Star Wars: The Clone Wars episode 8 recap: Ahsoka discovers criminal mastermind’s identity

We’re up to episode eight of Star Wars: The Clone Wars‘ seventh and final season, bringing the Ahsoka-centric arc to an end. This episode, Together Again, landed on Disney Plus Friday, and finds Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein) and sisters Trace and Rafa Martez (Brigitte Kali and Elizabeth Rodriguez) scheming to escape the Pyke Syndicate on the planet Obadia.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because they escaped in the last episode, but got caught and so this one starts in a slightly repetitive manner. Ho-hum. Luckily, things escalate quickly. SPOILERS incoming.

Fortune cookie

“You can change who you are, but you cannot run from yourself.” This is a pretty blatant reference to Ahsoka walking away from the Jedi, but she can’t escape the basic decency and selflessness she learned during her training.

The Maulstermind

Pyke boss Marg Krim (Stephen Stanton) is determined to get the spice Trace and Rafa were meant to deliver (and doesn’t know Trace impulsively dumped it in hyperspace), so he lets them go to pick it up. It’s clear that he’s terrified of his unseen boss.

When Ahsoka is left alone on Obadia, she sneaks around and rigs the Pykes’ base to blow. She also overhears Krim speaking to his boss, who unsurprisingly turns out to be Sith Lord-turned-crime boss Darth Maul (Sam Witwer). It’s unclear if he’s dropped the “Darth” title yet, but it isn’t used here.

He threatens to let Crimson Dawn, another member of his Shadow Collective criminal empire, take over the Pykes’ spice operation. You might remember that group from Solo, which takes place around nine years after this, and Crimson Dawn boss Dryden Vos was similarly terrified of Maul’s wrath. 

It’s clear that Maul is the type of manager who plays his employees against each other, because he’s a jerk and a rascal. It’s also cool that our first glimpse of him this season is as a hologram, just like his introduction in The Phantom Menace.

Getting that spice

Trace and Rafa try to trick their way into getting a fresh shipment of spice from a Toong worker (the same race as Phantom Menace podracer Ben Quadinaros). This is a slightly silly subplot, but it’s fun that Rafa ends up fighting a Trandoshan. So she basically kills a scary lizard man while Trace batters some Toongs with a pipe.

Passive Mandalorians

As Ahsoka escapes with Trace and Rafa in a rather epic sequence that uses a hint of John Williams’ TIE Fighter Attack, a trio of Mandalorians who’ve been lurking in the shadows follow them in their ship. This moment mirrors the visuals of the scene where Boba Fett tails the Millennium Falcon in The Empire Strikes Back.

They track Ahsoka, Trace and Rafa to Coruscant, where Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) enlists Ahsoka’s aid in taking back Mandalore from Maul.

I was sure the Mandalorians would be the ones to rescue Ahsoka after they spotted her in the previous episode — it seems odd that they’d just wait for her to escape before recruiting her. They can be a pretty insular group (even more so in The Mandalorian, which takes place years after this), but they’re also a bunch of badasses and it feels like Bo-Katan would take a more active role in this instance.

The Jedi way

Ahsoka tried to keep her identity as a Jedi a secret from Trace and Rafa, who expressed cynicism about the Order due to a Jedi’s role in their parents’ deaths, but it’s revealed during their escape and the sisters accept Ahsoka.

“You might not think of yourself as a Jedi, but you act like one,” says Rafa. “Or least, how I want them to be.”

She clearly feels that Ahsoka embodies the true spirit of the Jedi, even though the Order has lost its way and been subtly corrupted due to its involvement in the Clone Wars (and the machinations of one gloriously evil space wizard).

Ahsoka is also nervous that joining Bo-Katan will bring her back to the Jedi. We’ll find out how close she gets in Siege of Mandalore, the season’s final four-episode arc, which begins on Disney Plus on April 17.