#letta turmond

[adragonsfriend]

Serious question:

Why is there not a single fic on ao3 tagged "Barriss Offee & Letta Turmond"? I'm aware the Wrong Jedi Arc is a trashfire in significant ways, but there is so much room for some soft fixing of canon in exploring that relationship. And I don't mean fixing as in "fix-its" (though there could totally be overlaps)--there's so much room there to give Barriss a comprehensible character arc, explore her guilt, isolation, desperation for a solution that drives her right into the arms of someone using her skills and access to commit violence that only ends up trapping her even deeper in guilt and isolation, in denial of her own responsibility for the people who died in her attack and just how deeply ineffective it was as a form of protest.

Hell, the guilt of killing Letta herself to avoid being caught is part of the trap Barriss closes on herself. The fact Letta didn't realize Barriss would be desperate enough to kill her is intoxicating. Can you imagine the late night talks the two of them had after Letta's husband went to bed, Barriss spilling her guts to Letta, who's almost as good a listener as Master Luminara, but has so much more time to listen? Can you see the more and more overt nudges, turning this communally raised healer who feels helpless in a war, into someone who thinks she is alone in her objection, and that violence is the only way to express that?

Can't you see the Barriss Offee & Letta Turmond?

[coruscantguard]

personally, i think letta turmond should have been a government informant. would it have completely fixed that storyline? absolutely not, the wrong jedi storyline is an racist disaster from top to bottom. but fucking hell, barriss, as a member of multiple in-universe minority groups, being specifically targeted by a government informant who convinces her to take illegal direct action so that the government can arrest her, (an arrest that would both hurt the credibility of activist groups that oppose palpatine and drum up anti-jedi and anti-alien sentiment,) is a storyline that would have actually made maybe a little bit of sense— at least when opposed to the bullshit they actually went with. after all, government informants attempt manufacture crimes and entrap members of activist groups all the time irl.

[stellanslashgeode]

I think about Letta Turmond a lot. Like, was she really super committed to ending the war or was she just tired of her husband going on and on about nano-droids and was like "If you like them so much I'll just feed them to you, asshole."?

One of my headcanons is she and Barriss def bonded over facial tattoos. I'm surprised Ahsoka didn't catch feelings, accents and face markings is her catnip.

Master Skywalker, I am truly unhappy to have to tell you this, but through an unfortunate and entirely unforeseeable series of circumstances that had nothing whatsoever to do with me, poor Ahsoka has been framed for treason.

[sabindark]

Hello there -!

I Looking Fanfic/ao3 about Anakin is framed for the murder of Letta Turmond and the bombing of the Jedi Temple

[stellanslashgeode]

I'm happily educating myself on all things Barriss via your wonderful blog. If you'd ever feel like unpacking more of your Wrong Jedi thoughts/intrigue, I'd love to hear more of your analysis.

Oh my, you've put a quarter in the machine now you have to hear the whole song.

The arc is very divisive with Barriss enjoyers because her character veers so far from her Legends depiction. She was a pretty prominent character in the original Clone Wars multimedia project and was a caring and selfless healer. And the arc doesn't do much to explain her motivations for turning.

Another thing that vexes me is because it is essentially a police procedural (they even hired a writer from Third Watch for this arc) so much occurs off-screen. So, we do not know quite what happened but have to infer.

Let's start with motivation. In her very few post The Wrong Jedi appearances they've tried to hint at Barriss falling mainly though post-traumatic stress disorder. And that's sort of a good explanation? She was at Geonsis at the start of the war, and was one of two Padawans we know of IN the arena who lived and the other was Anakin! You have to think this is a healer, someone who was trained to be a pacifist, and the battle was so sudden and frantic that she had to witness other Padawans she knew in the creche die all around her and she was too busy defending herself to do anything. So that's trauma and guilt. The short story A Jedi's Duty shows that she sat out nearly the entire first year of the war healing others back at the temple, explaining why she wasn't there to deal with Asajj Ventress with Luminara in TCW season 1. Also, she is having trouble sleeping because of memories of that first battle. She asked for help but they told her to meditate if she couldn't sleep, but she couldn't meditate properly because of this haze of the dark side invading her perceptions. She's even having trouble Force healing and she feels guilty that others are taking risks that she is unwilling to take. She consults with an old friend, Tutso Mara and is finally able to meditate, but right then Luminara calls her to a briefing, and wouldn't you know it, they're going to Geonosis again. She is frightened but memorizes the tunnel formations under the weapons factory they need to destroy because that's her duty to the Light and to her Order. The last scene is her joining Luminara and Gree to depart for the battle. And it's such an ironic story because Master Mara is one of her later victims and the place she bombs is right there in the temple hangar where the story ends. I think that's why she chose it as her target, it was the place she went from safety to chaos.

And what happens next? She almost is buried alive Right Away, then as she's reeling from that she gets a Geonocian brain worm. She was also at the Battle of Umbara, and you know how that goes. So I guess trauma is a fairly good reason, as well as her love and admiration of Jedi ethics and pedagogy that just went right out the window when the Jedi had to do what it took to fight in this war. Barriss is a bookworm, all that heritage meant something to her. And really, that was the purpose of the war, to isolate the Jedi by having them betray their morals and sully their reputation with the public.

Fanfiction writers also can pick and choose from Legends, such as all the crazy stuff that happened to her on Drongar but that's a story for another day.

So we get to the Wrong Jedi Arc itself. We aren't shown how she meets Letta Turmond, how much of a partnership that was. Letta says Barriss was the mastermind of the operation but that's after she's jailed. I don't trust her. I mean, Letta is a grown woman and while Barriss was an idealistic and heartsick Jedi at that point she's just 17-18 according to Feloni. I can see it as a situation where a teenager gets politically radicalized and taken advantage by a woman she trusts. If we get a Letta flashback in Tales of the Empire I will be so happy!

Ahsoka is framed. But there's a multi-step aspect to it. Part A, Letta calls Ahsoka to the prison because she was told she was the only Jedi her collaborator trusted and gets Force choked by someone we do not see. Part B, after she is arrested someone leaves a key card outside her cell and she follows a trail of first injured then dead clones to make it look like she broke out and went on a killing spree. Part C is the only one we actually see start to finish, where Ahsoka contacts Barriss and she lures her to the factory that made the nano-droids.

Barriss is guilty of Part C. But did she do Part A and B? She was at the funeral with Ahsoka and heard same time as her that she was transferred to a military compound. Then in the maybe hour, two hours Ahsoka was in a mission briefing Barriss supposedly broke into a brand-new high security compound, got in the walls, and strangled Letta as Ahsoka was in the cell alone with her. Then Part B, she hung around undetected for a few more hours to set up the escape while also erasing the audio off the recording of the murder.

I personally think Palpatine MIGHT have done part A. He has much greater access and he has the motive (to take away a pillar of stability for Anakin). If Barriss did do Part A, what was the motivation? The most pessimistic reading is she did it to save her own skin and purposely framed Ahsoka. Another is that Barriss genuinely talked up Ahsoka to Letta, and did NOT do so to set her up but because she was one of the lonely girl's only friends (and maybe love interest) and then Letta goes ahead and calls her there, Barriss is in the walls, and she just cannot have Ahsoka's opinion of her ruined. She killed Letta to silence her from tainting this one friendship she had left, did so out of panic, and wasn't thinking of the consequences. Then Part B, oh no I got my girlfriend framed for murder. So she springs her out. So why does she kill those clones to further frame her?

Consider the conversation after the funeral, "Ahsoka, do you think it is right for us to ignore our emotions?" I think the subtext there was "Ahsoka, I'm hurting so much, join me to stop me." She was feeling her out to see if she felt the same about the war as she did. And she did Part B to see if Ahsoka would run, SO THEY COULD RUN AWAY TOGETHER. Sure, it's manipulative as all Hell, but that's the dark side for you. It was a test, and Ahsoka failed because as soon as she gets out, she calls Barriss to help clear her name. So that she could get back to the war. The war Barriss hates with all her being. So that's why she did Part C. She had been alienated by the Order and her own master by all these deployments and the one person left who she valued was buying into the propaganda that the Jedi needed to finish this war. It broke her. And she did something awful.

All and all I think her fall is fascinating because it wasn't for personal power or attachments, she wanted to sacrifice her own grace to save the souls of all other Jedi. She did it out of love for the Order, even if it came in such a twisted and destructive form. That's also why she'd become a lousy Inquisitor. They're the anthesis of all she stood for, an army fighting for the dark side.

I know a lot of fans hate this arc but... man that speech! I spent the whole Prequel trilogy and TCW waiting for a Jedi to stand up and say "What we are doing is wrong, we should stop." Yoda and Mace know their path is leading to the dark, but they see no other way but through. I just wanted someone to say no with their whole chest. And it was Barriss. That's why I love her, your honor. I admire the idealists, her and Satine. They should have teamed up and put a stop too all that nonsense.

Sorry this is so long? I have a lot of FEELINGS and now you can see why I have a lot of trepidation about this Saturday. You know, I thought of you last night when I was rewatching Tales of the Jedi. It was the scene were Dooku was leaving to meet Palpatine with Yaddle following in The Sith Lord. I was imagining how you felt watching that for the first time, and I remembered my reaction was "Oh no, it's the temple hangar! Barriss is going to blow the shit out of this place in a decade and change!"

[sapphicahsokatanoweek]

What is a Crackship?

A crackship is a pairing that is considered bizarre or unlikely for some reasons, such as:

The characters have never interacted. An example of this would be Ahsoka Tano and Ursa Wren. They met during the Siege of Mandalore, but we never see them interact.

The characters have no chemistry. An example would be Ahsoka Tano and Letta Turmond. Although they met and interacted during the Clone Wars, their interactions were as investigator and suspect, with Letta dying before any change in dynamic occurred.

The characters are from different timelines or galaxies and could not have met. An example of this is Ahsoka Tano and Master Indara from The Acolyte series. As The Acolyte was set around 132 BBY, Master Indara had died nearly a hundred years before Ahsoka was born.

[aldrendaux]

Story: Sleep through the Chaos

By norik956

Summary: "Ahsoka Tano is in a bad position. Framed for the murder of Letta Turmond and the Temple bombing, she's imprisoned after Tarkin's accusations. Stuck in that cell waiting for Anakin and very tired, would it be that bad if she caught up on some of the sleep that she didn't get with all the recent battles and missions? A one shot poking a bit of fun at the season 5 finale."

[fanfictasia]

Whumpcember Day 14

Cornered

Spoiler: This is an excerpt from When Stars Align

The Council is decidedly appreciative about the entire thing. Anakin has never seen Obi-Wan quite so… jittery before. It’s weird, and it’s freaking him out. “It’s okay,” Anakin tries, because this was more his failure than his master’s, but it’s still… hard to deal with.

He wants… doesn’t know what he wants.

Just for this all to be over.

“There’s nothing you could’ve done.”

Obi-Wan sits beside him, squeezing his shoulder. He doesn’t say anything. There’s nothing to say.

Anakin is being put on trial for this and – he doesn’t know how to explain to the Council what really happened. It sounds so insane. It sounds like he’s lying and doesn’t know how. If Anakin were trying to lie and cover this up, he’d be good at it. He’s a good liar. He grew up on Tatooine. Knows how to make things believable. This is not.

He thought he could make this better by running, but that just made it worse. If – if someone got closer to finding the truth, he has no idea, but the evidence is probably all destroyed now.

“Padawan Skywalker, serious charges have been levied against you. How plead you?” Master Yoda says.

Anakin remembers the first time he stood in the center of the Council. He’d been terrified and lost and lonely, and that’s how he feels now. “Not guilty, master. I would never take the lives of the clones. Even Letta – might have been guilty of killing many, of bombing the Temple, but that’s not the Jedi way.”

She might deserve to die, but that’s not a choice Anakin would ever make, or think of making. That’s not who he is. That’s not what he does.

“You were alone with Letta Turmond when she died. Can you explain this?” Master Windu demands. His gaze is sharp and accusing, and it makes Anakin feel… he doesn’t know. Just wrong. Dirty. Guilty somehow, even if he isn’t. Maybe he is, though. The Council hadn’t wanted him. They thought he was dangerous. What if they’re right?

“Someone Force-chocked her,” Anakin answers, looking away. He can’t bring himself to meet their accusing looks. “I – I don’t know who. I sensed something Dark, but it was elusive. I didn’t realize what it meant.”

“Which brings us to Ventress,” the next question is, “Can you explain your association with her?”

“It wasn’t really an association, even,” Anakin objects, “She attacked me in the underworld, attempting to turn me over for bounty. She’s a bounty hunter now, apparently. I was able to convince her to help me.”

“Help you do what, exactly?” Master Windu asks, “Did she help you acquire the nano droids which were used in the attack?”

They’ve already found him guilty, haven’t they? The desperation burning in his chest is – will mean nothing. Not in the long run. That doesn’t mean he’ll stop trying. “I was able to track down the place, and she offered to take me there,” he replies. They can take of that what they might. “I – I don’t know what happened. It was a trap. I don’t know if she was involved or not, but someone attacked me there with her lightsabers and mask.”

“And yet, there is no report of the clones sighting anyone else on the scene,” Master Mundi interjects.

He shouldn’t even be surprised by that. “I – I don’t know, but someone was there,” Anakin insists, “Just like in the prison. I couldn’t tell who it was. My senses are… clouded.” He hates having to admit that, but it’s the truth, and lying about it will look even worse.

“Clouded by the Dark Side, these things are, Padawan Skywalker,” Master Yoda replies, “Dangerously clouded, but not just surrounding you, surrounding many things in these times.”

He says it like he always does – in a tone that’s meant to be gentle, and it is, but Anakin finds no comfort in it now.

“You’ve already reached a decision, haven’t you?” Obi-Wan demands accusingly. Anakin can feel his rage – rage that he feels himself. “This meeting is merely formality.”

He’s not wrong, but now doesn’t feel like the time to be so blunt.

His heart is hammering in his ears, and he can’t – can’t think. He’s terrified.

“Reached a decision, we have,” Yoda admits, “Though not in total agreement are we.”

“It is the Council’s opinion that Padawan Anakin Skywalker has committed sedition against the Republic, and thus, he will be expelled from the Jedi Order,” Windu continues.

“You can’t do this!” Obi-Wan yells from below, and Anakin hears lightsabers igniting – the Temple Guards must be holding him back from – from something.

“Your Padawan status will be stripped from you, and you shall forfeit all rank and privileges within the Grand Army of the Republic. You will be turned over to the Republic courts to await your trial and whatever punishment they will set for you. Henceforth, you are barred from the Jedi Order.”

Anakin feels numb. Can’t feel anything except a distant horror.

He’s only felt like this twice in his life – once when he heard Qui-Gon died, and he lost the only person willing to take care of him, and a second time when he stood over the remnants of the ship at the Citadel, over the charred ground, staring at Echo’s smoking helmet.

He remembers the explosion. The smoke. The blood. It was – Force, that is one thing he will never get out of his head.

They expelled him from the Order. It’s like their refusal to train him all over, only Qui-Gon isn’t here to promise to do whatever’s right, to take care of him, even if the Council tries to stop him. And there is nothing Obi-Wan can do. And this time, it’s after he always gave his life and so many of his friends, his brothers for the Order.

And now…

He has nothing. Is nothing.

[feltpool]

Fox would enlist Rex, Wolffe, Hound, etc’s help to track down, and hold to account, the person who organised and carried out the murder of all of those shock troopers in order to blame it on Ahsoka having done it in making her escape from her jail cell back in S5. All of the barriers having been turned off and the armed bodies being spread all over the corridors certainly suggests that there was someone who did that in person (unlike Letta Turmond’s death) before planting the card for the door for Ahsoka to find and making their exit before Fox returned to the office to raise the alarm.

.

Then they’d all be able to gain some peace knowing that at least some of their brothers senseless deaths had been avenged within their lifetime

If Order 66 never happened and Palpatine fell off the face of the galaxy, how would your favorite clones live happily ever after? I wanna hear all the headcanons. 🥰

[theclonewarsdaily]

the clone wars chronological watch: #106 ➡ Sabotage

Invasion! The planet Cato Neimoidia is under Separatist attack. Anakin Skywalker and his Padawan, Ahsoka Tano, rush to the rescue as they lead a squadron of starfighters to the planet below...

[cptrs]

[jedi-enthusiast]

Ahsoka was off planet, but they thought that she was working with another woman---Letta Turmond---as an accomplice to help her bomb the Temple, when in actuality Letta was working with Barriss.

They suspect Ahsoka of this because, when Ahsoka goes to interview Letta, Letta reveals that she was working with a Jedi, but she gets Force-choked and killed before she can reveal who it was. And on the recording of the interview, which didn't have any audio so they couldn't hear what was said, it looked like Ahsoka was the one Force-choking her---therefore making it seem like she went there with the intent of killing her accomplice before she could reveal anything.

After all of that and she gets arrested, Ahsoka then makes an increasing number of bad decisions that just make her look even more guilty---which leads to the Jedi being unable to defend her and expelling her.

And, even during her trial, Ahsoka only really makes herself look more guilty by being vague and also not revealing that she had contact with Barriss---to the point where the only reason she wasn't convicted was because Anakin caught Barriss and brought her to the Senate to confess.

Ok here's my thing with "The Wrong Jedi" arc, and I'm saying this as someone who actually really likes Ahsoka in TCW.

People use this arc to shit on the Jedi (particularly the Council) so much, but like...Ahsoka was literally doing everything she could to make herself look guilty and give them no other choice but to suspect her.

Like, let's put this in perspective, shall we?

One of the people in your (really fucking large) family--someone you know of, but whom most of the family isn't really close to--gets accused of murdering someone and being a part of a terrorist group--and apparently there's video evidence, although even that doesn't really make it clear what happened.

You, of course, start trying to do everything you can to get said cousin out of jail since--even though you're not close to them--you don't think they would do something like that, and the evidence isn't concrete.

But, while you're trying to help them get released, you find out that your cousin has escaped from the county jail, several police officers are dead from knife wounds, and the only evidence is a knife that specifically belongs to your cousin as well as a couple other things that implicate them.

Your cousin goes on the run, then teams up with a known murderer and terrorist, and hurts even more police officers while on the run until finally they're caught once again.

Now you are left with a choice: you can either continue trying to defend your cousin, or you allow the police to take them into custody to face a trial.

Right now a lot of people hate your family, to the point that they're sending death threats and mail bombs and screaming obscenities outside your ancestral home.

It's already putting everyone else in your family, including literal children and babies, in danger and if you continue defend your cousin--despite all of the evidence that points to them being guilty--they could be put in even more danger and the government funding that your family lives off of could be taken away, since you would be defending a suspected terrorist.

So, in that situation, what would you honestly do?

You would do the smart, and reasonable, thing and stop defending your cousin so the police could take them into custody.

The Council tried to help Ahsoka, but she kept doing things to make herself look guilty and--in doing so--put them in a hard position where they couldn't defend her anymore without causing harm to the rest of the Order.

And would you really, truly, honestly defend someone when all of the evidence points to them being guilty? Of course not!

If you want to blame someone for what happened in that arc, blame Barriss for framing Ahsoka in the first place or Tarkin for being such a dick, but shut the fuck up about the Jedi.

They were put in a shitty position and made the best choices they could in a bad situation.

[mylordshesacactus]

I love how you’ve explained Barriss’ intentions during the wrong Jedi arc in the past, how Ahsoka was never meant to take the fall, and how Barriss *attempted* to shift blame onto Ventress. But I’ve always been confused why Barriss set Ahsoka free onto Coruscant since at that point she didn’t have the Ventress plan yet. Did she just free her and… hope for the best? Or did she initially plan something else and it just went wrong and was forced to set Ahsoka free?

Bold of you to assume Barriss had anything resembling a plan from the moment she panicked and murdered Letta Turmond to the moment she realized she could frame Ventress.

The thing about Barriss is--when she's scared, she kills people. Look at her instinctive, knee-jerk panic response in the proto-Order 66 moment in Brain Invaders. No hesitation, no thinking, no tactical analysis; she was in danger, Ahsoka was in danger, she took the brutally efficient killing blow by unthinking reflex.

That's what happens when you take a girl with severe anxiety and put her on the front lines of a manufactured war. If those lightning-fast reflexes were any less strong, she would be dead by now--and in that situation, objectively, she was not morally in the wrong. Willingly or no, those clones were trying to kill her! She was completely justified in killing them first.

But it absolutely informs how I view the Wrong Jedi arc, because it shows us just how bad Barriss' startle response is. How wrung dry the war has left her. When in any doubt at all, when she feels threatened, she doesn't fuck around asking questions. She takes the kill and she takes it before you have a chance to blink.

When the initial plan has gone off the rails and she doesn't have time to make a new one--she is SO fucking bad at improvisation. She panics hard, shuts down, can't think; look at Weapons Factory, where she depends on Ahsoka to think on her feet when the plan fails. It shows up in how wild and scattered Ahsoka's "prison break" is, where clearly no thought has gone into anything but the next few seconds, versus once Barriss has actually had a chance to think.

Ahsoka called BARRISS to ask for help, you may recall. Barriss had no way of contacting her to offer it, and certainly no way of just knowing Ahsoka would call her at all. That physically could not have been part of any plan--people acting like she could conceivably have set that up in advance are attributing, like...Palpatine levels of manipulative foresight to a girl who can't even improvise well enough to figure out a way to destroy a reactor without hand grenades while she is literally sitting at the controls of an armored tank.

Thus, breaking Ahsoka out was a panicked series of increasingly stupid decisions--whereas from the moment she has time to set something up in advance, it actually goes very smoothly. If she hadn't gotten high on the Darkside Tango and taken it too far, then panicked--again--when she snapped out of it, the responding clones would have seen her, dressed as Ventress, fleeing the scene. It would have backed up Ahsoka's version of the story, set up Ventress as the villain, and overridden any attempt the actual Asajj Ventress made to protest her own innocence--after all, trusted Republic soldiers SAW her at the scene! And now she's lying about it! She's clearly hiding something!

But, well. When Barriss Offee feels threatened, she reflexively acts to save her own life.

With ruthless, brutal efficiency, and wasting no time to think about the consequences.

[jbk405]

I thank you for the answer you gave to my question about barrissoka. now my second question do you think (if barriss did not bomb the Jedi temple) barriss and ahsoka could have left the order, fall in love, start dating, get married and then have kids adopted or biological

Could they? Absolutely. But with the number of caveats here we're essentially into AU territory, in which case anything is possible.

Getting into "How I would have done it...", unless we're re-writing the entire last three seasons of The Clone Wars there's no way to avoid the Wrong Jedi arc and Barriss's role in it. But what I would have done is change how she did it. Pulling from a post I wrote in 2020...

However I don’t buy all of Barriss’s actions.  I can believe her becoming disillusioned with the war and “falling in with a bad crowd” that could plan the bombing, since this kind of thing has happened in real life.  What I find over the line for the character is the way she methodically and deliberately framed Ahsoka, a dear friend.  Setting her up and even personally killing Clones along the way with no apparent hesitation or regret.  That’s too much “Jumping Off the Slipper Slope”, where a character goes from “complex and ethically dubious” to “straight-up villain” with no intermediary.

What I feel they should have done was keep the beginning the same -- arranging the bombing then killing Letta Turmond when she was about to confess -- but then have Barriss hover on the line of really framing Ahsoka.  She can tell herself “it’s not my fault” when Ahsoka is originally arrested, it’s just the bad luck that she was present when Barriss “had” to kill Letta.  She can continue the “I’m not really framing Ahsoka” lie to herself when she sneaks her a passcard and her lightsabers by saying that she’s honestly trying to help Ahsoka escape.  If she doesn’t actually kill any Troopers along the way or plant any evidence she can still cling to that “I’m not evil, this is all for the greater good” rationale.

Then, as Ahsoka continues her investigation instead of going into hiding -- which Ahsoka was obviously going to do but again at this point Barriss is lying to herself that Ahsoka will  lay low and that will be the end of it -- this is when Barriss steps over that line to incontrovertibly frame her.  She sets up Ahsoka to be captured with the explosives as happened in the show, and the rest of the arc continues from there.

That would have been a much more natural progression, to see her go from “misguided extremist” to “callously evil”.

After this, both Ahsoka and Barriss can be wracked with guilt and conflicted feelings over how everything went down. Barriss as a character can retain a lot of sympathy for her actions since she is somebody who got in over her head in trying to do something right and got swept up in fear and panic until she became something her own self would never recognize. This opens the doorway to a self-realization and a potential redemption without the story needing to walk back deliberate and gleeful betrayal. Not that you couldn't do a redemption story with such a character -- any character can have a redemption arc -- but "This character chose evil" requires an entirely different arc to redeem them than "This character was out of control".

With such a basis for the story it is very easy to see them reuniting after the Purge and eventually starting a relationship ("Eventually" being the key word there after they've dealt with their trauma). Barriss may escape from her prison during the turmoil of the Empire's rise, and accidentally run into Ahsoka while they are both in hiding. Barriss may be released by the Empire in order to help hunt down the remaining Jedi, only to find herself choosing to assist them when it comes to the end. Ahsoka may decide to rescue Barriss from her prison in light of their old friendship and in need of any allies she can find. I've read fanfic with all of these premises, and more.

However they meet up again, provided Barriss's actions and motivations are addressed -- really addressed -- she and Ahsoka could eventually rekindle the spark that was once between them. It won't be easy, but it also won't be impossible, and they could eventually reach their Happily Ever After together.

[feltpool]

More brain clearance thoughts

Same warning as the last post.

May contain Bad Batch spoilers, I might just be talking rubbish.

Either way, if you don’t usually like my ideas about the show it’s probably best to avoid reading this.

By the time The Clone Wars aired its final episode we were still left with a lot of loose ends and unanswered questions, things that many of us have given up on ever getting a canon answer for, but it seems like the writers of The Bad Batch have spent time looking into this and thinking about what they can reasonably tie up or borrow from fanfic before leaving the CW era behind entirely.

We’re already well on the way to getting answers about what happened to Rex between TCW and Rebels that led to him ending up living on Seelos with Gregor and Wolffe.

I already covered the possibility for what happened to Dogma post-Umbara

So what about Commander Fox?

. Fox shot Fives. And we’re left to assume that he was exonerated for it afterwards, everyone had been told that Fives had tried to assassinate the Chancellor after all. But we never got to see any follow up, we never saw Fox again in the show after that episode.  We also never saw Fox without his helmet on - leading to HC’s about Fox getting his name because of his red or silver hair.   But Fox could just as easily get his name because of his cunning, his resourcefulness and his tenacity, and not his hair colour.

.

Fox doesn’t get a lot of screen time to choose from so lets jump right in the deep end and look at the scene where Fives meets his untimely end...

Anakin and Rex have met Fives in the warehouse and he’s trapped them inside a ray shield.

If you listen when they’re talking you’ll notice that Fives is agitated and sometimes loud, not shouting but still being louder than a normal speaking volume, but the ray shield adds to the echo of Anakin and Rex’s voices so makes what they say louder and clearer than anything Fives is saying:

Fives: “How do I know you’re not tricking me? How do I know it won’t be a trap? The Chancellor will try to kill me! I promise you that!”

Anakin: “The Chancellor?”

Fox enters the warehouse building with his troopers in tow

Fives: “He’s in on it.  I don’t know to what extent, but I know he orchestrated much of this. He told me in the medical bay!”

Anakin: “He told you? When you tried to assassinate him? You have gone too far, Fives! The Chancellor is incapable of what you claim”

Fives: “He is! I swear to you General. You have no idea...”

Fox gets within range and Fives ends up going down. The shield is deactivated and Rex rushes to Fives’ side.

And Fox is standing right there when Fives says:

“Rex. This... is bigger than any of us… than anything I could have imagined. I never meant to… I only wanted to do my duty. The mission… The nightmares… They’re finally over”

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What interests me in this scene is how clearly Fox must have been able to hear what Anakin is saying as he approaches Fives’ position with his men.

Back in the S4 Ahsoka arc, when she leaves her jail cell and Fox thinks she’s killed the clones under his command he issues a ‘shoot to kill’ order. Which makes sense in the given context. The clones know how powerful the Jedi are, how much of a threat a rogue Jedi presents, and he saw her appear to kill Letta Turmond without so much as laying a finger on her from the viewscreens in the guard station not too long ago.

And since it also appears that she’s just killed some of his own men, his brothers, you can see why Fox is angry about that and responds with full force.

But not only does Anakin tell him not to do that, Rex backs him up and tells him that he knows Ahsoka, and that she wouldn’t do that.  In the later pursuit of her it’s made clear that it’s all weapons set to stun, do not shoot to kill.

And in that warehouse he once more has Anakin’s word to go off. And why wouldn’t he listen to him, listen to the Jedi? Because that’s exactly what they’ve all been trained to do and it worked out well the last time he did that. The true killer of his men was discovered and apprehended.

But here, what Fox likely hears far more clearly than anything else is Anakin saying:

“When you tried to assassinate him?  You have gone too far, Fives!”

and Fox acts upon what he hears. Just like he did previously.

And he shoots Fives right in the chest with a live round and kills him.

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But what happens after that?

Anakin’s immediate response is to tell the troopers to get the ray shield off, and Rex rushes straight to Fives’ side and calls him brother. Calls for a medic.

Hardly the actions of people who are glad you just shot down the dangerous man who tried to assassinate the Chancellor.

Fives doesn’t waste his last breaths on damning the Chancellor, or anyone else in that room. He only talks about the conspiracy, and says he wanted to do his duty.

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Fox is up and on his feet right through Fives’ speech to Rex as he’s dying, he was close enough to shoot him at close range, so he’s close enough to see the pain on Rex’s face as he holds Fives in his arms, close enough to hear the anguish in his voice. Close enough to see the pain on Anakin’s face as well.

We see him twice amongst the shock troopers standing around as the view cuts back and forth, but he doesn’t join the others as they gather around Fives and Rex just after Fives died, and as the camera pans out we don’t see him in shot at all.

So where has he gone?

He was standing with the guard when one took out the ray shield. That’s his shoulder guard there on the left.

He was standing with his men when Fives says: “This is bigger than any of us, than anything I could have imagined”

But 36 seconds later, once Fives has gone and that same trooper who shot out the shield generator removes his helmet.

No Fox.

Just how quickly did he realise just what he’d done here and have to get out of that place?

To feel sick for what’d just happened? For having acted rashly and murdered a fellow clone he’d only intended to knock down and had to leave or… what?

Vomit? Cry? Stumble from that room only to sit on the floor outside as his legs gave out in shock as the full realisation of what he’d just done hit him?

We see the look on the face of the ray shield shooting trooper, see his sadness as he looks down at Rex and Fives and they all realise what just happened.  But we don’t see Fox.

Because Fox didn’t intend to kill Fives but was pushed to do it by a fast bit of mental programming to shut Fives up permanently. Not by the Chancellor with his Sith mind control abilities, but by Nala Se seeking to hide what was really going on there. A full on mental reconditioning of his brain might not be possible long distance, but sending a signal to his inhibitor chip that allowed his judgement to be affected, to put him off balance at just the right moment to affect his judgement and before he realises that something’s wrong it’s already far too late to do anything about it

And being careless with his blaster isn’t something that Fox would ordinarily be, he’d hardly be the most highly decorated clone in the GAR if he was reckless.

And he’d never choose to kill a brother in cold blood.

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So what happened after that?

Most likely he went looking for an explanation that’d make sense out of this mess.

But he’d have to look into it independently. After all, Fives had claimed that the Chancellor “orchestrated much of this. He told me in the medical bay!” and since it was the same man who’d have overseen the committee that looked into the affair afterwards and failed to find anything wrong he could hardly turn to him or the senate for any help with it, and he doesn’t have a Jedi General to turn to.

And we know the matter went to an official investigation because when Ahsoka is following Rex’s lead to ‘find Fives’ just after Order 66 has been called she brings up two old reports on the matter:

Nala Se (in recording): An independent investigation confirmed that the Clone Trooper CT-5555 experienced a malfunction with his inhibitor chip.

Both the Senate committee and the Jedi Council have accepted these findings.

However, a grievance report was filed by CT-7567.

Cut to Rex’s report:

Rex (in recording): I already know this report is gonna fall on deaf ears, [sighs] but I owe it to Fives to record what I saw.

I'm not sure I believe it myself, but there's a possibility that the inhibitor chips the Kaminoans put inside of us have a purpose that we don't yet fully understand.

So what happened next?

Fox realises he’s been just as used and lied to by the people with power over him as Dogma was by Krell?

And then what?

Because something happened here that we haven’t seen yet, something that leads to the big question I’ve been working towards here:

Was Crosshair formerly Commander Fox?

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The sniper. A gun programmed to point in the right place at the right time.

Fox didn’t expect Fives to die when he shot him. Only expected to put him on the ground, just like Crosshair later does with Wrecker. Because it’s not so much that he’d shot him that’s the issue here, so much as that the variable power output of his blaster was turned up so high that it burned a hole right through his armour and into his chest. We know that Rex was badly hurt when he got shot in the chest, but it was a survivable wound that he’d recovered from sufficiently to get back to work the next day. And Cross was careful with the settings when he shot Wrecker. You see him adjusting and checking his rifle beforehand. It was enough to hurt him, but not enough to do him any major harm. You see him doing the same thing before he shoots in Caleb's direction as well. Crosshair always checks the power output before he takes a shot.

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I did a little research to make sure the power could be changed on blasters (quote from wikipedia):

Blaster weaponry can vary the intensity of their output, generating bolts of greater destructive power but with corresponding trade-offs. For example, the DC-15 blaster rifle used by clone troopers can blast a hole .5 m (1 ft 8 in) wide in a wall made of the fictional material ferroconcrete when set on maximum power, but doing so consumes more [tibanna] gas and reduces its ammunition capacity from 500 shots to 300. A more powerful blaster bolt also generates more recoil which can make it more difficult to use the weapon.

No one had to force his hand to make him shoot Fives, only to nudge him towards turning up the power output beforehand.

And after that?

Fox doesn’t have to be the smartest trooper out there to be determined to find out the how and why of what happened there that day, he just has to know that it was wrong, to be stubborn and thorough, and to refuse to let the matter go. Just like Fives wouldn’t.  Unfortunately that didn’t work out so well for him either, but he’d heard what Fives said so when he got the opportunity he had himself scanned and got his chip removed. A looooooong time ago!

He wasn’t lying, This is who he is.

The writer’s have had great fun in interviews telling us that we should see a noticeable difference between Crosshair with his chip and Crosshair without it

And we do, we just haven’t been handed the context to realise exactly when it happened until we’re specifically looking for that moment. But that doesn’t mean you can’t work it out.

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When he says ‘Good Soldiers Follow Orders’ he does that because he knows it’s what Tup said when he was sick because of the chip, and he knows that because it was in the reports he’s read. No other clone ever says it. Not Rex, not Jesse, not even Wrecker when his chip fully kicks in.  But he knows Tech is recording him and wants to fake this as well as he possibly can for anyone who might have access to his recordings.

Because the only way he’s ever going to get to the bottom of all this is if he can gain access to the Kaminoans records, to do his best to find Fives in his own way and then to expose what’s been happening to the clones for all this time without anyone else knowing about it.

And not just to the standard clone troopers, but also to experimental Clone Force 99.

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In the training room Tarkin offers him a chance to catch his eye, he wants to see them in the training room to see what they can do. And his trick shot with the knife? Well, that worked perfectly!  Tech downplayed his own abilities without looking too obvious about it then flopped on the floor pathetically because catching Tarkin’s eye is the last thing he wants the rest of them to do, making Cross look like the perfect soldierly option.

And it’s probable that Cross had that little cry in the armoury where only Wrecker could see him because he already knew that persuing this course of action was going to be difficult and that it’s going to come at the cost of leaving his brothers behind where he can’t help to protect them. That he’s going to miss them all and will have to make some very hard decisions with no kind of support network around him. No Lula, no Tech, no Echo, and no Wrecker.

But this is their best shot at exposing this whole thing, of not only clearing his name of murder, but of letting all clones know what Fives tried to do for them as well as letting them know the full extent to which they’d all been used and controlled.

And it reminds me of the Rako Hardeen episodes, where Kenobi had to fake his own death and spend time behind enemy lines knowing in advance that he’d be cut off and alone, and would have to deal with whatever situation arose. No matter how much he knew it was going to hurt Anakin to think that he was dead, or how hard it’d be to maintain his facade while pretending to be a callous bounty hunter.

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On Onderon he’s careful to show nothing but loyalty to the Empire, even overdramatically groaning about it when Hunter tells him not to massacre the civilians, but also being a Good Soldier and Following Orders when Hunter gives them.

And a report is sent in which only confirms that.  Because right there is a chance for the sender to really sell Crosshair as being an ideal soldier for them, as showing them true loyalty even though there was no Imperial presence on the mission with them. And sure, it can turned around and made to look like his own team sold him out to further their own ends, but it really only helps Cross to get where he wants to be.

But after Cross is taken away from other others in the brig Nala Se gets to reprogram his mind again. Oh sure, she tells Tarkin that she’s enhancing his chip. What else is she going to say to the new guy they know almost nothing about? That she’s reprogramming his brain so he’ll behave in the way she wants him to and not in the way he normally would? And after they’re so keen to establish that the Kaminoans feel that they have to tread carefully among these new Empire representatives because they don’t know what they’re like or what kind of treatment towards the clones they’ll be happy about? Not to mention that she has secrets to hide here, technologies she wants to keep safely hidden.

We see the procedure causing him pain as it zaps his brain from both sides, but in spite of the treatment he was still able to exert enough control to allow the team to depart from the hangar at the end of the episode. However, it’s strongly suggested that he gets at least one more more session of treatment after that when we see him in the med bay again before he’s sent off to Onderon with his new squad to deal with the refugees there.

And after that we see him behaving very differently indeed. Not only does the stupidly mouthy ES-01 have to die because he’s made himself a direct threat to Crosshair but he also cannot afford to show any weakness or leniency towards him in front of the rest of his team. And while the refugees also have to die in order to maintain this pretence – he lets his squad take care of them while he walks away and doesn’t have to watch it happen.

Later on, and with an unknown number of potential further conditioning treatments in place (it’s unclear if she’d be able to give him any more after he’s been handed over to Rampart as his new Commander), he sets the Batch up to die on Bracca. They have no obvious escape from the ion engine and the Imps are already walking away from the ship when the explosives go off and the reality of their imminent demise as the engine flares snaps Cross’s programming like a dry stick.

He can’t help himself from crying out NO! when he sees it, but since everyone standing with him probably died in the blast from the engine with only his increased physical density saving him from death, no one was able to report that part in. The med techs we see with him afterwards presumably came in from elsewhere on site. His immediate reaction on finding out his brothers are alive is wanting to follow them, to go to them, to see for himself whether or not they’re ok. But they vanish off into hyperspace and his chance is lost. He sits and looks angry and thoughtful.

So what are his options now? To try to leave and give up on everything he was trying to achieve in the first place, to have suffered all this for nothing, or to stay put and see what he can still accomplish. It isn’t like Kenobi could have acted any differently when he was playing at being Rako Hardeen. They both have to commit fully to the role they’re playing while also trying to do as little harm as they can.

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Skip to the finale and we get this scene:

Crosshair: The Empire can't protect the galaxy without strength. This is what we were made for. Think of all we could do together. We were brothers once. We can be again.

Hunter: Why would we trust you?

And then Cross executes his team exactly as he’d previously set up. But not directly, he doesn’t shoot any of them himself, only bounces a shot off the reflectors. It still has the same end effect but he only ever kills ES-01 directly. Anyone else is only shot to wound. So far at least.

But why does he kill them? (aside from the whole scene being ripped off from referencing a different show - “Have you betrayed us? Have you betrayed me?”) It looks like a display of loyalty to the Batch, and it is, but that’s not entirely it.

He’s desperately lonely and he wants his brothers back by his side. He’s literally never once in his life had to spend so much time away from other clones and it’s killing him. Yes, there are problems within the team, but maybe things could be different under Empire control than when they were following the orders they were being given previously by the person Hunter refused to name back in TCW. They could find a way to work together to achieve the end goal he’s been working towards instead of being at odds with each other, hurting each other. To go back to the way things used to be.

And we see how much being alone is hurting him, the look on his face when he turns and sees Howzer standing in Rampart’s office with that oh so familiar face looking back at him.

And he wants that. Badly.

He wants them to come with him, but he can’t say that outright. Firstly because of his new team being present, and then because he doesn’t know where he stands. Not after they failed to respond to him after he called out to Hunter as the Batch were leaving Ryloth, and this happens before he realises that Hunter never told them he’d called him. That only happens in the following episode in the tunnels under Kamino.

But there and then if he brings the Batch in with him, maybe makes himself look a little sloppy. Not incompetent, but complacent enough for his squad to have been taken down by the Batch before he got through to them, but not bad enough for the Empire to dismiss him entirely.

But we don’t know what he had planned to happen next because Omega sets her own personal droid army off and everyone has to scramble for their lives.

She messed up all of his plans and no one but him even knows it.

And it makes ES-02 absolutely correct when she reports “Admiral, the Commander lost control of the situation.”, just not in quite the way she means it. However, she also helps him out here because it only aids in making him look sloppy, but not murderous.

But we’ve already seen him take steps towards looking less perfect than he could do. Like when he’s casually sitting on Rampart’s desk, in his office, directly facing the door, idly browsing through his datapad. Unlike the perfect soldier we’ve seen him act like at all other times.

Bloody impudent clone! Maybe he’ll behave better with his previous team leader around to keep him in his place.

And then that’s where Cody is likely to come in from the Empire side of things.

To find out if Crosshair is truly loyal, and whether he can remember to act like he’s a soldier of the Empire and not a desk polisher.

Bad Commander Crosshair!

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I posted previously about

Crosshair showing the physical signs of someone who’s experienced a stroke or similar type of brain injury

and if he managed to get his own chip removed but it didn’t go as well as the other removal operations we’ve seen then it could have left him with noticeable damage in the aftermath.

And maybe he’d have been able to keep it hidden for a while, which should be pretty easy since he often appears to keep his helmet on.

But he has no scar! I hear you cry. Well no, not if he had access to medical equipment to heal it up afterwards. Any traces would be hidden by his hair like Tech’s would be, and now that his skin is burned it could be gone without a trace.

Rex has a scar because he didn’t have access to follow up treatments, not because surgery always causes heavy scarring.

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There’s the possibility of it being a side effect of others messing with his head so often (”I've had my head adjusted by some of the best in the business. But it just won't stay adjusted.”), or of him fighting the reprogramming she’s inflicted on him. Re-laying new neural pathways to get around the blocks installed in his mind could have caused some noticeable side effects, and this is without going into the physical alterations that’ve made him taller, thinner, paler, etc.

.

Now, I’d suggest that the damage could have come from his investigation having been discovered by Palpatine. Palps could absolutely damage him in ways that no one would ever see externally, especially since he’s “severe and unyeilding” enough to resist any attempt to pursuade him to let this go.

‘Poor Commander Fox, probably the stress dont’cha know.’ Yadda yadda yadda and off to Kamino he goes, never to be seen again.

But surely he’d just kill him and be done with it. Who’s going to care enough about one lost clone anyway, right?

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In TBB Ep 01 after Tech informs them that the clones have been ordered to execute the Jedi on the grounds on them having committed treason what does Crosshair say?

“That would explain things”

Not only explaining what’s happening there and then with the Jedi, but what had been happening all along. The missing piece of the puzzle he’s been trying to work out for so long now.

What secret purpose it was that their inhibitor chips had.

What they’d really been created for.

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Many have complained about the loss of his sense of humour and playfulness we’d seen in TCW. Wrecker only got annoyance and was shoved away when he tried to pal up to him as usual, before Lula slapping him. But Wrecker looks surprised at his reaction to him. This wasn’t normal behaviour.

But Cross has a lot of his mind at this time and isn’t in the mood to deal with it just then.

Especially since what Tech has just been telling them all is how:

“It's been well documented that the Kaminoans inhibited the cognitive functions of clones to engineer them to follow orders without question.”

which is something he already knows more than enough about, and is something they should all be a lot more concerned about being informed of. Because that goes far beyond the scope of the inhibitor chips.

And why has Tech been looking into that anyway?

But rather than letting us focus on that statement they move in with the Lula slapping to distract us from what was just said.

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Anything else about Crosshair turning on the team at the start of TBB?

While Crosshair’s actions are being influenced here, on Kaller, and later on after his trip to the med bay on Kamino before he leaves with the Empire, it isn’t because of the inhibitor chip.

They’re just a red herring as far as most of this story goes.

The chips caused the clones to turn on the Jedi and their supporters, but once that’s done they’re just left with the knowledge that the Jedi were evil betrayers and that they have new masters and new orders to follow now. And after that point they have to make their own minds up about whether they want to follow those new orders and stick with the Empire or if they’d rather attempt to defect instead.

But once they convince us to focus on the chips being the root of all clone controlling evil we’re not looking for any other explanation. So they do still serve a point in the plot aside from setting these events in the timeline with the activation of Order 66, but it’s a lot more limited than they want us to think it is.

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Why was the Ep 01 hangar scene set up the way it was if not to make a parallel between that moment and Fives’ death?

Why fill a spaceship hangar with a bunch of boxes of troopers personal belongings if not to have an excuse to have a backdrop of crates for the scene to unfold against?  Because they could have gone pretty much anywhere on Kamino to retrieve their armour and weapons. There’s nothing special about that specific location other than that being the place the story contrives to put the things they’re going to need before they leave.

Why are there shock troopers on Kamino in the first place? Kamino doesn’t need them to be there, they have their own security forces with a grey and white paint job, and it shouldn’t be like the Empire are so short on troops that they need the CG to watch their backs.

The only real reason I can see for them to be there at all is so they can set up a scene where they can make the same man’s life take a sharp turn for the worst, for the second time, when he enters a darkened space filled with boxes, while flanked by shock troopers, before shooting a man who hasn’t done anything wrong.

They do love their parallels in this show.

But this time he lets his men go in first, takes his time to assess the situation before him, and places his shot a lot more carefully.

And just look at the curved, swirled, striped lighting of the ray shield in front of Fox, and the light on the wall behind Crosshair as he stands in the doorway.

Coincidence? In animation? I highly doubt it!

Anyway, he checks the power output of his rifle, then hits Wrecker in the exact same place we already saw him take a hit and walk away from it earlier in the episode. Crosshair may not entirely be feeling like himself at this point, but he hasn’t become a meat-droid either.

And both Fox and Crosshair have showed that they care about their brothers.

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I’ve said previously (somewhere) that it seemed like Crosshair might have been the new guy before Echo joined the team, with CT-9904 implying that he’s the 4th to join the group, not the youngest clone there.  Umbara was Season 4, The Fives arc Season 6. But we don’t know how many attempts there have been to try to create ‘superior’ clones, only that there are four team members and Nala Se says ‘Five are all that remain’ What number does Tech have? He could be CT-9908 and that wouldn’t affect the amount of squad members, only the number of attempts at generating clones who manage to survive the ‘enhancement’ process.

And surely there's a reason the Empire immediately assigned him the rank of Commander despite everyone referring to him by a CT number and not a CC or RC number. As far as we know the only Batch member with any rank other than ‘trooper’ is Hunter.  I've always thought it was an odd detail, especially since Rampart doesn’t think much of the clones, but we all saw how easily he took to his new command position right off the bat.

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I was trying to work out exactly how Omega could claim to know what Crosshair would do next when they were in the brig, which led to me rewatching the scene where Cross is supposed to be getting his chip enhanced. And Nala Se says to Tarkin “the order does appear to be working.” With a very odd emphasis on ‘appear’. Because she really can’t be certain, but clearly can’t tell for sure if his reprogramming has been successful just by scanning his head. She knows who Cross used to be, she knows how he ended up back on Kamino And she may well assume she knows full well what it is that he wants to do given the opportunity to get out of there. He's severe and unyielding, and unwilling to give up on his end goal, and this is his chance to make a play for it.

. But back to Omega. She's said enough that's been wrong right to his face, and she's a part of Kamino, not a part of his family unit. So he’s doing his best not to say anything in front of her which might cause him problems later on, he has a quest to fulfil and no current intention of letting it go

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Cut to the end of episode 1, after the Batch have escaped

Lama Su: Has the matter been rectified? Nala Se: The inhibitor chip augmentation was a success.  However, the remaining clones of squad 99 have escaped, along with Omega. Lama Su: We must be cautious.  Until the Empire's intentions are made clear, say nothing. Nala Se: Yes, Prime Minister.

This is another one those split conversations we don't initially notice.

Has the matter been rectified?

The inhibitor augmentation was a success

and

However, the remaining clones of squad 99 have escaped, along with Omega.

Are two absolutely different things.

And Lama Su's concerns? "We must be cautious. Until the Empire's intentions are made clear, say nothing."

They're about Crosshair, not Omega.

Nala Se wasn't buying that Cross was genuinely showing loyalty to the Empire but she also tells Lama Su that she was enhancing his inhibitor chip. Which strongly suggests that the Kaminoan Prime Minister knows very little about what she’s been getting up to in her own private lab, and Taun We likely knew nothing of it either.

All of this comes down to one scientist pushing what she has at hand to see just how far she can go with the technology she’s created and caring nothing for the suffering she inflicts upon those people in the process. Just because you can do a thing doesn’t mean that you should.

And Omega is Nala Se’s creation.

Nala Se doesn't let Omega go so much as she lets the team get away from Kamino before Crosshair can ground them and she risks her special secret project falling into Empire hands and them being able to do whatever they want with the things that she’s created.

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But let's go back to this scene:

Omega: You're angry. Crosshair: How perceptive. Omega: I know what you're going to do, but please don't. Crosshair: What do you know? Omega: I know it's not your fault. You can't help it.

And Cross gives her that barely seen sly smile. But she also directly tells him that she knows far too much about what's happening here than any mere child should. And he shuts her down quickly at every opportunity after that. Because he isn't stupid and he knows she's a part of this, that she knows too much. He keeps her firmly at arms length and wants nothing to do with her, he doesn’t even call her by her name, only referring to her as ‘the kid’, and saves her from drowning more to stop Hunter from jumping in after her and risking his own life in the process than to actually benefit her.

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Anyway, we all know Cross is angry, he’s put on a good show for everyone watching as he pointed out that Hunter is a poor leader and they never should have gone back to Kamino. That's hardly a stunning revelation. But what is it that she 'knows' he's going to do? She also says 'you can't help it' Why can't he help it?  Why does she assume he'll have a loss of free will or self control? She wasn't in the room while he was getting his ‘chip enhancement’ done because she'd already been caught by the Shock Troopers, so if she knows about that then she'd need to have known in advance that his head was going to be messed with. And of course she does, why would such things not be freely discussed with, or in front of, Nala Se’s assistant just like when Tarkin is there and they discuss everything right in front of her. She's a part of all this, not some innocent bystander. Azi tells us "We are official Kaminoan medical personnel". Not I am, we are.

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And how else would Foxhair tie in to the wider plotline and some of the characters still in play?

He’s connected to Ahsoka from his pursuit of her following her escape from jail even if people mostly seem to remember Wolffe from that arc because of the scene where he shoots her and the associated Plo Koon angst potential.  Just because she didn’t show up in TBB yet doesn’t mean she doesn’t have the potential to do so later.

To Anakin and Rex from that arc, the Fives arc, and from the mission to Skako Minor.  

To Wolffe, however loosely, from the time they both spent pursuing Ahsoka.

To Cody, who already knows the Batch and introduces us to them, as well as his forthcoming appearance in Season 2

To Palpatine and the Empire by his prior job with the Coruscant Guard as well as by whatever his current position will turn out to be after they’ve retrieved him from Kamino.

And he’s connected to Echo through having assisted in rescuing him from Skako Minor, being on the same team as him for a while, and also because he’s the man who killed his long time friend and brother.

Which then suggests that this is a part of the reason they chose to bring Echo back from the dead after all this time. So they can come back to those events and deal with the repercussions of that plotline from all those years ago. To give Rex, Echo *and* Fox some closure over the matter as well as showing exactly who was responsible for everything that happened to kick that arc off in the first place.

Which also makes sense of why we didn’t see them mention, let alone actually talk about, Fives when Rex and Echo met up in Cid’s bar. Can’t get them talking about him and exposing the underlying plot too soon, can they?

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What else?

Look at this:

What’s that on the side of his helmet? Is that a microphone or a camera on his left hand side? The SW way for commanders to have a record of personal accountability?

If it is then he knows what it's like to constantly record everything around you as a part of your duty, which would go a long way to explaining why he knows to be SO very very careful with every word he says in front of Tech in the finale.  

Because if the things Tech records are retrieved from wherever they get stored or backed up to then his own words could easily be used against him at some later point. And that’s without the risk of some Empire lackey overhearing him talking and reporting what he said.

. Fox appears to have had a forward facing aspect to his position with the CG. He’s there in the office when Ahsoka comes to the prison, and again when Anakin comes to talk to her. He’s likely had to deal with the public in a way that most clone troopers will never have had to do, or had the opportunity to do. This can only have helped him to deal with Rampart and the members of his former Elite Squad, as well as any other non-clone troopers he has to deal with in the future.

Having the skill of being able to read the mood of the room and pick out the extent of the underlying intent in ES-01's words and tone is a valuable skill that the Batch team could sorely use right now, and one which will also help keep him alive and one step ahead of Rampart, who isn't likely to expect that from a clone.

It also helps explain how he knew just what to say to get under Rex's skin on Skako, and how his words helped to keep Rex motivated instead of putting him off from his goal. .

What about Crosshair’s tattoo?

When did he get that badly drawn tattoo?  And it is badly drawn, especially the line running down his cheek. It’s reasonably straight but it isn’t consistently applied. The horizontal line is higher on one side of his eye than on the other, and the line thicknesses of the whole thing vary wildly, not to mention the gaps in the lines. 

Not only have we ever seen any other clone sporting a poorly applied tattoo, but would someone as precise as Crosshair really choose to have that mess scrawled on his face? Are we supposed to assume he did it himself so it’s ok if it looks shit? Or is this a part of the once mentioned bullying? That this was something drawn on him by someone else, someone with power over him, that he’s never dared to have removed for fear of what punishment would be inflicted if he tried it.

Is it an enforced reminder to him that this is who he is now? That he’s Crosshair and he’d better not forget it!  Clones tattoos don’t generally relate directly to their names, Fives is the only exception I can think of there. Which is probably for the best otherwise Jesse might have been named Coghead.

And what of the picture from Hunter’s trunk?

Just how closely have you really looked at that picture?

Same picture

And the crossed arms. Ever notice that habit of his?  It isn’t common amongst clones, they usually keep their arms by their sides or have a helmet under one arm.  It’s noticeable because were see it so infrequently.

But they both do it, and it’s almost always the left arm over the right.

.

But why didn’t Crosshair leave with his brothers at the end of season 1?

Because he knew there was no point in doing so. “None of this changes anything.”

Kallus chose to return to the Empire before having a good think about things and becoming Fulcrum and that’s who we’re set up to most think of in that situation, but Kenobi had the chance to return to the Jedi during the Rako Hardeen arc, realised that the job wasn’t yet over and chose to remain for a while longer in order to complete his task.

Once he realised that Hunter never told the others he’d been in touch with him on Ryloth he knew that they’re all taking his actions at face value and that anything he says is his word against Hunter’s. That they all think he really has turned against them and sided with the Empire, taken the easy way out and chosen a bed, 3 meals a day and all the ammo he can fire over fighting for his brothers like some of them had been planning before he left the team - shows what they know, right?

This is only further backed up when Tech says “Understanding you does not mean that I agree with you.” and he does think he understands him. Understands why he’d choose to stay where he is of his own free will and not come back and suffer with the rest of them rather then helping them find a way out of their situation as well. But he’s wrong.

In order to achieve his aims Crosshair has chosen to stay where he is even though “loyalty means everything to the clones”

But that’s only a part of the story and one that’s likely to come out by the end of Season 2

Regardless of how hard he tried to convince his old team to come with him in the finale, that he set up in advance and then slaughtered his Imperial team in front of them, no matter how much he protected them all in the fight and through the collapse of Kamino, he still chose to stay and wait for someone else to pick him up.

Because he’s finally managing to put all the pieces of a long term puzzle together, of being placed in a position to help all of his brothers and not just himself or his own team. He’s looking at the bigger picture and how it’ll negatively affect all of the clones. And that’s something he can’t simply turn his back on in order to go and play happy families with his brothers, no matter how much he really really wants to be able to do that.

.

Because despite what Hunter says in the S2 trailer, none of them will really be free until the Empire decides to let them go, and even then that’s debatable for this particular special team.

But that’s audience knowledge, not character knowledge.

[mademoiselle-cookie]

It’s implied at a few points, especially in books and material to do with the Old and High Republic 

If it wasn't in the movies or TV series, it wasn't canon, so I won't talk about that.

Think about all the abandoned temples throughout the outer rim and other obscure locations we see across the series. They weren’t always ruins, they used to be maintained and have Jedi posted there. 

In canon, they never talk about why the old temples are abandonned. So the logical explanation is : they left. People moved constantly. In a big galaxy during a long period of time, it's bound to happen. When things change and your location no longer suits you, you move. 1000 years ago, the Republic didn't exist, so the needs of the Jedi weren't the same.

Do you know how small 10 000 is for a community? How do you expect them to divide their number in a galaxy this big? They can literally all live in the Temple in Coruscant, which is ONE planet on ONE system. In AOTC, Dooku said he managed to rally the support to 10 000+ systems (not planets, SYSTEMS). Hell, even Coruscant is ridiculously big in comparison to the Jedi. There are 1 trillion people on the planet. 1 000 000 000 000. 130 times Earth’s population.

"[...] the whole force of the Republic, which is 100,000 systems" The Star Wars Archives: 1999-2005, 2020

And again, they really don’t have to be. 

Children will be all the better protected if there are as many Jedi around them as possible. So it’s important they stay together. And the Jedi are a big, multicultural family. Every Knights and Masters (even Padawans) are a possible teacher, so if they’re all in the same place = more teachers. Every individuals is unique and they all have something different to teach. You reduce this diversity by dividing them like that.

They could have had multiple temples or outposts 

Why would they need outposts anyway? If they need to go somewhere far, they use their ship. They’re not the ones who has to fix all the wrongs in the galaxy and must therefore be ready at all time. It’s the mission of the Republic.

"Jedi are like negotiators. They aren’t people that go out and blow up planets, they aren’t people that shoot down things." The Phantom Menace, “Prime of the Jedi” Featurette, 2001

"And the idea with Star Wars is that the monks really aren’t warriors, they're negotiators." Celebration V, Main Event, 2010

The Jedi receive their authority from the Republic, so it is normal that their home is in the heart of the Republic, right next to the Senate. Their missions are mostly about negociation, mediation and protection, no need for outposts for that.

This point was a major thesis of the Clone Wars. How many times did we see a group of Jedi swoop in to help a group of civilians under threat from the war, only to be criticized for not being in touch with the people?

Given that's it's not at all a theme of Star Wars, not as many as you think. I think of only two (2!) times.

The first is Letta Turmond, a person who feed her husband bombs to explode the Jedi Temple. Who killed clones and civilians. So she has shit to say about the Order. And the second time is indeed with Trace and Rafa, who didn't know a Jedi can leave the Order when Dooku is famously an ex-Jedi and who went to leave Coruscant to be free of the war.

(Which is a great idea.)

Because that's the issue with them : they know jack shit about the Jedi Order or the situation of the galaxy. They're unreliable narrator, who get feed by Palpatine's anti-jedi propaganda.

You may have forget that but Palpatine also used the war to ternish their reputation.

[“The accusations that the Jedi created the Clone War to give themselves more power over the government is absurd, and I will not stand for it”]

It's not a coincidence if the only persons who accuse the Order of not being in touch live on Coruscant, where the propaganda is the strongest. (And it will be so ungrateful from the populations that the Jedi have risked their life to save to tell them that)

Their's a reason if no one was bothered when a whole community was massacred to its last child.

But it is a sign of a systemic issue with the Order itself

You're confusing a Republic problem with a Jedi problem. They can't help everyone, it's virtually impossible, and the galaxy shouldn't be dolled up and overprotected like that by them. It has to fend for itself. Which is the role of the Republic.

It's the Senate who detached itself from the galaxy it was supposed to protect by letting itself become corrupt.

It's the civilians too who refused to take their leader accountable and didn't care about the persons who tried to protect them for thousands of years being slaughtered while accepting the lose of freedom for the "peace" of the Empire.

They took their rule of no attachment too seriously

You don't know what attachment means in SW.

It's not a synonym for love/relationship/affection/… it's about possessivness and greed. It's self-centered and a cause of suffering.

"[Jedi] do not grow attachments, because attachment is a path to the dark side. You can love people, but you can’t want to possess them. They’re not yours. Accept that they have a fate. Even those you love most are going to die. You can’t do anything about that. Protect them with your lightsaber, but if they die they were going to die. there’s nothing you can do. All you can do is accept that fact." George Lucas, Star Wars Archives 1999-2005

Letting go is always represented as a good thing and not doing it a bad thing. Ex : Anakin.

Good : letting Padmé go in AOTC to focus on Dooku (because Obi-Wan would have died alone)

Bad : commiting a genocide to save her.

Or just, Obi-Wan. He loves deeply (Qui-Gon, Anakin, Satine, Padmé, Yoda, Dexter, the Order…) but he's fully capable of letting them go. I remind you that he never fall to the dark side when all the people he loved either died or betrayed him.

wound up detached from the galaxy they were supposed to protect, only viewing it in abstract, in theory, rarely as a concrete place inhabited by real people

WHEN? What make you think that?

Because they didn't give hugs to civilians?

(lol) (But more seriously, Jedi don't seem to have a problem with people in general)

Or because they didn't help anyone without the Senate's orders?

If we forget 2 minutes that the whole reason they entered an intergalactic war who killed them was to protect the galaxy against the Separatists and the Siths, from memory, they did it, even during a war :

Onderon, a separatist planet,

Mandalore, the leader of the neutral council, multiple times,

the Lumen, whose leader didn't want to help the Jedi,

Felucia (I don't remember if they were part of the Republic but the Senate didn't care about them),

the native tribe of Orti Plutonia that the Chairman of Pantora, a planet of the Republic, wanted dead.

Perhaps it's less that they misunderstood it, and more that they saw it through a very particular lens, and were very certain in their beliefs, so much so that they became inflexible and haughty.

Again, how the Jedi praticed the Force and how George Lucas described it is the same. They didn't misunderstood it.

And can you give me an example of them being inflexible? It's in their way of life to adapt to things and to not be attached at the way they are in a moment X.

Yoda himself calls out the arrogance of the current generation of Jedi in Attack of the Clones.

Understandable misunderstanding but that's not what happens.

Here, Yoda is speaking in riddles and is telling that Obi-Wan is the one who can be arrogant. Because it's his arc in the movie : trusting Anakin and having faith he will follow the right path.

"We contrast [the previous scene where Palpatine boosts Anakin’s ego] with the three Jedi and show Obi-Wan's concern about the fact that his apprentice is getting ahead of himself, and he's arrogant. And Obi-Wan is kinda put down a little bit by Yoda, there, 'cause Yoda says that that arrogance exists in the older Jedi too, which is a way of warning Obi-Wan that he may be suffering the same hubris." Attack of the Clones Commentary Track

how Vos is viewed as odd and is somewhat disliked by other Jedi like Obi-Wan

If you're talking about Legends, it's not canon, so whatever (and if I remember correctly, he fall to the dark side and kill clones and Jedi ¯_(ツ)_/¯ And he was bff w/ Obi in the EU so not really disliked). Because at no point in TCW he's shown to be disliked.

Aayla considers him like her father and didn't once say anything negative about him.

The Council sends him with a Council Member to an important mission.

He banters with Obi-Wan (which is the langage of affection in this series. A bit overused btw). Obi-Wan didn't even hesitate to compliment him on his work or to trust him.

of course Anakin's unorthodox attitude causing so many ripples

Yeah so many ripples. The Jedi Order never respected or liked him.

And Anakin feared their punishments everytime he didn't do the job the way they want (or at all), of course. Just like the time he lost R2 full of army’s intel (when he was supposed to wipe its memory) and was scolded by Obi-Wan and sent to get R2, like he wanted to.

Or when he risked his mission/Padawan/men after ignoring Obi-Wan’s advice to wait for reinforcements and received a sigh and a glare.

Or when he kept Mace, Obi-Wan and Yoda - Members of the Council - waiting for hours without given even one excuse, and Mace followed up with his mission.

Or when he almost ruined the Rako Hardeen mission and Yoda is the one apologizing to him.

Or when he went to Tatooine with Padmé, his charge, and then to Geonosis against direct orders, and received a sarcastic remark from his Master.

I did say that the state the order was in when the guy who's fault it actually was came to power made them an easier target than they would have been had they been in a stronger position from the start.

Palpatine took avantage of the Republic, not the Order. He only went directly after the Jedi when the plan was almost finish. Because the Senate was their only weakness.

It was a thousands years old plan and Palpatine was forced to create a whole war to reduce their number and ternish their reputation to commit their genocide. And he had a big army programmed to obey this specific order whenever he wanted. If the Jedi were this weak from the beginning, why bother this much? Because it's certainly not easy to do that.

Even if they had changed whatever you have in mind that should have made them better, Palpatine was still determined to kill them all, and he had an army before the Jedi even knew the Sith had reappeared.

Order 66 is a clear parallel with the Shoah. George Lucas, for all his flaws, would have never dare insinuate that it was partially their fault and that they could have prevented their genocide.

Palpatine undermined them and weakened them at every opportunity, but the Jedi had their own problems beforehand.

The Order was perfectly fine for 25 000 years. During the PT, their only problems are with things outside of the Order. Those who don't like the Jedi life can leave if they want.

Palpatine took advantage of those weaknesses and exacerbated them, but he couldn't have done that if those cracks weren't there already.

He tarnished their reputation through a war he personally created and used a mind-controlled army to kill them. I failed to see what weaknesses he was using with that.

Like I said before, inflexible and haughty. Too sure of himself and his own authority.

When?

Inflexible, huh...

he represented a lot of what the prequel era Jedi got wrong, too.

How? Give examples and screenshots.

Still powerful, capable, and compassionate in his own way, but distant and closed-minded.

Proof of his closed-mindness?

He, and Yoda for that matter, intended to turn Anakin away because he loved his mother too much, and according to them, that was a path to the dark side.

That's not what happened.

The Council is asking about his feelings and he's constantly dodging the questions, he refuses to admit he's scared and become aggresive when confronted.

He's repressing his feelings, something a Jedi must not do. They must accept, confront and master them.

Dealing with emotions in a healthy way is a hard but necessary thing to do for a Jedi. Of course a traumatized 9 yo would have difficulties with that, that's why the Council told him no. There's other paths that of the Jedi. If someone looks like it will be dangerous to teach him super-powers (which are accompanied by the threat of the dark side), you don't teach him super-powers.

And they were right in the end. Anakin's fear and unwillingness to admit his feelings are the reasons he committed a genocide.

Jedi are encouraged to put everything in question

Tell that to the Jedi high council that put Yoda under lock and key and theorized he was being controlled by the Sith when he came to them about his visions of Qui-Gon and Force Ghosting and never considered for a moment actually taking him seriously and considering a new possibility.

1 . The Council first reaction is to meditate a day and a night in a not very comfortable position because Yoda asked their help.

2 . They're questionning the Grand Master of the Order. That's exactly what I'm talking about. (And that proves thta the Jedi are not blind to their weaknesses or think of themself as infallible. Remember someone accussing them of being haughty)

3 . it’s not a unanimous.

4 . Yoda agrees with them.

Mace : "Master Yoda, you are older and wiser than any living Jedi, but this does not mean you are beyond the corruption of the dark side"

Yoda : "Agree I do. A possibility we must consider it is. Clouded so much of our vision the dark side has. Deceived I may be"

5 . Yoda's not "under lock".

If someone would be critical and unfair against the Council, it's Anakin.

The Council are mostly worried about Yoda.

6 . THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT WILL HAPPEN A FEW EPISODES LATER

Speaking of which, Force Ghosting being a lost art is another indication the Jedi were not at their peak.

It's just your interpretation. We don't know anything about it. In the OT, it was just Jedi heaven.

we get Jedi like Kanan and Ezra who very clearly fostered attachments and drew strength from them, but knew to let go when the time came

It was love, not attachment. When they hold on their attachments, they made mistakes.

we come right back around to Luke and Ahsoka hammering away that attachment = danger in The Mandalorian, as if they weren't two of the most attached Jedi in history and found a way to achieve balance through that.

Luke is not attached. He saved his father by letting go of his attachments. What do you think him throwing his lightsaber away means?

And @david-talks-sw did a good post here about this scene in The Mandalorian.

Darth Maul on Obi-Wan Kenobi +

Perception of the Jedi by their Enemies

Darth Maul has a very consistent strategy when trying to bring down Obi-Wan. Which is attack somewhere, put innocent people in danger. Kenobi being the annoying knight he is will come running to save them. Than kill him when he is busy being a good person.

1-Raydonia 2-Satine 3-Mandalore 4-Luke

(He didn't personally go in the third one but he sent Ahsoka. And he put himself in great risk by authorizing the Siege. This action was illegal.)

The best part is Maul is completely aware what he is doing. He acknowledges this many times.

Your noble flaw is a weakness shared by you and your duchess.

I was expecting Kenobi. Why are you here?

I am lost... And yet, I-I can feel his presence, so close. So close! I can... see him... in my mind's eye. Kenobi. KENOBIIIII!... Will it end here, like this? No. NO! I must draw kenobi out, tempt his noble heart. But how, how?... I know... I know.

His plans literally revolves around Obi-Wan having a noble heart. Which is one of the reasons Maul sees it as a flaw. Because it leaves someone vulnerable to wicked people like Maul.

This isn't even a specific Maul & Obi-Wan thing. We can find many examples of people trying to use Jedi's virtue against them. The Jedi seem to have a reputation in the galaxy as highly virtuous people.

Examples:

Admiral Trench specifically bombarding Senator Organa's refugee camps because he believes this will force Republic Army to engage him. (Tell me again how Republic was as bad as the CIS)

Zygerrian slavers method of enslaving and attempting to control Jedi was hurting innocents every time they showed defiance.

Admiral Trench makes this gamble again in the last season but with the worst person he could choose.

This is a good reference to other scenes and quotes. Reusing the word "nobility" was definitely trying to make a contrast between Trench & Anakin with Maul & Obi-Wan.

It really shows how much Anakin has diverted from what a Jedi should be. He even calls nobility a flaw like Maul does.

☀️☀️☀️

Inspiration for this post came when after seeing some bewildering takes on Obi-Wan, my first thought was:

"Man, even Maul would find these claims ridiculous. No one in star wars has any delusions of Kenobi being evil or corrupt to the degree they imagine."

Things spiraled from there. I ended up finding many evidences of this in canon. Like this quote ⬇️

Why come to this place, not simply to hide?... Oh, you have a purpose here.

I love this one. Maul knows Kenobi is not one to abandon his duty or ideals. Which means if he is on Tatooine he must have some some kind of mission here.

☀️☀️☀️

All of this resulted in creating a hilarious picture because,

I can't believe Admiral Trench and Zygerrians have a more positive perception of the Jedi than many fans of Star Wars.

And people are really out there making Darth freaking MAUL look like a fan. You know it has gone too far when even Maul (the og hater) can't agree with such horrible takes.

I must draw Kenobi out, tempt his noble heart.