When fans gathered for a Star Wars: The Clone Wars panel at San Diego Comic-Con in 2018, we got much more than a warm and fuzzy look back at the animated series. Lucasfilm used the panel to announce the show’s return for one final season—an opportunity for supervising director and executive producer Dave Filoni, as well as the show’s crew, to finish the story as they intended. Fans campaigned to save The Clone Wars for years since its cancellation in 2013, and it worked.
Disney+ aired the final 12-episode season earlier in 2020, 12 years after The Clone Wars’ first episode premiered. The emotional conclusion put the Bad Batch front and center, followed Ahsoka Tano on a walkabout journey, and showed the Siege of Mandalore. The season completed the story for fans and for Filoni. I talked with him about the last season of The Clone Wars of the show—about everything from why they chose the arcs they did, Ahsoka and Anakin’s last interaction, Maul’s ambitions, and much more.
![Ahsoka wields lightsabers in front of an explosion](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/13035217/Ahsoka-in-battle.jpg)
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Nerdist: Obviously you came into this last season with a lot of fan expectations and things you wanted to wrap up. How did you finalize which arcs would be told in this final season of The Clone Wars?
Dave Filoni: It was tricky. It’s really a combination of several things at play there. One of them was definitely that some of the episodes you saw were very far along in the pipeline. So, for example, the Bad Batch pipeline was just about ready to go into animation. It wasn’t animated when we shut down before, but it was right there. So it seemed natural to do those episodes. Also, I felt very strongly that we needed to have a clone-centric arc to remind the audience or to bring a new audience in that maybe hadn’t watched The Clone Wars before. Since we were going to be on Disney+, [I wanted] to familiarize them with these characters and who they are and what they’re like. That was an important arc to do.
The second arc was also one that was in production at various levels, but I hadn’t felt that we’d actually nailed the story yet. It went through a lot of different revisions to reach its final form with Trace and Rafa. And that story arc was important because you have to frame Ahsoka’s story and her ultimate ending with what the world is like outside the one she knows. How is this Clone War affecting regular people? What’s the impact on that? And she needs that perspective in order to even consider going back into the world of the Jedi and the combat and the fighting because she has to understand what she’s fighting for and what she represents. She needs a point of view that’s not her own.
![The Bad Batch in The Clone Wars](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/13035216/Bad-Batch-1.jpg)
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It helps frame what was underlying all the things that, frankly Barriss Offee was bringing up, and all the things that episode arc was bringing up. If you look at the episode arc where she leaves, there are protesters outside the Jedi Temple. Letta Turmond is saying that the Jedi aren’t what you think they are anymore. And so you’re actually getting that point of view shored up more.
Then of course, really the whole exercise for me was about getting to do the Siege of Mandalore and the ending. But I think people wonder, and it is hard to pick 12 episodes. We have many episodes, a lot of which probably weren’t, I would argue, as important to those specific arcs of getting to the Siege of Mandalore.
![Bo-Katan and Ahsoka look skeptical](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/13035215/Bo-Katan-and-Ahsoka.jpg)
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The one other arc I’d considered doing was explaining how Darth Maul got away from Sidious. I felt that that was going to be important, but I couldn’t fit it into the arcs and I didn’t want to jam it in there. And we had done it as a comic book release, and I was really appreciative of Dark Horse for doing that. So I thought, ‘Well, the information is out there for people that want to do that deep dive.’ I just have to tell the story in a way that explains who he is and that he’s loose. And I actually added him to the Trace and Rafa arc. He was not a part of that in its original inception. In its original version neither Bo-Katan nor Maul appeared in that arc, which I think people would find a little surprising.
But again stories evolve, and they change, and you figure out what their form is. And the thing that I can definitely say is that because some time went by, because I learned a lot more and my team learned a lot more—we learned so much making Star Wars Rebels, making Star Wars Resistance and my additional knowledge gained on The Mandalorian—The Clone Wars benefited from all of that and was a much better show at the end for it. And I do see the Siege of Mandalore as my final statement with the team on our work for the past 15 years.
![The helmet of a Clone, a marker of a mass grave.](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/13041958/Clone-Wars-Finale-1.jpg)
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I want to go back to the clones for a moment because the final scene really paid homage to them. They existed and died because of Palpatine. It felt tragic, and this last moment kind of emphasized the pointless nature of the war. So why was it important to you to show that kind of tragedy of their existence at the end?
For me, the scene is actually one about—it is a tragedy, but you have two characters showing a tremendous amount of respect to them. And I had a very different situation to deal with than Revenge of the Sith because I had a generation of kids that grew up watching the clones as heroes, that love Rex, Cody, Gree, Fives, Echo, Tech, you go on down the list. They have a real relationship with those characters as their friends and heroes. The idea that Ahsoka could be very blunt about things and say, ‘Well now they’re trying to kill me so I should cut them down,’ doesn’t really work for me. I thought it wouldn’t work for her. It’s about not compromising her value of who she is.
For these clones, it’s about understanding that they are in a situation where they don’t have free will. I tried through every method possible, visually, musically, color-wise to show that they became somebody else. The going sentiment in the Republic is that they ended up at war and their civilization was threatened because they were weak, because Valorum was weak, because they didn’t have a standing army. The Jedi get framed, of course, for starting an army. But one thing that the people largely come out of it thinking is that the Republic needs to work from strength. That’s why democracy dies to thunderous applause and they elect an emperor who they think will keep them safe.
So the clones are seen as people that are putting down an uprising by many people in the Republic. The Jedi are basically accused of staging a coup. To the clones, that’s believable to a degree because the evidence is there. I mean, what was Mace Windu going to do when he walked into the Chancellor’s office? At first, he goes to arrest him and then he decides he’s going to kill him. So they’re in a really compromised situation.
![Mace Windu threatens with his lightsaber](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/13035214/Mace-Windu-Revenge-of-the-Sith.jpg)
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Luckily that part of the story was told by George. I also have to consider when writing those episodes what George did—that’s the truth of it all, and I’m not trying to change anything of that. I am trying to highlight certain things and bring, not a different light, but show things from the point of view of different characters while maintaining the film, which I love very much obviously. And I had to tell the personal story of these clones. It was one of the editors who brought up that Rex and Jesse know each other really well. They’ve been in this series the whole time. And that’s why we added that line where Rex makes a personal plea and says, ‘Look, we’ve known each other a long time. If we do this, we’ll be the ones that are traitors, not her.’
And so you have to get all these points of view across and people still do what they do, but the idea that Ahsoka and Rex, to a degree, can be selfless. They can still go and honor these people who are friends, even though they tried to kill them. You’ve got to reach a point of: do they forgive them? I think on some level they do. It doesn’t justify their actions. They wish it was otherwise. Rex is torn up. He knows what’s going on. He’s trying to be direct with Ahsoka when he says, ‘They don’t really care, they’re going to kill us.’ You see that he’s really torn because he doesn’t want to do it.
There are very complex issues by the end of it, because it is a tragic situation and the heroes do largely lose, but the one thing that they can’t lose is their integrity and their morality and who they both were. That needs to survive and stay intact because then there is actually a possible future. If they’ve compromised themselves and prove to be no better, then they’ve really lost. It’s tough stuff, but it’s all these things that we were taught in the show and George believed to be important.
![Anakin and Ahsoka in The Clone Wars](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/13043347/Anakin-Ahsoka-Old-Friends-Featured.jpg)
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We got to see Anakin and Ahsoka come together again. And that was special because that doesn’t happen again until Rebels, as far as we know. Anakin seemed so happy to see her, and Ahsoka was very focused on taking care of business. We know Anakin struggles with attachment. Do you view how he interacted with Ahsoka here as him being a little bit better about that? Like this is the time he actually did let go.
[Laughs] No, not at all. No. The way I wrote that, and I didn’t know how people would feel about it, but a lot of when I write Star Wars, I’ve tried to relate it to everyday life and experiences you have growing up. Taking away all the big politics and things going on in the Clone War, and the Jedi, and the Sith, and the dark side, and light side, it’s just simply to me that Ahsoka’s a person that had a big falling out with her friends before she left school for summer. And her best friend, her older brother is like, ‘Well I get why you’re angry at the group, but I’m still part of the group. It’s not difficult for me.’ And she’s like, ‘That’s fine, I’m just doing my own thing.’ And so she goes off all summer. She’s got different job, and she runs with a different crowd, and she learns a lot of different things across the tracks that she maybe wasn’t aware of where she was living.
It was always amazing to me growing up how much things would change in one summer. In your adult life, that’s a very short amount of time. But [when you’re younger] it’s actually—that perspective, it feels like a looong time, the summer. People, you come back and you see them at school, and they’re very different and they’ve had experiences that you don’t know about. I used that as a lot of my reference point for writing the scenes where she comes back and she’s a little bit more standoffish. She’s actually trying to signal to him: things are different, like I respect you, but things just aren’t going to be the same. Where Anakin is just driven that things are going to be the same. [He thinks] with any luck, this will all be over, and everything will be back.
![Obi-Wan and Anakin look concerned](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/13035212/Obi-Wan-and-Anakin.jpeg)
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I had it written differently at the end, the last thing she says to him. She used to tell him not to change. I felt that was just too leading. It didn’t feel real to me because it’s like implying that she knows he might change, which, I don’t think that’s what that is about. But since I gave them this little tit for tat instead, where he says, ‘With any luck, this will all be over soon.’ Then she, being his apprentice and being snippy with the comebacks as always, says, ‘Yeah, Obi-Wan says there’s no such thing as luck.’ That’s who they both are. They give each other a hard time, and they try to one up each other. He likes it, but he’s like, ‘It’s a good thing I taught you otherwise.’
Then as he’s walking away, she realizes, ‘I can’t leave today not giving him something.’ And I think in their relationship, she usually is the one that gives a little more room and he’s the one that’s a little bit—he’s the cockier older brother. But he was trying so hard to lean in when she’s back, he’s excited to see her. It’s obvious she’s a bit, ‘I’m a little more grown up.’ So that’s why she says good luck because it’s giving him a point. It’s saying, ‘No, I hear you too.’ It’s a more subtle way of doing it.
![Ahsoka admires new lightsabers](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/13035211/Ahsoka-with-lightsabers.jpg)
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I don’t usually like to explain things in such detail, but I think we’ll get that it’s an important moment and I needed it. I dedicated the first half of that episode to dealing with Anakin and Ahsoka so the opening is really about, ‘Okay kids, this is the last time we’re gonna see Anakin and Obi-Wan on this show.’ If you’ve never watched the show before, if you only watch these four episodes, the opening gives you who Anakin and Obi-Wan are and what their relationship is. So you’re ready for meeting this young girl who obviously is like a younger sister to this guy, but you need all these dynamics to be established. I had to dedicate all this time to working in these relationships out because I had a task of having to reintroduce them and pull them apart, all in basically half an episode.
And to convey that to a potentially new audience, you had to get that right.
Yeah, and it could have been disastrous, but I did think of it as one whole piece and if this is all you see, this is how it plays out. I’ve hopefully learned a lot over the years from George, now from Jon, as we write Mandalorian and figure that out. I have applied a lot of that to this. I think to the benefit of the show.
![Anakin behind Vader's mask](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/13043017/04242020_TwilightAnakin.jpeg)
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The first fan question I have is about Anakin and Ahsoka from Abigail Puhala on Twitter. She says: “In the final scene, you can very clearly see Anakin/Vader’s eyes. I was reminded of ‘Twilight of the Apprentice’ in which you had talked about that it had to be Anakin looking on Ahsoka when she slices away the mask and he says her name. I was wondering if the decision to make Anakin/Vader’s eyes visible in ‘Victory and Death’ came from a similar place of inspiration?”
It’s about—first of all, I make sure it jives with the rest of the Star Wars. If you watch in A New Hope, I was always fascinated as a kid how you could kind of see somebody in there through the red lenses. It’s just really interesting to take this person who seems so lacking of humanity and realize there’s a person in there. So again, taking it from the point of view of somebody that’s never interacted with the show before, this young man you see at the beginning of this four-part arc, who is the older brother, who’s the hero who gives her this lightsaber—you have to connect, if you have no idea who Darth Vader is, that the dark clad knight at the end of the episode is that young man. It connects some things that are chilling because then you realize that all the things that Maul said were true, that Ahsoka’s lack of ability to accept that points to how she’s still flawed. She has things she needs to overcome. That there are no simple answers. And so I had to draw these parallels and one of them was I needed you to see humanity within that dark armor.
So it was just a subtle way to connect the humanity. You deal with these themes in different stories, and they are going to connect sometimes, but sometimes not. So it is a good connection then to Rebels when you see the slash and the eye. I didn’t plan to that detail. I do try to plan for a lot of detail, but I think it’s more about the humanity that’s inside the armor and connecting that that was her mentor, her brother, and that he’s picked the weapon back up.
![Anakin gives Ahsoka her lightsabers back](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/13043346/Anakin-Ahsoka-Featured.jpg)
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And seeing that after the last scene we’d seen Anakin in when he gives Ahsoka back her lightsabers. He was so proud.
He is, yeah. And he gets his little shot in there too. Because [he thinks] they’re better of course, because he worked on them. Of course. It’s so Anakin.
I have another fan question that you touched on a little when we talked about Ahsoka and Rex. Samantha from Twitter asks, “What do you think about forgiveness of self in terms of the personal journeys of Ahsoka and Rex, and what they unwittingly were a part of?”
It’s a great question. I love that people ask these questions. I think that no matter how you look at it, they were trying to do good the whole time. They were trying to prevent loss of life and death and they were trying to prevent people from going through suffering. They did it to the best of their ability. They just didn’t have the full picture. So when you get to the end of it, I think part of what Ahsoka is trying to make right is saying, ‘I’m not going to hurt these guys even though they’re trying to hurt me. I’ve got to find a way out of this.’
![Captain Rex with his troopers](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/13035210/Captain-Rex-and-troopers.jpg)
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But the clones at that point, because they’re programmed, are so bent on destruction—and almost self-destruction at any cost—to take them out. It’s a hard thing to fight against. So I think it takes both of them a long time. I don’t think it is easy. I think it is a challenge and it’s difficult. I think Rex bears it for a long time. I think when you reach him in Rebels and he says, ‘I took out my control chip’ to Kanan as a way of explaining that we all can make a choice. I think he sees that as true and I think it’s one way that he’s coped with things. He did get it removed. Kanan doesn’t need to know the minute details of Rex’s life.
I think that’s where you can get hung up on continuity so much that you don’t actually tell a story that’s about real people. So Rex at that moment tells Kanan the point of view Kanan needs to understand who Rex is and what he’s really about. Later on, do they have a scene where they get into the truth of it that was a lot scarier? Probably, but I think Kanan also knows that. So I think it takes them [Ahsoka and Rex] a long time to cope with everything. The life they knew is gone. It’s tough. It would be hard because with The Clone Wars, I know where it ends. I don’t get to have the parade in this one unless it’s the ‘Imperial March.’
I do hope that the audience took heart in the fact that Rex and Ahsoka came through largely intact as far as who they are as people trying to help other people. I think that could be a positive out of this. You know that if you watch other series that they can go on to do great good as well. That they can be an inspiration to others and help. That they are both actionable people to do good.
![Maul looks menacing](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/13035208/Maul.jpg)
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I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask about Maul. He’s someone who’s had a volatile history with Palpatine. In this moment, he sees the galaxy will be in chaos. He’s taken on bringing together criminal organizations and has a power base. But what is in his head when he asks Ahsoka to go with him to confront Sidious?
He’s a person obsessed with power and the only way that he feels secure is to amass more power. He’ll make whatever alliance he needs to [in order] to benefit himself. Remember, fundamentally the dark side is always about the self and doing things to satisfy oneself, to control, to manipulate, to have greater power. Victory is seen only through strength. They conquer their fear by oppressing others. And so Maul plays both sides of the coin because he learned well from Sidious, which is, ‘I’m going to tell you certain things that are true, but at the end of the day, I’m going to get what I want because you’re going to be afraid of what I tell you is the truth.’ And that’s what he’s hoping, that she’ll align with him for the goal of taking out Sidious. I believe that he would work with her to do that, but she can’t trust him at all for what the outcome of that would be—as she well knows.
She thinks on her side, what’s going to also be a fatal flaw, that, ‘I can play his game but outsmart him,’ which frankly is exactly what the Jedi thought that wound them up in the Clone Wars. I constantly try to hit the button that she has evolved a lot, but she’s far from perfect. She has a long way to go to really conquer her own fears and shortcomings, which I think makes her a much more interesting character. Because Maul—look, he had an Alliance with the Mandalorians and Gar Saxon and he says, ‘Die well.’ Basically, ‘I’ve used you.’
![Mauldalorian in action](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/13035207/Gar-Saxon.jpeg)
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You’ve served your purpose.
Exactly. That’s Palpatine, right, when he’s willing to trade out Vader for Luke. It really simply breaks down the dark side of the Force. For me, it’s in you and your actions when you’re afraid, and when you do things to service yourself above other people, and when you have a lack of compassion. It’s not something that takes hold of you necessarily and grows inside you, it’s a way of belief and action that you adopt. And then because you do that, it gets harder and harder. Think about when you make a mistake and how hard it is for people to tell the truth or to apologize and you spiral out of control. You don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘I’m going to do something terrible today.’ But sometimes you do and then it spirals out of control and it’s hard to get out of the situation. So you know, once you start down the dark path, forever will dominate your destiny.
When you do things for other people, when you’re selfless, when you gift something, when you sacrifice time for someone, when you make someone feel better, those are feelings that are good, that uplift you. It’s the only way to get that feeling. And then you feel better. That person feels better and you start a chain reaction in a different way. And the only other Jedi lesson I can teach you today, Padawan, is that you don’t conquer the dark side and then that’s it. You don’t just overcome it. You are tested and tested and tested. There is always another test. These are the trials. And I think people trivialize it into thinking, ‘Well, I defeated the dark side.’ Yes, you did on Monday, but now there’s more. Because your hubris can get a hold of you. Because remember Yoda says in the prequels that even the older Jedi have become arrogant. He warns against how the Jedi Order is acting and behaving prior to, and then during the Clone Wars, and he sees fractures within them. They’re just hoping that they can outmaneuver the dark side and Sidious before it’s too late and they don’t. They almost do. They get close, but they don’t.
![Lauren Mary Kim and Ray Park mocapping duel](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/13035206/Maul-mocap.jpg)
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With Maul and Ahsoka, of course, they end up dueling. It’s incredibly choreographed, and I know Ray Park came back as Maul and you had Lauren Mary Kim as Ahsoka. It was a new thing for The Clone Wars. Is that something you foresee more of in Star Wars or in animation?
We had a very special situation there. We had tried using some motion capture a long time ago in the Wookiee hunt episodes. I captured a couple of people portraying Wookiees, and Keith Kellogg, the animation supervisor, and I felt that it was just too heavy of a process for us to take in our format that we were executing, but times have changed. Technology has changed. Lucasfilm has made a lot of developments and then I worked on The Mandalorian doing a lot of previs. And for some of that previs I used our tools through ILM, which involves stagecraft and doing motion capture work. I was personally much more comfortable doing it and directing actors on a stage. And so knowing Ray and seeing this opportunity—and frankly knowing I needed to have a really spectacular lightsaber fight and if you can get someone like Ray Park, it takes the pressure of you as a director to execute it. You have to surround yourself with the best talent that you can find. And he’s so spectacular. Keith and I were marveling at his speed and how he would move so quickly the trackers couldn’t follow him and his lightsabers were virtually fly out of the hands even though they hadn’t. It felt good on every level.
Lauren had to come in and do something that really nobody had ever done before. Ray got her to come on. I just said, ‘Ray, I need somebody to come and portray Ahsoka.’ So he figured that part out. When I met her, I described the character and the fighting style that I thought she’d employ and what the animation had been doing. I thought she was just brilliant. She brought a lot of the speed and quickness that we needed to portray this character that had previously only been done by our animation team. They’ve done a great job, but that was the only part we ever used mocap for. I think people are surprised that none of the facial we do is ever mocap. It’s all key animated by the animators.
We’ll have a lot of meetings, Keith and I, about what the facial performance should be of characters and get inside their heads. And the animation talent that we use at CGCG is just phenomenal. That company that was animating these episodes, I have collaborated with them since the beginning of my work at Lucasfilm. We have like a 15-year relationship that’s probably the most important in my career. The people there know Star Wars as well as anyone, or at least know these characters as well as anyone. So I think everybody felt good finishing it and doing a fight like that. We really took it seriously because we knew people would want it to be good.
![Chirrut wields his staff](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/13035205/Chirrut-Imwe.jpg)
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And you have to live up to that. I have another fan question for you. This one’s from DamonWanKenobi on Twitter. He asks: “What prompted the use of ‘I am one with the Force, the Force is with me’ and was that connection between Ahsoka and Rex that sparked her finding the chip?”
It was a very tricky thing to explain and justify this chip that’s in their heads, And it should be difficult to find otherwise why isn’t everybody removing them? And I needed to rely on an arc that maybe you had seen and maybe you hadn’t seen. I didn’t have a lot of time to do all of this. What I came up with was this idea that because she is connected in her own way to Rex and they’re good friends and that she cares about him, that she needed literally to get inside his head and maybe to open up his mind. I really enjoy—I think it shows homaging other things and paying dues to other people and projects within Star Wars. I really felt that ‘I’m one with the Force and the Force is with me’ was a line that resonated from Rogue One. It just popped into my head in this moment as something that could really work well to connect the two. As we were performing the scene it became this great moment where Dee [Bradley Baker] and Ashley [Eckstein] started saying it together and so you get the unity, the bond that’s happening there.
Then we animated it so it almost looks like his words are coming out of her mouth. It’s just a way of doing it to say she’s in there and allowing him to open up his mind and it reveals the problem to her, to the world. Those were the elements that influenced the making of that scene. It’s one of my favorite moments. You have to feel it. You have to believe it and feel it, otherwise it’s not going to work. You can have all the logic in the world and try to explain everything, but if the audience by that point wants it to be found and feels that moment, then it will work.
![Ahsoka removing Rex's chip](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/13035204/Ahsoka-Removing-Chip.jpg)
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Well and you feel like this is something Rex desperately wants to get out. He doesn’t want to be in this position.
He’s fighting it inside. He just can’t. I think that’s another thing. You asked earlier about the clones and it’s like you see Rex has some consciousness that this has all gone down the wrong way, but he can’t prevent it from happening. It shows you that it’s a little bit outside of their control. And you know as somebody that watches The Clone Wars, that his spell is a little bit broken because he talked to Fives. I was working off of a really old idea that sometimes when you hear what the truth is, when you’re told the lie, it just doesn’t stick with you. And so Rex hearing what Fives had to say and then seeing that he had logged a report on Fives’ behalf saying, ‘I think there’s something going on here that we don’t know, and we don’t really understand yet.’ You know that at least Rex’s gears were working in the direction of, ‘There’s something wrong with us.’ So when something happens, he has the mental capacity maybe to fight it a little bit more than everybody else, even though he still succumbs to it in the end.
![Clones in formation](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/13035203/Clone-troopers.jpg)
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And then as we wrap up, Natalie Lucia on Twitter asks “…did you feel, or do you still feel that there is more Clone Wars that should be added to the universe?”
I don’t know. Personally for me, probably not. I have a lot of things I’m excited that we’re doing looking forward. I think it’s hard because I so appreciate the fan support, and I appreciate just how excited everybody was that we were back. I understand them wanting more and more episodes. The people that worked on it—myself and the team, basically all the leads—they were on the original run and I think it shows. We’re really thankful we got to finish it. But I also think creatively, you always want to move forward. I think you could get stuck in a situation where suddenly we’re doing all these stories again, but where is the ending? I don’t want that feeling. I want you to feel like this had a purpose and it rounded out and let’s find something new that’s exciting. We’ve got to look forward a bit here, but boy that was really satisfying to get to do. I can’t even tell you how grateful we all are that people were there for it to watch and support it. Disney+ supported us greatly to get this done. It was a great effort by everybody that understood what Clone Wars meant to people. It feels good. I’m glad it’s done.
I will say one other thing because I don’t think I say it enough: Kevin Kiner’s music, it’s just phenomenal. The finale—I mean it’s phenomenal all the time, but no more so than wrapping up this ending. Every time that he and I have gone into the ending of the series now, and we’ve got through it twice, I just think he and his team have hit a home run. One of the things I enjoy the most is I’ll just still, to this day, sit and listen to the music he composed for scenes because it’s just so perfect and the way that it encapsulates the mood and the tone and the emotion. He just gave fans something great.
![Ahsoka talks to droids](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/13035202/Cheep.jpg)
Lucasfilm
On a lighter note, I couldn’t help but notice that you voiced another droid, Cheep. He made me think of Chopper. Is it your thing now to voice a droid whenever you can?
[Laughs] No, I know my limits and they are many. But that type of droid, because I made him like Chopper, he’s more like a Chopper prototype droid, I thought it’d be funny if I did that and show that there’s something about that generation of droid model that’s a little bit more cantankerous and bizarre. That was Cheep and it was just fun to be a part of that and get to do that again. I really enjoyed doing Chopper most of the time and that worked out, so I was a little emboldened. It’s better than my X-wing pilot by a long shot, that’s for sure. It’s much more fun to do droids.
A couple of people on Twitter, Mollie and Aliaa, asked about Morai. She appears overhead in the last episode, and I know you’ve talked about how she’s an observer of these important moments as related to Ahsoka. Would you care to speak any more about her appearance in that scene?
No, not too much. [Laughs] Answering things is not really that fun. I know what the answers are, but the audience is savvy. They all know what’s going on. It just tonally plays out the right way. I’ll say that. I used to have different versions of that and the way it [Morai] landed. There were always common things about it. At one point I had that bird perched on the Y-wing fighter and it wasn’t playing right. You have to play with it and it’s always a race to get it right before you run out of time and money. You have to be flexible and able to leap at opportunities that arise.
![Vader looks up at Morai](https://legendary-digital-network-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/13035201/Vader-and-Morai.jpeg)
Lucasfilm
I changed the ending as it went because I think a really important thing for me about the ending of the series was this is not about Anakin. It has something tangential to do with him, but it’s not about him. It really has to be about Ahsoka and Rex and their point of view. Anakin’s story is told. That was George. That’s what he did in Revenge of the Sith. So I don’t have to worry about that, but I can tell the story that needs to be told related to her. And so I had to be careful when it got to the ending that, you know, it’s not this distraught thing about her and is she thinking about Anakin and what happened to him. That all plays out however it plays out, but it’s not the most important thing. Then it’s like de facto telling Anakin’s story somehow again through her, which is not the voice I want in this. I think it all broke the right way. It was a thrill to work with everybody again and see everybody that had been there since the beginning.
Thank you, all Star Wars fans, Clone Wars fans for supporting us over the years and helping inspire this to happen. It was a great thrill and I hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed making it. And let’s look to the future. Always in motion is the future, and we’ll see what’s coming your way.
Featured Image: Lucasfilm
Amy Ratcliffe is the Managing Editor for Nerdist and the author of Star Wars: Women of the Galaxy. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.