REVIEW: ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars,’ Season 7, Episode 7 – “Dangerous Debt”

Star Wars: The Clone Wars is back this week with episode 7, “Dangerous Debt.” In the previous episode, Ahsoka teamed up with the Martez sisters. Rafa scored a job running a spice shipment from the planet Kessel to the crime syndicate known as the Pykes. Previously ignorant of who was all involved in this job, Ahsoka realizes who the Pykes are and argues with Rafa. However, while the two of them are arguing, Trace dumps the spice into space. Now with no shipment to deliver, Ahsoka comes up with a plan to deceive the Pykes and get away with the money. Unfortunately, her ploy fails and they are now prisoners of the Pykes.

“Dangerous Debt” begins with the trio trapped in a Pyke fortress on the planet Oba Diah. Ahsoka and Rafa are playing the blame game which leads Rafa to finally revealing why she and Trace hate both Jedi and Topsiders. Not long after the sob story, Rafa is taken away to be tortured while Ahsoka and Trace are left behind to plot a way to escape.

Although we get more information about the characters, and we see some character growth, this episode felt a little off. It felt like mostly filler, and, even that filler was unexciting. There was a whole lot of running, arguing, and shooting. But the plot was lacking. If you removed this episode from the queue, I doubt you’d miss much. The only excitement plot-wise came from the introduction of some characters we’ve seen before in a previous season. I won’t reveal just who, but their introduction should bring some entertainment in the next episode.

Beyond there being very little plot, we do get some decent interactions between the characters. Ahsoka, of course, is still trying to be the good Jedi that she is, but she’s beginning to realize that the moral high ground isn’t for everyone. She still believes that you can’t profit off someone else’s suffering but she’s beginning to realize that this just isn’t how the world works.

We finally get the back story on just why the Martez sisters don’t like Jedi, or topsiders for that matter. Although this was supposed to be a sob story and get the audience to sympathize with the characters, the fact that Rafa is the one retelling the story dampens the effect. The pity story just doesn’t incite pity, and therefore doesn’t have an impact when subsequent bad things happen to Rafa. It was a good try and might be adequate for children, but adults may find it hard to empathize with a character that’s been, up until this point, combative, morally deviant, and selfish even in the face of a bad childhood.

Though there’s more action in this episode than the previous, it mostly amounts to a lot of running, jumping over obstacles, and blasting. We do get a good action moment with Ahsoka defeating a room full of Pykes, but this single scene couldn’t support the rest of the episode. Trace is also a bit too good with a blaster under pressure, especially for someone who obviously doesn’t handle stress well.

The one saving grace is the excellent execution of both the animation and voice acting. The animation is wonderfully expressive and, in conjunction with the amazing voice acting, does wonders to make the characters’ emotions come to life on screen. The action scenes were smooth and seemingly effortless. Even the running, which the characters did a lot of, was dynamic and fluid.

Overall, “Dangerous Debt” was odd. The ending wasn’t fulfilling at all and this episode doesn’t seem to be very important besides revealing Rafa and Trace’s history with Jedi (which could have been done at any point) and revealing some mysterious figures which give me hope that the next episode will rise above this one.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars “Dangerous Debt” is exclusively on Disney+ now.

Quinn

Quinn is an editor and comic and video game writer with a love for Transformers and cyberpunk. As a nonbinary person, Quinn also takes pleasure in evaluating the inclusion of LGBTQ+ persons in media.