#cue hurt confusion about why the umbara clips were all i could find

[spockandawe]

Man, the biggest disappointment of the clone wars, by far, is how BARELY the clones are even characters. 99 got as many lines as most of the other boys. I was expecting echo to have at least *one* episode between invited to be an arc and being sploded. There's still a few seasons left, but I'm only a few from umbara, which means it's time for hardcase and dogma to get, very possibly, less development than cutup and droidbait. I know the bad batch is going to disappoint me in new and exciting ways, but it's.... very unsettling. The random old jedi dude who helped ahsoka find her lightsaber has gotten show attention leaps and bounds beyond arguably every clone we've met. At a minimum, fives and rex will beat him out eventually, for sure, but they've been around for three whole seasons and are losing, badly, to a one-off rando unaffiliated with any main characters.

Like, I was so excited to meet monnk, and stoked to see it was a three-parter where he was featured, so SURELY-- no. fuck you. if you don't already recognize his armor in murky low light, you don't even get to know if he's talking. I watched one mortis episode and skipped the others, because it was AGONIZINGLY dull and i don't need three episodes to tell me anakin is super powerful and gets dangerously attached to his people. I can't believe we dumped all the dathomir momentum for THAT, and there weren't any clones or zabraks to make things fun

Not that I'm.... unhappy here. I'm just kind of stunned by just how much fandom creators are carrying this franchise on their backs. I would still say it's a good show, but i would be DRASTICALLY less compelled if not for fanfic to expand on all these characters who show up to get a name and die. People clown on cody for barely having a canonical personality, but I'm almost halfway through, and he's got more to him than almost every other clone character 🙃 The most developed clone so far is 99, and that's because he's a clear-cut Tragic Archetype 🙃🙃🙃

Just IMAGINE this show with a more modern form factor, something closer to SU maybe, where you've got a large-scale plot happening, but it's easy to zoom in on tighter episodes as necessary, but ALSO can integrate side characters in little ways to round them out before they're central to the plot. 'But SU has a smaller cast--' COOL then take your notes from transformers! I'd hesitate to say most animated versions do a good job of giving the WHOLE cast balanced attention, but it's still an improvement. Imagine I had some idea of who jesse was before umbara! Or kix! That would be wild! But I think they've had one or two throwaway lines each, and it's such a waste of potential.