Star Wars: The Clone Wars "Revival"

The Clone Wars is finally back, and back with a bang! We did have to wait a while for the new season, but it was by far more than worth the wait!

The start off the episode wasn't majorly special, I guess because we'd already effectively seen the first two scenes off the episode through preview clips. But after that, it really kicked off. To summarize the early scenes, Darth Maul & Savage Opress take out these interesting-looking Droids, Savage goes weird and starts making noises and attacking objects, Maul tries to dominate over Savage and Savage says there is no need for dominance between them, to which Maul reminds Savage of the Sith rule, a master and an apprentice, and that Savage is the apprentice. That was basically what happened in the clips from this episode, and pretty much as I expected, Maul defeated Savage a few seconds after the clip was cut off, by using one of his cyborg legs to grab Savage in the face and slam him into the ground. Savage then gets up and acts like nothing had happened in how he'd challenged Maul's rule. That scene illustrated how pointless the character of Savage Opress is now and how he is beyond redemption... didn't like that "Blue Snaggletooth" guy they also threw in, don't really know why but he seemed silly to me. 

 The whole plot of the episode was completely genius. Props to the writer of this episode. Getting Maul & Savage to try and recruit the Weequay Pirates was great, and it was a great way to bring the awesome character Hondo Ohnaka back into the show. Another well-worth-the-wait thing, as Hondo hadn't been on the show since the last episode of season 2! He was as awesome as ever in this episode, delivering some hilarious lines. It was also great to watch Pirates vs Pirates, really nice.

With the episode kicking off into turbo gear now, we witnessed a epic lightsaber duel between Darth Maul & Savage Opress vs Obi-Wan Kenobi & Adi Gallia, which in my opinion is one of the best lightsaber duels on the show so far. Maybe not the best, but up there. The addition of the music from "Witches of the Mist" was a great addition too, and really worked with this scene. It was really chilling to find out Maul's plans weren't ready yet when the Jedi arrive, as you would expect that he had his plans figured out. This duel also brought our first dark moment of season 5, with more to come this season, with another in this episode, and it was very dark. In their duel, Savage Opress force-pushes Adi Gallia into a wall, and while she's trying to recover he runs in and rams her through the chest with his horns, before stabbing her through the back with his lightsaber while she tries to breathe. So brutal, yet epic and just another example that this is NOT a kids show (also, I am aware Grievous killed Gallia in a comic before, but this show over-rides canon so as far as I'm concerned Grievous never killed Gallia. Case closed. Though while the character choice in the comic was better, death by Grievous, the WAY in which she was killed in this episode was much better, in my opinion). It was also sad when Obi-Wan shouted "Noooooooo!" in typical Star Wars fashion, and when he rendezvous with Hondo, who asks him where Gallia is, and Obi-Wan says, "She's- She's dead." I believe Obi-Wan & Adi Gallia were good friends in the EU so they may have been trying to reference that. 

And now we come to the second of the dark moments in this episode. As Hondo and the Pirates still on his side prepare to "deal" with the Pirates on Maul's side, or in other words get them back on Hondo's side, Maul & Savage go after Obi-Wan. When Maul & Savage have Obi-Wan trapped against a wall it looks hopeless, but Obi-Wan manages to catch Savage off-guard and slice off his arm. And this wasn't some silly cutting off of the arm with little to know care from anyone, like Twazzi last season in the episode "Crisis on Naboo", but no, this time it was proper and it was amazingly done. You could actually tell the pain Savage was in. Maul & Savage were forced to flee, which brings me to another point. In my opinion at least, Savage is weighing Maul down BIG TIME. Maul could achieve big things on his own, but Savage is like a liability from my point of view. I think Maul maybe might have had a chance of defeat Hondo and his Pirates if he didn't have to flee due to Savage lacking one arm, which also ended up being responsible for Maul losing part of one of his cyborg legs. I don't mind the fact that the Pirates beat them illogical, because of the condition Savage was in Maul couldn't really handle two things at once.

And lastly, the final scene was just so chilling and awesome! Palpatine basically telling the Jedi to get back to the war was great, as they need to get back to focusing on the war! Not sure how many of you readers noticed this, but in the episode when Palpatine says, "They're just petty crooks", that doesn't sound like the original TCW Palpatine voice-actor at all, Ian Abercrombie, who died earlier this year but managed to record most of his season 5 lines so we heard... it's almost like they added in another quote for whoever's replacing Ian to do, and it's a stupid little line which takes away from a great speech slightly in my opinion. Almost sounded like Corey Burton did the line, from listening again and again, and that's a problem, because aside from Count Dooku & Cad Bane, almost ALL of Corey's characters sound EXACTLY the same. Plus, it's not like the crew don't have other people who've voiced Palpatine before, Sam Witwer would be a great choice. 

PS: One additional note, Hondo mentions at one point that Obi-Wan failed to stop General Grievous destroying Hondo's old fortress/base we saw in previous seasons, from the sound of it. We can add that to a list of things we should have seen on the show in an episode, just like we never see Dooku give Pre Vizsla a scar, we just see Vizsla after he has it a while.

My verdict: In my opinion, this is THE best episode of the series. It had drama, humour, action, great dialogue, it was just a joy to watch. Rating: 10/10