Full Synopsis
Following the opening crawl, we then pan
up to see a large blue planet with twin crescent moons where a single small Droid Gunship flies by, soon followed by a giant Mon Calamari merchant cruiser that blocks out the bottom half of the screen in a perspective-flipped reference to the iconic opening of Episode IV. Only here, the big ship is beset by a swarm of smaller Droid Gunships that strafe and damage it and the Mon Calamari crew are ordered away by the Sha’anar Dispatcher and forced to turn away from the planet. It pans back to show the whole planet surrounded by Sha’anar Battleships.
(Image source “starwars.com”)
Panning up to the surface of the planet, an oceanic world dotted with islands, and inverting, we see the castle-like city of Oxon sitting amid a cluster of islands surrounding beautiful azure lagoons, themselves amid the turbulent oceans all around beyond the reefs. It cuts to inside, where the young and heavily made up Nimoida Queen Amidala is alerted that another ship has been turned away by the blockade and that the Sha’anar are demanding that she surrender her authority to the Guild. Guard Captain Pataka (Tupac Shakur) expects an invasion and advises that they raise the force field and prepare for war, but Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), appearing in a hologram, alerts them that Senator Mothma from the Galactic Senate is on the way to resolve the issue.
We then cut to the Republic Cruiser Harmonious, where we are introduced to Senator Birn Mothma (Michael Gambon) who talks with a hooded Jedi Knight. The Jedi has a bad feeling about things, naturally, but Mothma dismisses the concern, for the “cowardly” Trade Guild, despite their objections to the new trade tax whose enactment their blockade of the strategically located planet Nima is meant to protest, has no logical reason to want war. “They will make a fuss and then, having made their point, agree to stand down,” he predicts confidently.
They dock with the lead Sha’anar Battleship and are led by a protocol droid past a menagerie of strange and scary looking robots and bedraggled slaves of various species in a scene rhyming with R2D2 and C3PO visiting Jabba’s Palace in Episode 6.
Sha’anar Concept Art (Image source Imgur)
We cut to a scene where the terrified Sha’anar Master Merchant D’aaka Nuutgrich and his assistant Journeyman Merchant D’ofyne Kwayl talk to a hologram of a dark hooded figure, with D’aaka warning “Lord Dias” that a Republic Senator has arrived with a Jedi Knight. D’ofyne starts to panic and tell Dias that his plan has “failed” only to start to choke and fall dead. Lord Dias then admonishes the sniveling D’aaka to “clean up the mess” and then orders that the Guild “take care” of the Senator and Jedi, saying that he will “take care of the rest.”
Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet, 1996 (Image source “lukebartolo.blogspot.com”)
We return to the Senator and the Jedi, who are led by the protocol droid to the Office of Guildmaster Gunray Pabucan[1] (Brian Blessed), a large and slovenly but partially cybernetic member of the horse-faced Sha’anar who wallows in decadent splendor in a robe of gold. A band of alien slaves plays exotic, droning music while a muscular male alien dances. The Jedi removes his hood to reveal the bearded face of a thirty-something Obi-Wan Kenobi (Kenneth Branagh). Mothma and Gunray debate points of legality while Obi-Wan notices and starts to focus on a single 13-year-old disheveled slave boy (Zachary Ty Bryan). The slave gets slapped by the Guildmaster for interrupting him and drops the tray of drinks. The slave scowls as he reaches down to pick up a dropped cup, which Obi-Wan notes has almost imperceptibly rose on its own to reach his hand, the boy not appearing to notice
[2].
Zachery Ty Bryan c1996 vs. Concept Art of teenage old Anakin/Anniken (Image source “famousfix.com” & Pinterest)
D’aaka now enters and approaches the Guildmaster and whispers something in his ear. The Guildmaster laughs and says “Well, then! It seems that these talks are at an end!” Obi-Wan immediately becomes hyper-alert and tosses aside his robe, revealing his black samurai-like Jedi uniform[3] and draws his laser sword as a force field ignites around him and Mothma, who starts to protest. Obi-Wan takes a deep breath an instant before green gas starts to pump into the shielded space from the floor, causing Senator Mothma to immediately choke and die. Obi-Wan uses the laser sword to cut a hole in the unshielded floor and drops through to the lower level.
He is almost immediately engaged by an army of battle droids and starts to effortlessly cut his way through them or toss them aside with the Force. After fighting and jumping through a series of rooms, he enters a large hangar space where a giant pallet-loading robot engages him.
The giant bot is too powerful to defeat directly, so he leads it to a place where he can use the Force to flip the lever of a freight lift, which crushes the giant robot. Obi-Wan now works his way back towards the throne room, which locks itself behind blast doors, which he tries to cut through with his laser sword as the Sha’anar panic and the slaves flee through a servant’s entrance, the young Slave Boy strangely calm and alert despite the mayhem. Suddenly engaged by shield-protected Destroyer Droids that he can’t defeat, Obi-Wan uses Force powers to sprint impossibly fast and escape. Fighting through the ship towards the docked Republic Cruiser, he gets there in time to see it destroyed by internal cannons. Beset by more Destroyers, he starts to fight his way further into the Sha’anar Battleship.
Concept Art of Obi-Wan vs. Destroyer Droids, later renamed Droidekas in our timeline (Image source Reddit)
Wiping back to Nima, Queen Amidala watches in horror as Senator Palpatine’s image is jammed and vanishes mid-sentence. Guard Captain Pataka again advises that she raise the force field, but she states that she “doesn’t want to subject her people to a war.”
“A war is coming whether you want it or not, Your Majesty,” he says.
Cross-wiping back to the lead Sha’anar battleship, the Guildmaster, advised by D’aaka, orders the invasion of Nima to commence and Landing Craft start to load with Battle Droids. Obi-Wan notices this from hiding, and seems to be overtaken by fear and confusion. Calming himself and sitting cross-legged, he meditates, and says “hear me, Sen-nai”.
The scene cross-cuts to his “sen-nai” Jedi mentor Quigon Djyn (Katsuhiko Sasaki) meditating in a garden. He and Obi-Wan have a talk through the Force (in a reflection of Luke’s force-conversation with Yoda in
Legacy of the Jedi) and Obi-Wan describes his growing “fear” that war is imminent. Quigon notes to his “Padawan”
[4] that the Senate and the Jedi Council “suspected this” after Senator Palpatine alerted the Senate to the frequency jamming and after they lost contact with Senator Mothma. Obi-Wan asks Quigon if help is coming, but Quigon sadly notes that the Senate is “too tied up in argument” to dispatch the Jedi, who “dare not” act without Senate authority, and admonishes Obi-Wan to “be mindful of the living force”, gather what intelligence that he can, rescue the Nimoida Queen if possible, and to remember that “there is always hope…may the Force be with you,” before the Force connection breaks.
As Obi-Wan is considering his options, he’s called out to by a voice in a nearby prison cell. The prisoner tells him about some escape pods and tells him that he knows where to find them, even as he argues with another being in the cell in some alien language. Obi-Wan cuts the locks with his laser sword and frees them, revealing Moog and Ba Ba (voiced by Nathan Lane and Howie Mandel), two amphibian-like Roona[5] who were arrested by the Guild for trying to run the blockade. Moog is short and fat and wears a threadbare silky outfit that was probably fancy once upon a time while Ba Ba is tall and lanky and wears a utilitarian vest and pants. Obi-Wan asks them to lead him to the escape pods, but the two argue in a half-alien pidgin and appear to disagree on where they are going. “Forget it,” Obi-Wan sighs, storming off. “I’ll figure it out myself.”
The two Roona nervously follow Obi-Wan, explaining that they owe him a debt of honor now that he freed them. But he ignores them and closes his eyes and holds out his hand, using his Force connection to guide him, cutting his way through bulkhead after bulkhead and into the slave quarters and surprising the boy and his mother (Lynda Carter). He finds that the boy’s name is Anniken and that his mother Shmi was captured by Hutt slavers when she was pregnant. “All he has known is servitude on this cold, mechanical space ship,” Shmi says[6].
As Obi-Wan suspected, Anniken knows where the escape pods are, but he wants Obi-Wan to free all of the slaves. “All people deserve to be free.” Obi-Wan wants him to come alone (“Your mother will be safer here”) but Anniken refuses to help unless at least his mother is rescued as well. Obi-Wan relents; he is about to use his force powers to make the Roona return to their cells when Moog tells him that he can lead them past the siege into Oxon City through the “smuggler’s tunnels” and Obi-Wan realizes that while Moog is not to be trusted the naïve and innocent Ba Ba is incapable of lying, and thus confirms the truth of Moog’s claim by asking the other Roona.
Despite his reservations about “leading a menagerie”, Obi-Wan cuts a path through the robots to the escape pods, where Moog and Ba Ba hack the ship’s computer to disable the ventral cannons. All five of them crowd into an escape pod and they eject to the wet planet beneath in a scene reminiscent of R2 and C3PO’s escape to Tatooine. (“Blast that pod!” “There’s no life in the cannons!”).
We now see the menacing fleet of Sha’anar landing craft, escorted by droid gunships, descend to the surface of Nima, land amid the chains of interconnected islands, and start deploying an army of tanks and droid soldiers, which start to move towards the castle-like capital city of Oxon. Queen Amidala watches in horror as holograms display the advancing armies and reluctantly takes her Guard Captain’s advice and raises the force field, which envelops the city like an egg. Defensive walls with blaster cannons and towers also rise up out of the ground around the city behind the shield as a secondary line of defense, a castle about to be besieged.
“May the force be with us,” says the Queen, sadly.
Like this, but with a beautiful Italian baroque castle-like city rather than an Imperial brutalist archive building at its center (Image source “starwars.com”)
Following a wipe, we see the escape pod land roughly on a wide, white sand beach overlooking a gorgeous blue lagoon and Obi-Wan and the two humans and two Roona emerge, Ba Ba visibly sick and rushing to the bushes to throw up. From their position they can see a landing ship across the lagoon disgorging a rack of battle droids onto a far island, which it shocks to life. The droids gather in ranks. “We need to get out of sight quickly,” Obi-Wan says. They rush inland into the trees, but have to duck into the bushes as Droid hover tanks roll through. Droid soldiers forcefully lead lines of scared human refugees. One droid reports the southeast islands “secured”. Ba Ba notes how terrible it is, but Moog expresses no sympathies for the “land folk,” figuring that what happens to them is “not a Roona problem, bo.”
Back on the Sha’anar Battleship, Guildmaster Gunray talks to a hologram of Queen Amidala. He orders her to drop the force field and surrender, but the Queen refuses. She tells him about the Senator coming, but he denies any knowledge of a Senator even as some droids carry away the Senator’s body behind her hologram. He gives her an hour to surrender before he attacks the city. “It will be far worse for you if we have to expend resources to take your little city, little Queen!” Gunray says, before shutting off the hologram and stuffing a wriggling grublike thing in his large mouth. D’aaka tells him that their droid armies have reached, and started to surround, the city of Oxon.
On the surface, Obi-Wan now admonishes Moog and Ba Ba to take him into the city as was their deal. Moog tries to talk his way out of it, but Obi-Wan uses the mind trick on him. The two Roona argue in an alien language, Ba Ba upset, and Moog tells him that they can take their “Bonga”. Ba Ba asks “when did we, bo, get a Bonga?” but Moog shushes him. Moog leads them to where a small, fancy submarine is moored to a dock outside of a beautiful mansion currently being looted by Battle Droids. Moog very unconvincingly says “I, bo, forget keys, ba,” and breaks into the submarine, fiddling with some wires and even squeezing his fat arm through an impossibly small gap that opens in the canopy at one point to pull a lever. He then hotwires the submarine (getting shocked) and they slip below the depths.
As they sail through the gorgeous coral reefs and Anniken in particular looks out enraptured at the sights and colors, Ba Ba argues with Moog that he’s “going too deep, ba” while Moog says that he’s “more afraid of who’s
up there, bo.” They suddenly get attacked by a giant Clawflish (“the biggest fish in the sea, ba!”) and are about to get eaten when a Kaija Aqua Beast eats the Clawfish (“It appears that there was one bigger” says Obi-Wan[7]). With the sub now shorting out and leaking after the attack, they head up towards the surface, where they are soon surrounded and captured by other submarines, piloted by Roona guards, who arrest them all for theft and trespassing and disable and tow the submarine.
(Image source “starwars.com”)
Wiping back to the surface, the Droid armies reach the city of Oxon and begin to bombard the force field with their hover tanks. Inside the castle, a tear streaks Queen Amidala’s formal makeup as she watches footage of the citizens of Nima being rounded up by the Battle Droids and looks out the window at the besieging army.
Wiping back to the Battleship, Master Merchant D’aaka informs the hologram of Lord Dias that the city is under siege, but deliberately avoids the question of the Jedi. He instead expresses worry that “the underwater people” will join the struggle, but Dias assures him that the Roona hate the Nimoida and will stay neutral and tells him that “I will dispatch an agent to take care of that Jedi whose whereabouts you seem not to know.”
It then wipes to an office on Had Abbadon, where the hooded figure of Lord Dias turns off the hologram of D’aaka. He gets up and walks out onto the balcony and waves his hand. “Join me, my apprentice,” he says. The black hooded figure of Mauk Shivtor[8] (Benecio del Toro) emerges from the inky shadows, his mostly-hidden face tattooed in red-and-black circuit-board-like patterns, his teeth pointed. Lord Dias dispatches him to Nima to “find and destroy the Jedi” and tells Mauk that “the time to reveal ourselves and destroy the Jedi is at hand”. Mauk is practically salivating at the chance for “revenge. After all these centuries, revenge!” His eyes glow orange under his hood.
Somewhere between these two images (Image source Pinterest)
We wipe back to the Nima underwater and the Roona city where the disabled Bonga submarine is towed towards the “bubble city” of Roona’ka. The craft sail frictionlessly through the forcefield-like bubble walls and into an artificial harbor, where they float on the surface. Obi-Wan, Anniken, Shmi, Moog, and Ba Ba are led, as prisoners, before the “Baaza a’Roona”, Raaga Nassai (voiced by Queen Latifah), a Roona with the body of a Neolithic fertility idol and all the composure of an old warrior. In the background, fish inadvertently fall through the semipermeable bubble walls, and are collected by a young Roona. Nassai Baaza chastises the five for their theft, being particularly irate to see the “old thieves” Moog and Ba Ba, whom she immediately condemns to death. In the case of the “Nimoida invaders” (humans), who were “trespassing”, she is about to order them executed as well. Obi-Wan tries the mind trick, but Nassai Baaza laughs, revealing that she is “old, but still strong of mind,” but now recognizing that Obi-Wan is a Jedi, she commutes the execution and invokes the “old protocols” that, as a neutral in the outside war, she will keep Obi-Wan and his “two charges” under house arrest until the war is over.
Obi-Wan also intervenes to protect Moog and Ba Ba, citing that since he has freed them, their lives belong to him now. Nassai, annoyed, relents to let them live, but will “keep them in the strongest cell” so that they can’t escape “again”. Obi-Wan warns Nassai that her neutrality is ill-advised, as the Sha’anar will come for the Roona next, noting that they and the Nimoida are “symbiotically linked”, but Nassai dismisses them to their cells.
“I saw you fight,” says Anniken as they are led away by guards. “You can take all of them out. Why are you giving up?”
“They are innocents,” replies Obi-Wan, handing over his laser sword to a guard sergeant, “It would be wrong to harm them.” They are escorted away.
Mauk arrives at Nima (Image source Quora)
We wipe to space over Nima where an evil looking spaceship flies up to the blockade. Mauk is revealed to be the pilot. The Sha’anar challenge the ship, but Mauk transmits a priority code and flies unopposed down towards the surface below as Mauk’s theme plays. His ship flies past Oxon, still being besieged and shelled by the Droid Army, and then tucks in its wings and plunges into the turbulent deep seas off of the island cluster. The submerged ship heads towards the Roona underwater city.
It wipes to Obi-Wan, who is imprisoned in a nicely decorated room, but one carved into the living coral with no obvious escape. Shmi is sitting on a couch while Anniken desperately tries to search for an escape. Obi-Wan asks Shmi about Anniken and his father. She relays how she was a simple farmer’s daughter on Utapau. She tells him about a “man from the sky” who dressed like Obi-Wan and how she fell in love with him and called him her “sky walker”[9]. Anniken, still looking for any way out and popping the console off of the door controls, seems bothered by the story, saying unconvincingly that he “doesn’t care” who his father is, since his father wasn’t there to save his mother from the Hutts and never came back to save them from slavery. “No good man would leave us enslaved,” he says, just before getting mildly shocked by the wires he’s fidgeting with. Shmi says that the sky walker went off to fight the Hutt and that she’s always been sure that he or someone like him would return, ultimately citing Obi-Wan’s presence as proof that the Force sent him to rescue them.
Obi-Wan replies that she “may be right. It was surely fate that brought us together.” He tells Anniken to stop wasting his time looking for an escape and that the Force will provide a way out. Then he sits and meditates. Close-up on Obi-Wan’s face as visions alternate with his increasingly disturbed face. Images of Oxon City, Had Abbadon, the Sha’anar, the Nemoida, a beautiful young woman (Padmé), Anniken looking scared, and a brief, disturbing flash of a dark, cloaked figure with a red laser sword. He awakens with a start.
He also hears a grunting from a shaking air duct on the ceiling only about a foot wide. Muffled alien arguments echo inside it. Suddenly the vent pops off the end of the duct, revealing Moog’s squished face. “Hi, ba, we, bo, here!” He then slides bonelessly out of the far-too-small tube[10] and flops jellyfish-like onto the floor with a grunt, Ba Ba falling afterwards right on top of him with a shriek.
“The Force provides,” notes Obi-Wan, dryly.
Moog starts to hack a console to disable the alarms and Ba Ba starts to hack the lock on the door, their fingers working with the ease of beings who have done such tasks a thousand times. Obi-Wan admonishes them to “move quickly” because there is “a greater danger” than the Roona, but he can’t say for sure what it is. In a spray of sparks that shocks Ba Ba, the door opens. The guards rush in but Obi-Wan casually taps their heads with his finger and they both fall asleep. Obi-Wan sends Anniken, Shmi, Moog, and Ba Ba ahead to steal a submarine. “I have to retrieve my light saber.”
Ducking past guards, Moog and Ba Ba lead Anniken and Shmi to a bay with submarines, but also lots of guards. As the two Roona argue about what to do, Anniken says “I have an idea,” and runs out and sneaks past the various guards in a series of clever concealments. He sneaks aboard a submarine and starts it, but then slips back out as it starts to sail away without him. Ba Ba wonders what he’s doing. A guard sees the submarine heading out and cries out in alarm. The guards rush to three of the other subs and pursue it, leaving the bay empty[11]. Anniken smiles.
Meanwhile, in a rhyme of him going to deactivate the tractor beam in Episode 4, Obi-Wan slips stealthily past various guards using Jedi tricks, though something seems to be disturbing him. He then reaches a security desk and uses the mind trick to get the guard sergeant to retrieve his laser sword for him, then thanks the guard and puts him to sleep with a touch of his finger.
Back in the sub bay, Moog and Ba Ba are hotwiring a submarine while Anniken helps his mother into it. Suddenly, in a jump-scare, Mauk appears next to Anniken, inches from his face. A gnarled hand with black fingernails like talons grasps his face, threatening to draw blood. He leans close to the panicking Anniken’s, sniffing, head tilting side-to-side like a bird’s. “Such...power!!” he says in a raspy voice. “Such...fear. Anger...bitterness!!!”
Shmi yells at him and picks up a tool, brandishing it like a club, but Mauk ignores her, holding up his hand and flinging her back with the Force, never taking his eyes off of Anniken. “I MUST bring you to my Master,” he says.
“Stand away from the boy!!” says Obi-Wan, arriving on the scene.
Obi-Wan draws his laser sword. “Into the sub! Get it running! Go!” he yells as Mauk drops Anniken and draws a red laser sword. The two clash in a running battle that sees various supplies and equipment destroyed while the sub cranks up in the background. Alarms sound now. Mauk fights like a savage beast[12] while Obi-Wan tries to maintain a calm sense of center, the philosophies of Jedi and Sith shown in the very manner of their fighting. They flip over one another and occasionally blur with super-fast motion, showing a level of prowess lost in future generations. Moog wants to flee “now”, but Anniken tells him to wait for Obi-Wan. Moog “can’t wait” and starts to pilot the sub out. Finally, Obi-Wan, driven back by the savage onslaught, uses the Force to fling Mauk into a tangle of fishing nets and sprints at unnatural speed to the docking station and jumps out into the waters, swimming with superhuman speed to the fleeing sub.
(Image source Twitter)
Maul recovers, digging his way out of the nets, and screams in frustration. When a Roona approaches him to ask if he’s OK, he cuts the innocent Roona down in frustration.
The little sub heads out into some coral caves while they pull the exhausted Obi-Wan in through the force field like canopy. They ask him about the “other Jedi” and he replies “That was no Jedi. Something older, more dangerous.”
The sub eventually surfaces in a lagoon in the center of Oxon City. Armed guards surround the sub. “Don’t shoot, ba!” pleads Ba Ba. Obi-Wan rises. “My name is Sir Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Knight. I need to have an audience with the Queen.”
The scene wipes to space, where Mauk’s ship flies up to dock with the main Battleship. Face still behind the hood, he ignores the Protocol Droid and storms up to D’aaka. “What of the Jed…?” D’aaka starts to ask before falling on his knees choking. Mauk releases him before he dies. “I am assuming command of this fleet. The Queen will try to escape soon. I can feel it. Be ready!”
Back on the planet at the siege, the tanks blast at the force field. A flash-through destroys a section of the defensive wall, killing some guards, but the shield holds. Inside the castle, Obi-Wan is led before the Queen while Anniken and his mother are taken to a rest area. The Roona are barred from entering the palace entirely. Obi-Wan pleads with the young Queen that she needs to escape the city. If the Sha’anar droids break through, he tells her, “Something bad” will happen to her and the Sha’anar will replace her with “someone more…pliable.” The Guard Captain asks how he expects to get through the blockade. He mentions that his “two Roona allies” are blockade runners and may know a way. Advisor Sio Bibble is appalled at the notion of working with “the underwater savages”, but one of the Queen’s Handmaidens, Padmé (Aleksa Palladino), whispers in her ear, and the Queen mentions that with the royal yacht’s “concealment field”[13] that it may be possible to breach the blockade.
Aleksa Palladino in
Manny & Lo c1996 (Image source IMDB)
“Then you will come with me, Your Majesty?”
“We cannot be seen leaving our people in their time of need. Our trusted Handmaiden Padmé will go in our stead and speak with our full authority. She departs immediately.”
They go to the Nima hangar, where pilots scramble to board sleek streamline modern fighters while ground crew prepare the ships. Obi-Wan walks up with the Queen and her Handmaidens to the sleek, shiny Nima Royal Yacht “Zephyr”. Handmaiden Padmé bows to the smiling, crying Queen and they say their goodbyes. Nima guards bring in Anniken and Shmi and other guards bring in the two Roona; all are led to the yacht. Anniken notices Padmé and stares in awe at this beautiful young woman. He quickly looks away as she gives him a friendly smile. The crew of the yacht try to block the entry of the Roona until Obi-Wan gives them a soul-piercing stare.
(Image source “starwars.com”)
In a heartbreaking scene, Shmi says goodbye to Anniken, noting that she will stay there and work as a servant for the Queen. Obi-Wan makes it clear to Anniken that his mother will be safest here behind the shields and that Anniken needs to come with Obi-Wan to Had Abbadon to meet the Jedi Council. “It is surely the will of the Force.” Shmi tells him that she is very proud of him and that she will see him again soon. Of two minds, Anniken follows Obi-Wan into the yacht, looking back as his crying mother. “I’m afraid that I will never see her again,” he tells Obi-Wan.
The yacht and the fighters launch, cloak, and fly out through a gap that opens in the force field, invisible and ignored by the besieging droid army. They fly towards the blockade following the advice of the Roona for where the weak points in the detection field should be, but even so, the Sha’anar, on high alert due to Mauk’s menacing presence, detect the breach and scramble droid fighters. Obi-Wan enlists Anniken to help him at the defensive guns, and in a rhyme with Luke and Han escaping the Death Star, they and the Nimoida fighters help fight off the droid fighters. The yacht’s concealment device and hyperdrive are damaged and a bunch of astromech droids deploy to fix the damage.
(Image source Wookiepedia)
The Nimoida seem to be winning the dogfights, with Obi-Wan scoring a few kills but Anniken generally missing, but soon Mauk joins the action in his menacing ship, slaughtering the Nima fighters with little effort and blasting at the yacht, blasting away all but a single remaining blue astromech. Guided by Obi-Wan’s directions, Anniken concentrates and manages to damage Mauk’s ship (“I got him!”) which spins away as the last remaining droid finishes the repairs to the hyperdrive and they jump away.
On the yacht, Anniken is getting applauded by the crew and is eating it up. Padmé smiles at him, which causes him to freeze. Their moment is interrupted when the heroic astromech droid is introduced, being, naturally, R2D2[14], which Obi-Wan dispatches the Roona to clean up and repair. He then takes Anniken aside and tells him that he is a special child and that the Force is strong in him. He lets Anniken know that he wants to take him before the Jedi Council so that he can take him on as an apprentice.
As the ship flies on, Anniken is clearly smitten with Padmé, but she’s fascinated with Obi-Wan[15], which makes the Jedi nervous and Anniken jealous. Anniken follows her through the luxurious ship while she follows Obi-Wan. R2D2 seems bemused by it all.
Eventually they reach Had Abbadon, where both teenagers are amazed at the sight of a city planet, including the huge stadium-sized Senate Chambers and other landmarks. Had Abbadon is notably cleaner and more brightly lit than we saw it in Episode 6. Far below, a peaceful protest goes largely ignored by the crowds around it. A giant hologram displays a newscast. They then see an impossibly tall art deco tower high above all the others reminiscent of the iconic tower from Lang’s
Metropolis. Anniken asks I that’s the Jedi Temple, but the pilot says no, that it’s the Thorpe Tower. Instead, they fly past it and descend into an urban valley and down towards a lonely square of green trees with lotus-shaped walking paths that stands out against the grey of the cityscape around it. As they descend, they see a single beautiful ivory-colored stone tower at the center that was probably one of the most magnificent architectural achievements on the planet centuries ago, but is now dwarfed by the surrounding metal and glass skyscrapers.
They land at the temple and Padmé tells Obi-Wan that she must go speak to Senator Palpatine and make their appeal to the Senate, so Obi-Wan departs with Anniken and the Roona while the yacht flies away. Obi-Wan is greeted warmly by his old Sen-nai Quigon Djyn[16], who says that the Council is eager to hear his report. They are led through the beautiful green space and experience strange and arcane rituals whose meaning has been lost for centuries. Quigon, a joyful, constantly laughing man, takes a shining to Anniken, noting how he “reminds him of Obi-Wan at that age.” Anniken seems to calm down and smile for the first time in Quigon’s presence.
They are led by Quigon up a long spiraling stairwell to a waiting room lit by dim warm light. Two Jedi guards with laser spears stand by a large stone double-door. “Wait here, I will talk to the masters,” Obi-Wan says, as the Jedi guards withdraw their spears and the doors open silently of their own accord, flooding the room with bright light for a moment before closing behind Obi-Wan and Quigon, the light on Anniken’s worried face going dark as the doors close.
It wipes to the Nimoida yacht as it lands on a pad high above the streets below. Senator Palpatine walks up a skywalk between a phalanx of guards and warmly bows to Padmé as she descends the ramp, R2D2 behind her. “Ah, Handmaiden, such a gift to see you alive!” he says, and begins to talk with her about the challenges ahead in the Senate, advising that the Supreme Chancellor’s position is weak and that the corruption that allows the Trade Guild to get away with their attack runs deep. She expresses her hope to get a resolution condemning the invasion, allowing the Jedi to be deployed to break the siege, but Palpatine is “afraid that is unlikely to happen soon enough, given the bureaucratic inertia.”
Circle-wipe back to the Jedi Temple waiting room, where the two Roona have fallen asleep, Moog snoring loudly and Ba Ba’s long tongue lolling out onto his chest. Anniken nervously paces and asks the Jedi guards what’s happening, but they remain as still as statues. Finally, they pull back their spears and the doors open. A brightly smiling Quigon is waiting, surrounded by light. “Come, young Anniken,” he says, hand out. “The Masters will see you now.”
We follow Anniken as he emerges into a tall and brightly lit circular room with glorious views in all directions, though the skyscrapers seem to surround it like a fence of steel teeth. The Jedi Masters of the Council sit in a ring of chairs, and many species are represented. Obi-Wan waits in the center. In the front, a single chair sits slightly higher than the rest, belonging to Master Yoda. It is empty. To the right of the empty chair sits Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson), who dresses stoically like a monk, and to the left sits Baron Cetu Thorpe (Ian McKellen), who wears ornate finery. All the Jedi look at the kid and mumble among themselves. Thorpe leans in and smiles warmly at Anniken. Windu glares at Anniken, coldly.
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Obi-Wan expresses that he wishes to take Anniken on as an apprentice while Anniken expresses that he wants to become a Jedi so that he can “free all of the enslaved people of the galaxy.” The Masters debate Anniken’s fate, but ignore his questions. Windu declares him “too old” and warns that “there is much fear and anger in the boy,” while Thorpe declares that “yes, but much love, and much hope too.” Obi-Wan requests that Anniken be tested. Windu nods. Obi-Wan tells Anniken not to fear and “just relax, answer truthfully, and the Living Force will be with you.” Quigon escorts a worried Anniken away to be tested.
“So, tell us more about this…Sith you claim to have encountered,” says WIndu.
“If the Sith have returned, then surely we would have sensed them,” adds Kiai Mudri, an alien Jedi.
“Wily are the ways of the Sith,” says Thorpe. “Able to blend in, unseen, or hide behind amicable guises.”
It wipes to where Senator Palpatine gently leads Padmé into the Senate chamber, a cavernous room with hundreds of represented planets whose boxes convert into hovering pods that approach the Chancellor’s station at the center when called to speak. R2 whirs pensively. Padmé testifies of the attack against her planet and the murder of Senator Mothma, but the Sha’anar Senator denies everything and demands lengthy studies before the Jedi will be called up. Padmé screams in protest[17], but Chancellor Valorem appears ready to concede to the Sha’anar. On the advice of Palpatine she angrily calls for a challenge to Valorem’s leadership, causing an uproar. Palpatine smiles.
Back in the Jedi Temple Anniken is put through a bizarre test[18] involving strange crystals, bells, chanting and throat-singing, and a bunch of nonsensical questions, all overseen by Quigon. Anniken loses his temper at a couple of moments. Strange visions flash by him as the strange ceremony continues, including Mauk, Padmé smiling, and a vision of the siege of Oxon and an explosion causing his mother to scream. By the time it’s done, he’s scared and confused. Obi-Wan meets him in the waiting room and tells him that all will be well. But when they are called before the council, Thorpe looks sad and Windu coldly announces that Anniken will
not be accepted for training but will instead be moved into an apartment in Thorpe Tower where the Jedi can watch him for any signs of darkness. Obi-Wan protests and demands that they wait until Master Yoda returns from his “meditations in the sanctum on Shaballah.” Windu seems annoyed, but at the advice of Thorpe, he concedes the point.
Back in Palpatine’s Senate Office, the Senator is praising Padmé for helping to remove Valorem from power. “That was a bold and decisive move, Your Majes…I mean Your Excellency,” he says. But she expresses her regrets for “betraying” their ally Valorem. R2D2 beeps sympathetically. Palpatine tells her that their planet’s struggles have gained them allies, and introduces Senator Bail Organa (Adrian Dunbar[19]) from Alderaan and young Senator Mon Mothma (Bronagh Gallagher[20]) of Chandrila, who took over from her murdered father. R2D2, meanwhile, encounters C3PO, who is a droid working for Mothma and still a frame and wires, having not yet gotten his outer casing (“I will be Executive Gold!”). The two dislike each other from the start and start to bicker.
Palpatine suggests a political alliance. Organa is a pacifist and wants a more federated system while Mothma, still angered by her father’s murder, wants a stronger, more centralized Republic, but both oppose the blatant corruption of the Trade Guild and their allies and will support Palpatine for the new Chancellor, a job which he claims not to want. Padmé, bored by the politics, asks when they believe they can get the Jedi to break the siege, and Palpatine says that with luck they can get a resolution by the end of the next lunar cycle. “Oxon will be ashes by then!” she yells, and heads for the door, calling to R2.
“If the Senate can’t help our Queen, then I will!” she declares, over Palpatine’s protests. She storms to the yacht, which takes off and flies to the Jedi Temple.
At the Jedi Temple we see her yacht land, see her storm past the ceremonial people, and demand to be taken to the Jedi Council. As she marches into the waiting room Moog and Ba Ba wake up, groggy. Anniken, in meditation with Obi-Wan, calls out the her, suddenly very happy to see her. But she goes to the doors and reaches past the guards right between their crossed laser spears to bang on the doors while the guards shrug to each other.
The doors open and Quigon greets them. She demands to see the Council under “Article Four of the Jedi Charter” and a bemused Obi-Wan and Anniken follow her. In front of the council, Windu very “perturbed” at her “insolence”, she evokes the charter again, demanding as the representative of “a member planet” that the Jedi aid her. Windu tells her that she is neither the Senator nor monarch of her planet and not empowered to evoke the charter. She then shocks everyone by revealing that she is in fact the Queen, and that one of her handmaidens, who is “her near double”, has taken her place. After a debate that seems to amuse Quigon and embarrass Obi-Wan, the Council expresses their sympathies but denies the request, citing the need for the approval of the full Senate. But they agree to assign Obi-Wan as her personal escort once she makes it clear that she’s returning to Nima with or without them. Quigon, who seems to have taken a liking to the young firebrand, volunteers to assist his old padawan and “help locate and capture the alleged Sith.”
“So be it,” Windu declares. Anniken, however, will wait at the temple where Windu will personally oversee his training until Master Yoda returns to decide the boy’s fate. Quigon winks amusedly to Anniken, Padmé says “see you around,” while Obi-Wan offers some parting advice to “stay calm, stay focused, and the Force will be with you.”
As Anniken watches, Obi-Wan, Padmé, the Roona, and his new friend Quigon board the yacht, which flies off into the sky. “Now come, young Anniken, your training awaits,” Windu tells him, looming over him.
Wipe to space above the planet Nima and cut to the command center of the lead Sha’anar Battleship where Mauk and D’akka watch a hologram of the bombardment of Oxon. A beep alerts him to an incoming message. Lord Dias appears in a towering hologram. “Our plans have accelerated,” he says. “The Nimoida Queen is returning with two Jedi to Oxon. The one in the city is an imposter and can be disposed of. Launch the full assault now.” When D’aaka starts to protest that the defenses are still too strong and that the casualties will be “punishing” he starts to choke for a moment, amusing Mauk, before relenting to launch the attack.
In the City of Oxon, Shmi and the Nemoida look on as the bombardment increases. The fake Queen (Vanessa Johansson, older sister of Scarlet) is pleading with a hologram of Nassai Baaza to aid them under “the Treaty of Nabba”, but Nassai sneers about the treaty being signed “under duress” and therefore being invalid.
A flash-through in the bombarded force field shatters a window near Shmi causing her to scream in a scene we saw briefly before in Anniken’s vision during the Test.
Outside, a troop carrier deploys a group of battle droids that waddle out with big drill assemblies attached to them. They drill into the ground and emerge inside the force field and wall. The guards destroy several of them, but then regular battle droids start to advance through the holes, threatening to spill out into the city. Several are cut down, but the others use the droid bodies as makeshift defenses. “Secure the breach point!” one yells before getting his head blasted off.
It wipes to the royal yacht, where Quigon is telling stories about Obi-Wan as a young “Padawan” apprentice, which amuses Padmé but embarrasses Obi-Wan, who interjects that the Nemoida should consider their plan of attack. “We cannot fight your war for you,” he says. After a discussion of options, which are few since the Nimoida defensive forces are small, Obi-Wan says a single word: “Mandalorians”. Quigon is appalled by the notion. Padmé asks what they are and Obi-Wan says “Mercenaries. Occasional enemies of the Jedi. Brutal and violent, but honorable in their way.” Moog says that he knows a smuggler’s frequency through which they may be able to contact them and Padmé admits to having some of the Nemoida royal reserves in “a Chandrilian bank”. Quigon protests, but Padmé accepts the deal.
Back at Oxon the destroyed droids are stacking up inside the breach. A Droid Leader informs a hologram of Mauk that their casualties are unsustainable. Mauk’s hologram holds up a chip and says “I am sending you some codes. Use them,” and vanishes.
Cut to where a small Spider Droid pops up out of the Droid Leader’s tank and scurries into the holes. It pops up inside the breach and scrambles among the blasts, dodging fire, until it reaches a console and interfaces with it.
After a moment, the force field falls with a short montage of the fake Queen and her attendants and Shmi all looking on in horror. Back to the Droid Leader, who calls for an all-out attack as tanks engage the defensive walls and defensive cannons. Special ladder-droids deploy on the walls and battle droids climb them quickly, their hands and feet spinning. The Nemoida guards engage. Casualties mount on all sides.
Guard Captain Pataka calls for the fighters to be scrambled, which fly out and strafe the attackers, some falling to anti-air cannons. On the lead battleship, Mauk orders the deployment of Droid Fighters and Gunships, which stream out of the Battleships and fly down to engage in the battle.
“May the Force be with us,” says a terrified Shmi as the battle grows.
Wipe to the Jedi Temple where Mace Windu walks past a group of young Padawans who struggle to stack pebbles with their minds. He reaches Anniken, now with a haircut and fresh clothing and notably older than the rest. Anniken is playfully making pebbles jump over each other. He smiles at Windu, but Windu savagely tells him to stop “playing around” and focus on the lesson. Anniken sighs and starts stacking pebbles, looking bored.
It wipes back to Oxon where the Droid Army is gaining the upper hand with tanks blowing huge breaches in the defensive walls. D’aaka is declaring victory to be imminent when there’s a perimeter alarm.
Out in space a small fleet pops out of hyperspace. A quintet of Mandalorian Assault Ships fly in a star pattern towards a Sha’anar Battleship and fire large lasers that take up almost the whole ship. The beams converge onto a single point, causing the Battleship to explode. D’aaka declares a “breach in the blockade” and the five assault ships break off and return to hyperspace while a small fleet of Mandalorian Fighters and Landing Ships (the latter the same type of ship as Slave 1)[21] surrounding the Nimoida yacht fly through the breach and into the battle.
The Mandalorian Fighters engage, and use a form of vectored thrust to jink and dodge at strange angles that confuse the Droid Fighters. The Landing Ships land right in the middle of the melee, crushing several Battle Droids under them, and squads of Mandalorians disgorge and engage in battle using various weapons including the rockets on their packs and handheld thermal detonators, which explode in a sphere of extreme heat that causes the droids to melt into slag, even taking out a trio of shielded Destroyer Droids.
The yacht lands and Obi-Wan and Quigon run out, using their laser swords to provide cover as the Nemoida and Roona run towards the castle, R2 beeping along behind them. As they run towards the city, the yacht is destroyed, causing the pilot to stop and moan. “Run now, morn later!” Obi-Wan tells him.
The Mandalorians are making good progress against the Droids thanks to their superior technology, but they are getting pushed back by the superior numbers of the Droids. As they approach the gates, Padmé tells the guards “I am your Queen! We must get to the throne room! Engage internal defenses!”
The Droids and Mandalorians and guards engage in a running battle through the hallways of the castle. Internal force fields deploy at chokepoints in the castle and internal cannons drop from the ceiling and blast the Droids. Obi-Wan tells Padmé that getting the main force field back up is imperative and he and Quigon lead Moog and Ba Ba down a separate hallway to do so. She sends R2 with them.
Padmé reaches the throne room where the Fake Queen is still pleading with the hologram of Nassai Baaza. The Fake Queen sees Padmé and falls to her knees, causing a confused stir. Padmé goes to the hologram and talks with Nassai, promising that the Roona will get equal status and representation with the Nemoida as co-regents of “Nima-Roona”, shocking Bibble. Nassai agrees. Padmé/Amidala then pleads with her to send reinforcements. She laughs and said “We, bazza, sent reinforcements hours ago!”
It cuts to the turbulent shores where Roona vehicles surface onto the beach and disgorge and army of Roona warriors with force shields and wickedly-bladed electrified polearms flanked by a cavalry on two-legged lizard like beasts. Larger beasts carry big ion cannons that disable tanks and other vehicles. Other Roona ride flying beasts. They engage the rear flank of the Droid Army like a Spartan Phalanx of Zulu Impi, cutting a path through the Droids.
On the Sha’anar Lead Battleship, D’aaka reports the arrival of the new army. Mauk also senses that the Jedi are there. He promises to take care of the situation himself and walks, smiling evilly, towards the camera, his eyes flashing orange.
Wipe back to Oxon Castle where a worried Shmi approaches Obi-Wan, who assures her that Anniken is “safe, and in good hands.” Suddenly he and Quigon both become hyper-alert. Obi-Wan tells Moog and Ba Ba to continue to get the force field up and Shmi to “hide” while he and Quigon head back the way that they came.
Outside, Mauk’s ship joins the melee, destroying some Nimoida and Mandalorian fighters, before landing at the castle gates and walking past the saluting Droid Leader. He walks past the Spider Droid, which whirs at its interface. Just as Mauk reaches the force field protected hallway, the fields deactivate and the cannons go back up into the ceiling. Mauk draws his laser sword and hacks through the Nemoida guards. A Mandalorian gives him a bit of a hard time, but eventually Mauk cuts him down.
He enters into a large banquet hall where Obi-Wan and Quigon await. They draw their laser swords. Mauk says, “at last!” and tosses aside his cloak revealing his full hideous, demonic face as
two red blades ignite from either end of his laser sword.
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Business Insider)
Mauk engages the two Jedi in a ferocious, acrobatic display of martial prowess (stunt double Ray Park). Obi-Wan fights with simple, efficient movements while Quigon fights with the structured formality of a Samurai. Old suits of armor get cut in half. Their clashes continue, up onto the banquet table, cutting a candelabra-like lantern in half.
Moog and Ba Ba and R2, meanwhile, are high up in the catwalks above the castle. R2 and the Roona tap into a computer terminal, the latter using a small device, and try to re-engage the shields, arguing animatedly with each other on the right way to do so, but Moog notes that “someone” is blocking their efforts. It cuts to the Spider Droid.
Back outside, the Roona phalanx is making strong headway cutting through the droids towards the castle (a bunch swarm a tank, pull out its droids, and drop a bomb into the tank, taking it out), but they are taking high casualties, particularly from strafing gunships that the fighters and flying beasts try to chase off. “Forward! Roona-ha!” screams a Captain (Henry Cele).
Back inside, the melee-a-trois between the Jedi and Sith continues into a hallway, all leaping and flipping over each other. Cut to Moog and Ba Ba who fiddle with wires and buttons, giving Ba Ba a mild shock. R2 gives an annoyed whir. Moog calls out in celebration as a bunch of lights on the panel turn on.
Cut back to the Jedi where Obi-Wan senses something and uses the Force to push back Mauk. The internal force fields return, trapping Mauk. Two cannons drop from the ceiling. Quigon smiles at Mauk from across the field and waves goodbye.
Mauk’s eyes burn with anger and hate.
Wipe to Anniken’s eyes back at the Jedi Temple, and zoom back to reveal that he has a laser sword and is engaging a training drone while Windu looks on, and he is doing fairly well. Windu speaks quietly about how a Jedi must have focus and concentration and avoid “DISTRACTIONS!” which causes Anniken to lose focus and get zapped. Anniken keeps trying and Windu keeps distracting him until he loses patience, tossed down the laser sword, and storms off.
Baron Thorpe enters and chides his friend about being so hard on the boy, but Windu counters with a metaphor of forging a sword where the “impurities” need to be “hammered out” to make the blade strong. Thorpe counters that “too many hammers” can make even the best steel “brittle”. Windu thinks the boy is too emotional, to troubled, too angry, to which Thorpe replies how that reminds him of a young padawan he once knew, looking knowingly at Windu. “Let me speak with the boy,” he asks.
Thorpe meets with Anniken, who is visibly upset. They talk about Windu, who Thorpe maintains wants to help Anniken, but Anniken refuses to believe it, calling Windu a “sadist” and comparing him to the cruel masters he had at the Trade Guild, saying he “hates him.”
Thorpe smiles and tells him it’s “perfectly natural” to feel that way, and offers to teach Anniken how to “focus” his angry, scattered, emotion-clouded mind “like a laser”, with his first lesson starting “now.”
Circle wipe to Anniken returning to Windu, looking confident, where he manages to block all the blasts. “Impressive,” Windu tells him. Anniken’s eyes glow with pride.
It wipes back to the angry face of Mauk, who stares at the cannons. They fire, and, in a spinning set of moves, he blocks the blasts and reflects them back, destroying the cannons. He sneers and Quigon, who shrugs. Mauk now paces like a caged beast while Obi-Wan meditates and Quigon sits beside him, still smiling at the pacing Mauk.
It cuts briefly back to the battle where the Roona advance stalls and starts to fall back as the droids counterattack.
It cuts to the Spider Droid, who whirs and beeps.
The internal force fields fall again and the Droid armies advance and push back the city defenders to the throne room. The lead Mandalorian orders the remaining mercs to fall back and “protect the client”. They rocket to surround Padmé.
The field also drops between the Jedi and Mauk and the battle begins again, this time advancing up into the catwalks high above the central throne room below, where Padmé and her guards and the mercs are increasingly surrounded. The Jedi and Mauk flip and leap between platforms, getting closer and closer to where the Roona and R2 are still in a cyber-battle with the Spider Droid, trying to raise or lower force fields. R2 beeps excitedly. “Ha, there you are!” says Moog, looking at the screen. He has Ba Ba patch the main power bus into a circuit, sending sparks flying. Briefly cutting to the Spider Droid, we see the electricity run through it until it pops, shooting a stream of smoke, and dies.
Quigon and Obi-Wan finally seem to have the Sith on the defensive when down below Padmé, who’s been pushed back to a Last Stand on the throne dais, gets shot in the side and calls out to Obi-Wan. This distracts Obi-Wan for a critical moment that lets Mauk regain his footing and stun Quigon and run him through with his laser sword.
“Train…Anniken!” Quigon says before falling to the floor and fading away, leaving only an empty robe that Mauk pokes with a foot. Enraged, Obi-Wan pulls Quigon’s laser sword too him with the Force and attacks with anger and fury, surprising Mauk with the ferocity of his onslaught, but Mauk manages to push Obi-Wan off of the catwalk with the Force. Obi-Wan grabs a roof support, dropping the laser swords and holds on as Mauk expresses his admiration for Obi-Wan’s fury, and offers him a chance to join the Sith. Obi-Wan refuses. “Then die, Jedi!” and Mauk throws his laser sword like a spear, forcing Obi-Wan to let go and drop. Mauk pulls the laser sword back to him and snorts and walks towards where the Roona wait.
Obi-Wan uses the force to pull a hanging light to him and slides down its cord to slow his descent, landing in a three-point stance near Padmé and her forces. He pulls his dropped laser sword to him, and starts to deflect the laser blasts and defends Padmé and her people.
As Moog says “Almost patched in to the main force field generator,” a shadow falls over them. “Um, Moog, ba?” says Ba Ba. Moog slow-turns to see a smiling Mauk. R2 makes an “oh no” type beep. Moog, shocked almost still, hits a button and suddenly a force field engages between them and Mauk. We watch as another field engages around Padmé and the rest. And others start to engage one after another throughout the castle, isolating the bots. The main city-wide field begins to slowly engage around the castle, from the top down. Ba Ba sticks his tongue out at Mauk, who slashes impotently at the field, snarls, and runs off, hoping to escape before the fields all close.
As the internal fields engage one by one, Mauk breaks into a side room full of scared women and children. He notices Shmi among them, and smiles darkly at her.
Wipe back to the Jedi Temple, where Windu is leading Anniken through a meditation exercise. Suddenly Anniken has a vision of the evil smile of Mauk and his mother screaming in pain. He bolts to his feet. Windu asks why he broke the meditation and he says “my mother, she’s in danger!” Windu tells him that Force visions aren’t always literal and that he needs to let go of his attachment to his mother, but Anniken begs Windu to let him return to Nima to check on his mother. When Windu refuses, he storms out into the courtyard and screams in anger.
An old, green alien sweeps the courtyard floor[22]. “Troubled, young padawan?” he asks.
“Go away, sweeper!” Anniken snaps.
The sweeper laughs. “Go away I will!” He returns to his sweeping.
Anniken calms down and apologizes to the sweeper, and starts to talk to this old being. “Ah, yes, Master Windu. Very strict he is, but fair, and good of heart!” Anniken finds that he lets his guard down with this old being, telling him all of his fears and angers and how angry he is that some “great and powerful Jedi Master” is going to judge him. “You mean Yoda!” the sweeper laughs.
“Yes, who is he to judge me?” asks Anniken.
“Yes, who indeed? But worry about that another day you should.” The sweeper grabs a second broom and hands it to Anniken. “Here, away your troubles sweep, and on the moment focus!” Anniken smiles weakly and joins him in the sweeping, but still looks troubled.
Wipe back to Oxon; the main force field slowly closes around the city, droid fighters smashing into it, Mauk’s fighter just slipping through before it closes. The field cuts tanks in half as it descends and divides the Droid Army in two. Thrown into confusion, the Droid Army falters and the Mandalorians and Roona and Nemoida regroup and start to rip the fleeing droids apart as Mauk flies away.
Back on the Lead Battleship, D’aaka declares that “all is lost!” and the Blockade fleet starts to retreat into hyperspace.
The battle is won. Soon the assembled armies start to celebrate their hard-fought victory.
There is a big citywide celebration with Nassai Baaza and Queen Amidala (a.k.a. Padmé) holding a Globe of Peace. R2 beeps happily. Moog and Ba Ba, now heroes, dance. A hologram of Palpatine, now in the Chancellor’s Robes, smiles warmly. Obi-Wan stands by, stoically smiling, but stares forlornly at Quigon’s laser sword in his hand.
It then wipes to the Jedi Temple where a new sleek Nimoida ship lands. There is only the sound of the Force Theme playing in minor key as Obi-Wan walks out, nods to where Mace Windu, Baron Thorpe, and Anniken await. Obi-Wan hands Quigon’s robe and laser sword to a heartbroken-looking Thorpe. Padmé walks out, looking melancholy. Anniken smiles brightly to see her, but the smile fades as Moog and Ba Ba push a hovering gurney with the body of Shmi from the ship. Anniken silently screams and runs to her body.
As the music fades, it wipes to the Jedi Council waiting room, where Obi-Wan is giving Anniken a pep talk just prior to the Council’s final decision. They walk through the doors and up to the Masters. Anniken has a moment of panic when he sees Master Yoda, suddenly recognizing him as the sweeper to whom he expressed his darkest frustrations. Notably, the higher chair, that looked like a superior position when empty, leaves the shorter Yoda exactly at equal eye level to all of the other Jedi, a position of equality, not superiority. Yoda is perplexed with the child, so full of both love and hate, promise and warning. Obi-Wan insists on taking him on as his first Padawan despite Thorpe’s announced intention to do so himself and Windu’s strong reservations with taking him in at all.
(Image source CinemaBlend)
Finally, Yoda says “Destiny about this boy there is. The Force around him bends. Go, then, Sir Obi-Wan, and train young Skywalker as your Padawan. And may the Force be with you both.”
The film irises out and the credits roll.
