To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and the all-new episodes coming thanks to #CloneWarsSaved, we’re undertaking a full chronological rewatch of the five original seasons, The Lost Missions, and the theatrical release. We’d be honored if you would join us and share your thoughts on the award-winning series.
50: “Evil Plans” (Season Three, Episode 8)
“A failure in planning is a plan for failure.”
Synopsis:
On Coruscant, C-3PO is abducted by the bounty hunter Cad Bane, who is working for Jabba the Hutt and searching for information about the Senate building. Finding C-3PO devoid of useful information, Bane and his accomplices kidnap R2-D2 and extract the vital data, before memory-wiping the droids and sending them on their way.
Analysis:
It would seem that C-3PO has been made to suffer. It’s just his lot in life.
Artoo and Threepio may bicker like an old married couple, but this mismatched pair of counterparts clearly have real affection for each other.
Artoo seems to feel some sympathy in his circuits when he overhears the kidnappers plans to dismantle his golden friend, and he gives himself up to save C-3PO.
It’s the kind of selfless act of bravery we’ve come to expect from the hearty astromech, surrendering himself at great personal cost to save his friend. Unfortunately it’s an act that has greater consequences, which will endanger the safety of the Senate building and the politicians inside.
In the end, neither one of them have any memory of the altercation after an effective bit of memory wiping. All that’s left is a seemingly innocuous task — a trip to the market to buy some jogan fruit — that has incredibly important political implications to ensure Padmé’s dinner party with the Roonans is a success.
It’s a clever bit of storytelling to highlight how sometimes something that seems unimportant — the purchase of some fruit, a map saved in a memory bank — can have wide-reaching ramifications.
Intel:
- A remark that C-3PO previously worked for the chief negotiator in the Manakron system supports George Lucas’s original notes that the golden droid was over 100 years old in A New Hope. That means Anakin did not build the droid from scratch, but rebuilt an older droid that had previous protocol assignments.
- J0-N0, the torture droid, is based on 8D8, the smelting droid spotted in Jabba’s palace in Return of the Jedi.
What did you think of the episode? Tell us in the comments below and share on social with #CloneWarsRewatch!
Next up: Come back next Thursday when bounty hunters seize control of the Senate building in “Hostage Crisis.”
Associate Editor Kristin Baver is a writer and all-around sci-fi nerd who always has just one more question in an inexhaustible list of curiosities. Sometimes she blurts out “It’s a trap!” even when it’s not. Want to talk more about The Clone Wars? Hop on Twitter and tell @KristinBaver what you thought about today’s episode.
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