Warning Full Spoilers for the Episode “Deal or No Deal” are Below.

So last week I was a little hard on Ahsoka’s first episode back into The Clone Wars. I found it a little dull, treading over tired ground that has been covered time and time again in the Star Wars Universe. Thankfully this week’s episode “Deal or No Deal” improved greatly. It made me excited to see the last half of the arc play out, save for a few annoying characters.

The episode starts with a promising redemption of Trace, as I found her and her sister overly annoying last week. Thankfully Trace was giving Ahsoka some great dialogue and covered some interesting ground about how the underworld feels jaded by the Republic and the Jedi alike. Yes, I know this was touched on last week in “Gone With a Trace,” but it added a few more layers this episode. Ahsoka was just as ignorant about the underworld, and its inhabitants, as Trace was about the galaxy around her.

Then enters Trace’s sister, Rafa, and this is where things become a little more frustrating. Rafa gets a job, and her pilot dropped out last minute, so she has to recruit her sister to smuggle unrefined spice for the dangerous Pike syndicate. Of course, she left that tidbit of information out at the time.

I know Rafa is supposed to take care of her sister and protect her, so keeping the information to a need-to-know basis could be considered a smart move. However, this made Rafa come across as selfish and brash without a care in the world of who she hurts; That’s where the episode comes apart. It was truly frustrating to watch an older sister tear her relationship apart by not having any communication. All of the problems that have been occurring could have been remedied if Rafa just talked to Trace, just a bit, and educated her.

Now it is up to Ahsoka to be the bridge between the two siblings. Arguably this is where she shines, as an ex-Padawan, Ahsoka has been training for this her entire life. Trace shows shows how naive she is. She doesn’t know much about galaxy’s wide array of gangs, like the Pikes, and thinks that they are just small-time thugs like the ones she dealt with on Coruscant. So she decides to dump the cargo to get away from the situation. This just makes their situation worse, as now they have no delivery, and the episode ends with a nice cliff hanger that made me want to keep watching.

I know that Ahsoka will make it out alright, and I assume the two sisters do as well. However, what I thought was stupidity with Trace was nothing but young naïveté and being uneducated about the world around her. This is something that is most likely to do with Rafa sheltering her after their parents passed away. So now I have learned, and I can empathize with Trace. In fact, I have grown to like her, but Rafa is still a character I could do without.

As for Ahsoka, I thought she was the strongest character in this episode. She was not only the divider between the sisters but also a bridge to bring things to an understating, bringing peace. She is still trying to hide her Jedi past, but I feel that in the next episode she will have to reveal that when she gets them out of the situation they are in.

The Clone Wars has seemed to have finally gained a foothold. I have my fingers crossed that this will lead to a great triumph as the season wraps up. So far, we have gotten some strong character development in the last arc, and I am looking forward to seeing that conclude in the next six episodes.

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Star Wars: The Clone Wars “Deal or No Deal”

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Character Building
• Facial Animations
• Brings The Clone Wars back on track

Cons

• Frustrating Rafa Moments