale to the arc any other way after seeing this episode.

This episode started out very dark. Obi-wan and Rex were in the Kadavo slaver hold, working their backs off with the job of shoveling some sort of mineral into a mine car. Agruss, the keeper of the facility, mocked Kenobi, and Kenobi was forced t gewt down o his knees and beg for one of the Togruta's lives after a rather angry Zygerian told him too. I think the team did this to show that the Zygerians meant business. and they pulled it off subtley.

After we saw what it was like in the mines, we saw the clip in the preview where Sidious is talking to Dooku about his plans for the slaves and the Zygerian queen. I always love to see Sidious on the show, and I hope one day they have an arc focusing on him. It would be hard, but if the storywriters tried I'm sure they could pull something like that off nicely.

Once Dooku landed on Zygeria, we got a bit of a repeat of last episode's ending where the ueen was asking Anakin to stay with her in return for letting his friends go. At this point, it no longer had any of its hold over me, and was rather pointless to see again. The only thing that really kept the pace up in this scene was when Molec approached the Queen of Dooku's arrival.

The following few moments were a bit crazy, but I'll try and relate them to you as well as possible. The Queen posed the question to Anakin about not running away while she met with the Count, he replied that he doesn't run from anything, she takes his lightsaber and walks off, R2-D2 pushes one of the Zygerian guards, Anakin hides because of the distraction, one of the guards go looks for him when he realizes what's happened, the other guard (surprisingly not mad at all at the droid) gets ambushed by Anakin and Force-pushed off the building and manages to lift his head up after falling approximately 100 stories. Very rushed and not well thought out if you asked me. Thankfully though, it wasn't bad enough to truly scar the rest of an otherwise good episode.

The Queen's meeting with the Count was a good scene to finally see after two episodes of the main villains not even talkng to each other. While the Queen tried to stay in control of the situation, Dooku obviously had the upper hand. He then ordered Anakin's exection. While this was happening, Anakin rescued Ahsoka and told her to wait for his signal. As he ran of to the palace, the Queen told the Count that she would refuse to have him killed, and was prepared to fight both him and Molec (who showed his true loyalty to the Count when it was revealed he had been the one who'd invited Dooku). Her defiance went only as far as activating her lightwhip , because two seconds later she was being raised up off the floor in a Force-choke. Anakin rushed in jst in time to "save" her and fought dooku for a few seconds with her lightwhip. An interesting showdown, but had no real catch to it if you asked me.

Finally, Dooku got the upper hand and began electrocuting Skywalker. Zygerian guards rushed in to see what was going on, and Dooku quickly stopped his attack and said that Anakin had been trying to kill the Queen. Skywalker did some quick thinking and signaled Ahsoka. She flew the ship near the palace window, and Anakin escaped the palace with the dying Queen of Zyergia jus in time. This was pretty cool to see in my opinion, reminded me of some action/adventure movie where the hero is managing to esacpe through the craziest of methods all while get shot at from every direction.

As Anakin boarded the ship, he laid the Queen down, and in her dying breaths revealed the location of Kenobi and Rex on Kadavo. I was surprsied they made this a "sad" scene considering she was a main villain and all that. But strangely enough, Anakin was obviously sad to see her pushing daisies.

Finally, we got to the climax of the episode-busting the prisoners out of Kadavo. It started out with Dooku ordering Kenobi's and Rex's execution. Just as Agruss was about to get his hands dirty though, Anakin and Ahsoka landed on the planet. Agruss ordered the ship destroyed, but the duo were already at the front door by the time the turrets of the facility had blown it up.

Agruss ordered Kenobi to call them off, but when Kenobi told Anakin this was too big a fight to fight alone, Anakin promptly responded, "Who says I'm alone?" The very next clip showed Plo Koon's fleet entering the Kadavo system. Probably the best scene of the episode in my opinion, I was truly not expecting a prison break out to turn into all-out war. It did however, and I was glad to see that the climax of the entire arc was going to end in a major firefight.

Agruss became distracted with the fleet entering the systyem, and Obi-wan and Rex began to break free and fight their captors. Very interesting combat scene, as it started with it being mainly hand-to-hand all the way to fighting with the Zygerian stun sticks. Agruss had more than one trick up his sleeve though, and began to open up the floor where all the Trogutas were and electrofied the walls so that there would be no escape. Ahsoka tried to take care of this problem while Anakin, upon hearing that Plo Koon's starfighters were having a hard time with the facility's turrets, rushed off to help them. If I may pause for just a second, I would love to mention that this had the feel of a Mission:Impossible movie. The only other episode that has ever given me this type of feeling was Duel fo the Droids way back in Season 1, and I was glad to have seen that the show is once again giving us a similar scenario.

To sum up how it all ended though, Anakin mannaged to cature one of the turrets and used it to destroy the others. Ahsoka figured out that the only way to rescus the prisoners was landing the transport cruiser underneath the facility and letting the prisoners escape through the hole in the floor there, and Rex eventually killed Agruss with one of the stun sticks (impaled the keeper in fact). In the end then, eveyone escaped with their lives and the facility was destroyed. There was one thing I did find kind of weird though. There were only about ten Togrutas that we saw rescued compared to the entire population that had been supposedly kidnapped. A bit of a plothole, but with the rush of action going on, you coul still enjoy the overall scene despite of it.

I'd rate this episode a 8/10. It was a great ending for the arc, and, despite it's couple of plotholes here and there, was one of the better episodes this season. I would recommend watching it, especially if you have been keeping up with this current arc. So, with the slaver arc now concluded, the next stop is the Mandalorians! "Welcome to Death Watch!" Seeing these guys again ought to be great, the only thing I'm worried about is a romantic relationship between Ahsoka and Lux. But I'll save my opinions on that for another time. May the Force be with you!