***I must confess that, despite being a huge Star Wars geek, I have yet to see the landmark Clone Wars animated show in its entirety. I’m aiming to rectify that to a large extent here, as we look at pivotal episodes of the series in, “The Essential Clone Wars.”

SERIES: Star Wars: The Clone Wars
EPISODE: S5:E19 – “To Catch a Jedi”
WITH THE VOICE TALENTS OF: Ashley Eckstein, Nika Futterman, Matt Lanter, Dee Bradley Baker, Tom Kane
WRITER: Charles Murray
DIRECTOR: Kyle Dunlevy
PREMIERE DATE: February 23, 2013
SYNOPSIS: A fugitive Ahsoka is pursued through the depths of Coruscant.

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By Rob Siebert
Fanboy Wonder

Apparently this episode, “To Catch a Jedi,” is named for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1955 film, To Catch a Thief. Apparently I need to brush up on my Hitchcock, as I couldn’t help but think of the show To Catch a Predator. I can’t have been the only one…

No? Just me? Got it.

Yoda’s initial call is to send Anakin after Ahsoka. But it’s Mace Windu who actually says the sensible thing: That Anakin is too emotionally compromised to be involved in the pursuit. Ultimately, after a little encouragement from Obi-Wan, they do send him after her. But from a writing standpoint, it might have made more sense to have the council hold Anakin back, and then have him defy them by searching anyway.

Question: Where do photos of Jedi come from? The Republic has a photo of Ahsoka (shown above) that they use to announce her fugitive status to Coruscant. Did she pose for that photo, perhaps for records purposes? Or was that supposed to be a candid shot of some kind? You’ve got to assume the Jedi keep records, which would naturally include photos. But if that’s a posed photo, why is she scowling like that?

I ask all this because we saw a similar posed photo of Obi-Wan Kenobi during his self-titled Disney+ series.

I appreciated that they had both Ahsoka and her mystery Jedi assailant using hand-to-hand combat (Teras Kasi perhaps?). It reminds the viewer that the Jedi are capable of much more physically than just swinging lightsabers.

It was nice that they went back to Asajj Ventress for this episode. It would, after all, wind up being the penultimate episode aired on Cartoon Network. The show wasn’t near its true ending, but an ending of sorts was approaching…

Email Rob at primaryignition@yahoo.com, or check us out on Twitter.