Lucasfilm’s Dave Filoni recently sat down with the folks at Entertainment Tonight to talk about Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and the series finale. Filoni talked about the ending and that he’s had this particular one in mind for a long time now.
“That’s an idea that I’ve had for a very long time. As I went over different ways to end the show, that was always one of the options I had.“
“Ultimately, since Star Wars is a saga about the Skywalker family and Anakin plays a large role in the Clone Wars, but also in Ahsoka’s life, I felt that if you watch the four parts, as much as Sidious has this hidden layer of character arc in the episodes, so does Anakin.”
Filoni then continued further, explaining why it was important for him to end the show, focusing on Darth Vader, rather than Ahsoka.
“I wanted to draw a full arc for him where if you’ve never seen Star Wars, you hopefully will be able to understand that the young man that Ahsoka is very good friends with, that’s like a brother to her in the beginning, that the villain Maul says, “Hey, he’s going to turn out to be this bad guy,” in the end you see that, well, that was actually unfortunately true. The through line is the lightsabers that he worked on for her. There’s this symbolic arc of Anakin underneath that all.“
As to some of the visual choices that were made for the finale, Filoni explained some of those choices as well.
” Everything is bleached out. Everything is pretty stark. Everything’s washed away color-wise, which is what George did it at the end of Revenge of the Sith. A lot of things I do are just ways of taking what George did and reasserting them, enhancing them, showing that this is what his half of Star Wars is about, ultimately, and how the heroes will prevail through it, despite all of the wickedness of the enemy.”
Finally, Filoni dishes on the last moment we see, between Anakin and Ahsoka.
“The one thing that I felt strongly about was that she’s in a different place in life. And he never quite fully gets that when he’s with her again, that leaving the Jedi order and meeting Trace and Rafa, those adventures have made an impact on her.”
About Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
Star Wars: The Clone Wars will be returning with 12 all-new episodes on Disney’s direct-to-consumer streaming service. Created by George Lucas, the show first aired in 2008 and became an entry point into Star Wars for an entire generation, following fan-favorites like Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Padmé Amidala, while introducing major new characters like Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano and Captain Rex. Its stories were complex, its heroes and villains were perfectly imperfect, and its look was captivatingly beautiful. It became a multi-Emmy winner and is now regarded as essential Star Wars.