Hello and welcome back to another review of Star Wars: The Clone Wars here on the Star Wars Report! This week, Obi-Wan dies in order to infiltrate a group of terrorists aiming to kidnap the chancellor in Deception! This is the first episode in our second to last four part arc in season four; I can’t believe we’re getting so close to the end of the season!
Jumping right into the big topic of the episode, Deception focused primarily on Obi Wan’s faked death, and facial reconstruction to take the appearance of the very cool looking bounty hunter Rako Hardeen. Immediately we are thrown into a very different kind of Clone Wars episode, for better or worse. The entire opening concept of faking Obi Wan’s death reminded me of an old James Bond film (Diamonds Are Forever, I think), and going undercover certainly built upon the spy/undercover agent style of the episode. Though I will say this episode was much more exciting and suspenseful than some of our other espionage geared episodes (mostly from season 3), I’m not too sure how I felt about how they went about infiltrating Moralo Eval’s plan, the facial transformation and voice emulator seemed a little too far-fetched. The technology, for whatever reason, just felt like it did not fit in the Star Wars universe. All complaints aside, I did enjoy Obi-Wan’s portrayal of an evil bounty hunter, which I think makes the cringe worthy facial reconstruction technology worth it. I think there are many pros to creating a brand new bounty hunter character to go undercover for the Jedi, but I don’t think we would have would react the same way to his “tough guy” actions as we would to a Jedi Knight, especially Obi-Wan. His personality transformation was so believable, someone could’ve easily forgotten he was Obi-Wan and thought he was the actual Rako Hardeen!
Another strong point of the episode was the perspective we have looking through the eyes of the bad guys. I know we’ve had episodes focused on characters such as Cad Bane, but the addition of our ability to relate to Obi-Wan throws us right into the den of thieves in such a different way than seen before. We aren’t shown the whole plan because we aren’t seeing these events unfold from Bane’s perspective, or Eval’s, we’re seeing it through Obi-Wan who knows just as much as we do. The writers depicted that feeling of suspense and unpredictability very well, and with some of our favorite villains popping up everywhere! Characters such as Boba Fett, Cad Bane, and Bossk really helped make this episode better.
All in all, this episode was good, though not great by any means. This is one of the strangest episodes I think we’ve seen all season (not counting comedic episodes). I did enjoy all the small details and characters that we don’t normally see (Like hearing Obi-Wan addressed as Ben for the first time in the series!). I think the concept is flawed, but the results and how it all played out was very well done, and I can’t wait for more! That wraps up my review for this episode! We want to know what you thought of Deception, leave a comment below! Thanks for reading and may the Force be with you… always!
-Ryan
