The Siege of Mandalore is the collective name used to refer to the four-part series finale of the American animated science fiction television series Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The story arc is composed of the episodes "Old Friends Not Forgotten", "The Phantom Apprentice", "Shattered", and "Victory and Death", which are respectively the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth episodes of the seventh season of the series.
The series chronicles various events in the Clone Wars, a galactic conflict between the Galactic Republic and the Separatist Alliance that takes place during the Star Wars prequel trilogy. It primarily follows Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and his closest associates as they seek to help the Republic win the war. The arc takes place before and concurrently with the events of the film Revenge of the Sith, and follows Ahsoka Tano and Rex as they seek to liberate Mandalore from Maul, who had occupied it. After Maul's capture, Ahsoka and Rex are then forced to deal with the effects of Order 66.
All four episodes were released weekly on the streaming service Disney+ in April and May 2020. The arc received critical acclaim, with reviewers finding it emotionally resonant and a worthy conclusion to the series.
Plot
"Old Friends Not Forgotten" Ahsoka Tano and Bo-Katan Kryze contact Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, asking them for help in apprehending Maul in his new hideout on Mandalore. While Obi-Wan is apprehensive, Anakin and the 501st give Ahsoka a warm welcome until news arrives that General Grievous and the Separatists are attacking Coruscant. Upon Anakin's suggestion, Rex (field-promoted to commander) and part of the 501st accompanies Ahsoka to Mandalore, forcing Maul's loyalists under Gar Saxon into retreat. Bo-Katan apprehends Prime Minister Almec, while Ahsoka follows a trail into the city's tunnel network, only to walk right into Maul's trap.
"The Phantom Apprentice" Ahsoka faces off against Maul, who mentions Darth Sidious before escaping. Ahsoka relays this to Obi-Wan, who says he had inferred from Count Dooku that Sidious is the name of the Sith Lord who orchestrated the Clone Wars. Obi-Wan stresses that Maul must be taken alive as he may be their only chance to learn more about Darth Sidious, as Dooku was recently killed by Anakin. The captured Almec mentions that Maul had hoped to lure Anakin to Mandalore, but is assassinated by Gar before he can reveal why. As Bo-Katan's and Rex's forces lead a final assault against Maul's Mandalorians, Ahsoka confronts Maul again, who reveals that Sidious has engineered the destruction of both the Galactic Republic and the Jedi and asks Ahsoka to join him to stop Sidious. When she demands to know his intentions with Anakin, Maul claims that Sidious wants to make him his new apprentice, and that he had hoped to kill Anakin before this happens. Refusing to believe him, Ahsoka fights Maul above the city, where she rescues him from falling to his death. She then leaves Maul to be captured by clone troopers, despite his frantic warnings that everyone will soon die.
"Shattered" With the siege of Mandalore over, Ahsoka and Rex prepare to take Maul before the Jedi Council on Coruscant. Mace Windu and Yoda contact Ahsoka via hologram and reveal that Obi-Wan has tracked Grievous down to Utapau, indicating that the war may soon be over. On their way to Coruscant, however, Ahsoka senses Anakin falling to the dark side and helping Darth Sidious to kill Windu, moments before Sidious executes Order 66, which brands all Jedi as traitors to the Republic and orders their deaths. As Ahsoka's clone troopers, including Rex, suddenly turn on her, she is forced to escape. Rex resists the order just long enough to mention the incident with Fives, allowing Ahsoka to learn about the inhibitor chips. She releases Maul to create a distraction, then subdues and captures Rex. With the help of three astromech droids, Ahsoka removes the inhibitor chip from his brain, restoring his free will.
"Victory and Death" As Ahsoka and Rex try to escape from the cruiser, Maul destroys its hyperdrive, causing the vessel to drop out of hyperspace and into a nearby moon's gravitational field. Forced to fight their way through the clones, Ahsoka tries to prevent Maul from getting away in their shuttle but lets him get away after choosing to help Rex. Just barely clearing the doomed ship, Ahsoka and Rex escape to the moon, where they respectfully bury the clones and Ahsoka discards her lightsabers. Two years later, Anakin, now as Darth Vader, arrives on the moon and recovers Ahsoka's main lightsaber from the wrecked cruiser.
Production
Development and writing
All four episodes that make up the story arc were written by Star Wars: The Clone Wars supervising director Dave Filoni. Following the purchase of Lucasfilm by The Walt Disney Company, the series was cancelled in March 2013 following the release of the fifth season on Cartoon Network, and midway through the production of the sixth of eight planned seasons. This left unreleased episodes in various stages of production, from completely finished episodes to episodes that were still in early development. The completed episodes were released onto Netflix on March 7, 2014, as a truncated thirteen-episode sixth season, subtitled The Lost Missions. Included in the unreleased episodes were plans of a series finale involving Ahsoka Tano and Rex fighting Darth Maul during the events of Revenge of the Sith, which had been written, originally by Matt Michnovetz, at the time of the series' cancellation. Despite the arc not having actually been released, Lucasfilm considered its events to have occurred within the Star Wars universe, affecting subsequent Star Wars media that was created during the following years.
It was announced on July 19, 2018, at San Diego Comic-Con that The Clone Wars would return for a seventh, final season. The idea to revive the series originated with Carrie Beck, who also served as a producer for the final season. The seventh season was made up of twelve episodes organized into three four-episode story arcs, all of which had been in development prior to the series' cancellation. The third arc, comprising the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth episodes of the seventh season, and the final four episodes of The Clone Wars, was the originally written series finale. George Lucas, the creator of The Clone Wars, was involved with the initial plans for the arc prior to the series' cancellation, but was uninvolved in work that was undertaken following the series' revival. Out of a desire to keep to Lucas's vision for the franchise, Filoni discussed series concepts and ideas with Lucas, and Lucas provided comments on the episodes of the final season as they were being produced. According to Maul voice actor Sam Witwer, the four episodes that compose the arc were designed as a four-part series finale that "is meant to be seen in its entirety together", as a movie. The arc was written to be able to be viewed completely standalone from any other episodes.
Substantial care was taken to ensure that the arc maintained continuity with existing works in the franchise. Despite the events of the Siege of Mandalore arc intersecting with Revenge of the Sith, Filoni avoided repeating the events of the film and ensured that they were almost entirely offscreen, despite them deeply affecting the events of the arc. Instead, he chose to focus on characters that were not in the prequel trilogy, such as Ahsoka and Rex. This was to ensure that the characters and plotline of the film remained intact, as well as out of a lack "of desire to tell any of those scenes necessarily again". He described it as "a challenge not getting something chronologically out of order", particularly for managing character knowledge of the secret identity of Palpatine, who does not physically appear in the arc but is manipulating its events. During the process of writing the 2016 novel Ahsoka, author E. K. Johnston was instructed to avoid writing action sequences set during the siege of Mandalore in order to avoid contradicting plans for the story arc in the series, which had, unbeknownst to her, been renewed. Although the 2003 miniseries Star Wars: Clone Wars is no longer canon to the franchise, in keeping with the original intent of the newer series to not supersede the miniseries, reference is made to Shaak Ti's failure to protect Palpatine, an event which is depicted in the miniseries. Following the series' initial cancellation in 2013, Filoni co-created a new series called Star Wars Rebels, set years after the events of The Clone Wars, in which characters prominently featured in the arc appear. The integration of The Clone Wars characters in Rebels affected how they were utilized in the Siege of Mandalore arc. Filoni felt that it was unfortunate that the appearance of the characters in Rebels may have caused the arc to have reduced tension, as the audience would know that those characters would survive.
"Old Friends Not Forgotten" was directed by Saul Ruiz. Filoni stated that due to Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi prominently appearing in the prequel films, Ahsoka and Rex, the two principal original characters, were the main characters of the series, and that "there was a responsibility to tell the end of their story and then hand off Anakin and Obi-Wan to their proper conclusion, which is in the film Revenge of the Sith". He felt that an important part of the story was properly handling the emotional weight of the reunion and parting of Anakin and Ahsoka, who had been separated since the fifth-season episode "The Wrong Jedi", within the allotted time of the episode. He stated that as Ahsoka had gained experiences away from the Jedi Order, she had changed, while Anakin wished for things to return to how they were before. The cast and crew of the episode noted that key parts of the reunion included Ahsoka's reaction to the clones, who had painted their helmets to match her colors, and Anakin offering Ahsoka her old lightsabers, which was not part of the original script for the arc and was added after the series' renewal.
"The Phantom Apprentice" was directed by Nathaniel Villanueva. The lighting in the initial confrontation between Maul and Ahsoka was designed so that Ahsoka was brightly lit and Maul walked out of the darkness, to create a sense of Ahsoka being trapped. The creators of the episode used a standard Star Wars trope, in which the villain asks the hero to join them, but modified it so that unlike in most instances of the trope, in this case the villain has the better plan. Witwer stated that unlike most animation voice acting, in which he usually exaggerates due to not being able to act facially, he and other cast members were asked to do a more restrained "film read", which was an influence from Filoni's work on the live-action Disney+ television series The Mandalorian. Several events from Revenge of the Sith were referenced throughout the episode to help ground the arc within the film's timeline. The title of the episode was designed to be applicable to both Maul and Ahsoka, as former apprentices of the Sith and Jedi, respectively, as well as Anakin, as the secret apprentice of Palpatine, unbeknownst to both himself and the other Jedi.