Star Wars: The Clone Wars is back this week with episode 6, “Deal No Deal.” The previous episode saw Ahsoka making friends with Trace who is a mechanic and pilot. However, due to the shady dealings of Trace’s older sister, Rafa, Ahsoka sees herself trying to stop a dangerous droid, save Trace, and conceal her Jedi history. In the end, Rafa shows her true colors and makes a decision that Ahsoka doesn’t agree with.
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Despite this, after helping Trace work on her starship, Trace invites Ahsoka to stay with them for a while. After all, Ahsoka doesn’t seem to know where she’s going. Ahsoka agrees, just in time for Rafa to show up and reveal her next misguided attempt at hitting the jackpot. Rafa hired a pilot and ship to do a job but the pilot backed out. Therefore, she now needs Trace and her ship to do a job that she refuses to divulge to either Trace or Ahsoka. Since Ahsoka is sticking around for a while, she accompanies the sisters to try to keep them out of trouble.
The best portions of “Deal No Deal,” and the previous episode, were the moments you see Ahsoka grow. Slowly, but surely, Ahsoka becomes more enlightened about the world around her. We’ve seen Ahsoka grow into a more rounded person since Season 1, but here she finally realizes just how privileged her life has been so far. She realizes that not everyone views the Jedi and the Republic as the good guys, including those people under their rule.
Ahsoka also seems to come to the realization of how she could have been so blind to the misdealings and negative aspects of the Jedi Order because she’s seeing something similar happen to Trace. Just like Ahsoka was too close to the Jedi Order to realize their wrongs, Trace is too close to Rafa to realize that her older sister is manipulative and toxic to their relationship.
We do hit some interesting topics in this episode such as slavery. It really opens Trace’s eyes to the way of the galaxy and we see not only character growth in Ahsoka, but in Trace as well. I also appreciate whenever Star Wars: The Clone Wars isn’t afraid to show the dark side of the world despite The Clone Wars being a children’s show.
It’s certainly hard to watch Trace be manipulated by her sister because she’s a pretty likable character, at least in comparison to her sister. Trace is hardworking; she worked hard to be able to buy a starship piece by piece. She’s also very intelligent. Intelligent enough to assemble a starship piece by piece. The character is certainly a bit obtuse and proud but Trace is an extreme juxtaposition to her sister who is sleazy and self-centered. Rafa is a despicable character that makes me grit my teeth while watching these episodes. But, that’s probably the intent of the creators. Either way, these characters are a bit cliche; we see very similar sibling characters in media portrayed all the time so the script is well-known and predictable.
As usual, the animation is beautiful. Although there aren’t many action scenes in this episode, in comparison to the last few, the characters are extremely emotive and lend to a very empathetic audience. The voice acting is also spot on and works well with the animation.
Overall, I enjoyed the plot of this episode, especially in comparison to the previous episode. It’s great to Ahsoka grow as a character out from under the watchful eye of the Jedi Order, but it’s also great to see Trace grow as well. The one downfall of the episode is that Rafa, Trace, and their relationship as sisters are rather cliche so the script is a bit too predictable at times.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars “Deal No Deal” is exclusively on Disney+ now.
