The Clone Wars stands on the precipice of its final end. So what better way to send it off than two of its most vital architects just shooting the shit about Star Wars?
Last night the Star Wars Show returned to YouTube for a special episode that included the release of an extended interview between Dave Filoni and George Lucas, part of a talk the two gave to Lucasfilm employees that was originally not going to be made public. Thankfully, it has been, to celebrate the show’s final episodes, because it’s just a generally earnest and loving look back from these two creators about what this entire series has meant to them.
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The roughly 10-minute chat sees Lucas and Filoni reflecting on their working relationship”Filoni in particular on how Lucas’ love of film led to not just Clone Wars aping many cinema classics across its seven seasons, but to Filoni himself developing a wider passion for cinema”but also what they love most about what they enjoyed about Clone Wars.
And the great thing they agree on? It’s that Clone Wars got bloody weird.
Both Filoni and Lucas are clearly delighted in how triumphantly varied what they got to do on the show was. Not just in the way it played with various genres through the framework of Star Wars‘ sci-fantasy”like Kaiju movies with the Zillo Beast arc, inspired by Filoni’s love of Godzilla“but how it itself helped expand the mythos and spirituality of Star Wars in arcs like the Force beings of Mortis or Maul’s return through the witches of Dathomir.
But that love of Clone Wars at its most esoteric is maybe best summed up by George Lucas remembering his favourite arc on the show: “Secret Weapons,” “A Sunny Day in the Void,” “Missing in Action,” and “Point of No Return,” season five’s weird, spartan, and funky-as-all-hell arc that saw R2 and a group of fellow astromechs recruited (and momentarily stranded during) on a secret mission by the Republic to work with a diminutive alien commander named Meebur Gascon.
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It’s an arc that is, diplomatically speaking, not going to be on many people’s must-watch-lists, except for Lucas’ apparently. The more comedic droid-focused arcs are usually pretty low on what most Clone Wars fans love about the series, compared to the clones themselves or Ahsoka, Anakin, and Obi-Wan. Or even those space politics Lucas himself also loves so dearly!
But the fact that this is George Lucas’ favourite Clone Wars“this weird examination of droid identity in the middle of a desert void”is just…perfectly George Lucas. It’s perfectly Star Wars.
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And when it comes to Clone Wars, really, those two things are one and the same.