Finally rewatched it, and I have a couple thoughts.

Anakin pulling the false surrender ploy again. One of very few things that really ticks me off in Clone Wars. I noticed it first time of course, but I forgot to mention it.
The other thing is the female Mauldalorians. I have some issues with their design. They look fairly cool (as all Mandalorians do), but their helmets slope in towards the bottom, which makes me question how they can get them on in the first place. The other issue is the teensy-tiny jetpacks. It looks like the took they standard JT-12 and cut out the middle 50% of it.

On a more positive note, the appearance of Ursa Wren's armor lends credence to my headcanon that Bo Katan allied with the remaining True Mandalorians, of which Clan Wren was a part, to take down the common enemy of Maul and his Death Watch.

35 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Anakin pulling the false surrender ploy again. One of very few things that really ticks me off in Clone Wars. I noticed it first time of course, but I forgot to mention it.

It seemed to me as if this was an intentional callback to the Clone Wars movie that began with a battle on a bridge that was ended by Obi-Wan’s faux surrender. It looked like a bookend to the whole thing.

There are a few other callbacks to the CW movie, like how Anakin is resistant to Ahsoka's presence and here he desperately wants her around.

As for the smaller jetpacks, I chalk that up to the show's visual style. Like how most devices only require one button to operate them, etc. It's even more stylized than the live-action movies.

11 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

On a more positive note, the appearance of Ursa Wren's armor lends credence to my headcanon that Bo Katan allied with the remaining True Mandalorians, of which Clan Wren was a part, to take down the common enemy of Maul and his Death Watch.

Sorry, Sabine confirmed it in Rebels, Ursa was Death Watch.

2 hours ago, RuusMarev said:

Sorry, Sabine confirmed it in Rebels, Ursa was Death Watch.

Aww... I forgot that.

I also didn't realize that she'd been with Bo Katan in the previous couple episodes because of the different color scheme. I looked into it further and realized that she had Death Watch colors, she'd just customized the pattern, which is why I didn't recognize her when I saw her "in the beskar," but did when I saw the comparatively colorless hologram.

15 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Anakin pulling the false surrender ploy again.

Isn’t that a war crime?

41 minutes ago, DanteRotterdam said:

Isn’t that a war crime?

technically yes. But A. Droids and B. we dont know if they have a Geneva Convention. And likely not so no.

4 hours ago, Daeglan said:

technically yes. But A. Droids and B. we dont know if they have a Geneva Convention. And likely not so no.

I understand that you would go the literal route, but I was merely pointing out that no one bat an eye at Anakin doing a pretty despicable thing...

9 minutes ago, DanteRotterdam said:

I understand that you would go the literal route, but I was merely pointing out that no one bat an eye at Anakin doing a pretty despicable thing...

No one in-universe? If so, yeah. That's been an issue for me for a while.

Out-of-universe, I've heard a lot of people complain about it.

For evaluating this sort of thing though, I tend to keep in mind the potential ignorance of the writers and not hold it against the characters as much. If the writers were all "let's have Anakin commit a war crime. TWICE!" they probably would have handled it differently. Because of the lack of consequences or critical responses in-universe, I tend to write this off a bit more than I would some stuff. But, as I mentioned, this is a sticking point for me and certainly irks me.

1 hour ago, DanteRotterdam said:

I understand that you would go the literal route, but I was merely pointing out that no one bat an eye at Anakin doing a pretty despicable thing...

57 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

No one in-universe? If so, yeah. That's been an issue for me for a while.

Out-of-universe, I've heard a lot of people complain about it.

For evaluating this sort of thing though, I tend to keep in mind the potential ignorance of the writers and not hold it against the characters as much. If the writers were all "let's have Anakin commit a war crime. TWICE!" they probably would have handled it differently. Because of the lack of consequences or critical responses in-universe, I tend to write this off a bit more than I would some stuff. But, as I mentioned, this is a sticking point for me and certainly irks me.

I would like to remind you that Anekin is about do something much worse.. 😄

and Obi-wan did the exact same thing in the Clone Wars Movie (early episodes) so Anekin doing it in the "last" Clone Wars episode is an awesome book end to the series.

("last" because we are now technically in Revenge of the Sith.)

1 hour ago, DanteRotterdam said:

I understand that you would go the literal route, but I was merely pointing out that no one bat an eye at Anakin doing a pretty despicable thing...

To be fair, given that the opposing army is made up of droids, I can't see how a false surrender ploy can be seen as a despicable act or in any way morally objectionable.

The reason the concept of a war crime exists is that we as a species theoretically agree that there are some acts that cause unnecessary or excessive harm to other human beings, even in the context of a war. That moral concern is moot in this fictional context since the only people who will be "harmed" as a result of the ploy are inorganic automatons.

7 minutes ago, Kualan said:

To be fair, given that the opposing army is made up of droids, I can't see how a false surrender ploy can be seen as a despicable act or in any way morally objectionable.

Actually, you're missing part of the point here. In WWII, the Japanese used false surrenders*, attacked medics coming to help them, etc. Because of this, the Marines often didn't take prisoners because they couldn't afford to. This in combination with the Japanese frequent refusal to surrender resulted in a comparatively small number of prisoners. This doesn't translate directly to Star Wars, but if the Separatists can't trust a Republic surrender, the Republic can't surrender. This costs lives of clones, civilians, PDFs, etc.

*on a small scale, as far as I know, just individuals or small groups.

19 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Actually, you're missing part of the point here. In WWII, the Japanese used false surrenders*, attacked medics coming to help them, etc. Because of this, the Marines often didn't take prisoners because they couldn't afford to. This in combination with the Japanese frequent refusal to surrender resulted in a comparatively small number of prisoners. This doesn't translate directly to Star Wars, but if the Separatists can't trust a Republic surrender, the Republic can't surrender. This costs lives of clones, civilians, PDFs, etc.

*on a small scale, as far as I know, just individuals or small groups.

By all indications, the Separatists don't generally take prisoners anyway (unless there is a strategic reason to do so - such as needing to extract information from Even Piell or using Eeth Koth to lure out more Jedi) precisely because both armies in this setting are made up of expendable (Plo Koon's "not to me" notwithstanding) armies. And of course the Separatist commanders tend to be moustache-twirling villains.

Given the context of the setting, neither side can be said to be able to trust a surrender from the other, and the Jedi don't have much to lose when it comes to these sort of ploys - particularly when in the short-term it saves lives (how many more of Obi-Wan's troops would have been killed if that fight continued to be dragged out? And Anakin indicated time was of the essence to save civilian lives too).

2 minutes ago, Kualan said:

By all indications, the Separatists don't generally take prisoners anyway

Well, in the Clone Wars movie, Obi-Wan Kenobi was clearly negotiating for surrender with the assumption that the clones would be kept alive, and Whorm Loathsome seemed perfectly willing to hear him out. If the Separatists didn't take prisoners, he would've just said so and been done.

Separatists surrendering doesn't make any sense since the droids are droids, but the clones have lives to preserve.

The point of surrender for a victorious force is that it ends the battle quickly and preserves lives, infrastructure, time, materiel, and collateral damage. The point of surrender for the defeated force is similar, preserving lives, infrastructure, and collateral damage. With droids as the defeated force, they are unlikely to surrender (unless desiring to prevent collateral damage) since there are no lives to save.

We've seen clone prisoners on the field of battle at various points (Teth comes to mind) as well.

However, it is also important to keep in mind that there are more to both forces than just droids and clones. There are often planetary defense forces involved on either side, we just don't see them often in the Clone Wars show given animation/design/budget reasons.

16 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Well, in the Clone Wars movie, Obi-Wan Kenobi was clearly negotiating for surrender with the assumption that the clones would be kept alive, and Whorm Loathsome seemed perfectly willing to hear him out. If the Separatists didn't take prisoners, he would've just said so and been done.

Which circles us back around to why Anakin’s surrender ploy was written in the first place: to bookend the first Clone Wars arc (the movie) with this, the final Clone Wars arc.

From a “real world” perspective, Star Wars military strategy and protocols have rarely made much sense, and have instead been presented for the most dramatic effect.

2 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

Which circles us back around to why Anakin’s surrender ploy was written in the first place: to bookend the first Clone Wars arc (the movie) with this, the final Clone Wars arc.

From a “real world” perspective, Star Wars military strategy and protocols have rarely made much sense, and have instead been presented for the most dramatic effect.

The writing is fine, I just don't like the surrender ploy. The more I talk about it, the more I disapprove of the use of that ploy. As far as strategy, some bad strategies have in-universe explanations, some have out-of-universe technological/budget explanations, and some make sense in a bubble. Enough that I can largely suspend disbelief or accept some of the macro issues, though I'll still rail against some stuff that is just too egregious on the micro-level.

Jedi have always been doing morally questionable things in the pursuit of the supposed greater good. Obi-Wan's lies to Luke. Yoda and Obi sending Luke off to assassinate his own father. ****, the prequels are filled with the moral failings of the Jedi.

Calling the writers ignorant because they portray Anakin as doing something that would be unethical in the real world when that has been always a trait of the character makes no sense.

3 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

Calling the writers ignorant because they portray Anakin as doing something that would be unethical in the real world when that has been always a trait of the character makes no sense.

That's a bit of a strawman.

I didn't call them ignorant, I said I keep in mind the potential ignorance of the writers as to the particulars of a particular legal matter, and that can affect my opinion of an event within the story.

Further, my issue was not with them having Anakin do something that would be unethical in the real-world, in fact, I like it when they do so (case and point, Poggle the Lesser in the brain worms episode). However, it wasn't just Anakin that did it, it was Obi-Wan too. The thing that makes me think they either didn't know or didn't think it through is that there were no consequences or reactions from the others. No one questioned it, and it wasn't portrayed as being dark side or morally questionable at all . In the example of Poggle the Lesser, it was a clear "Anakin is going Vader" moment and was treated as such. With this, if anything it was portrayed as clever and good. I'd like to think that they just didn't know or didn't think of it, as that makes it a whole lot easier to just let it slide.

That none of the characters there question it is kinda the point. The moment a "foreign" element is introduced into this militarized world - in the form of the former Jedi Ahsoka - the Jedi's choices are immediately questioned. Seems like the writers trust you to use your head there and see the connection.

How I hate this sort of "um, actually..." type of discourse.

2 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

How I hate this sort of "um, actually..." type of discourse.

Yes, we should really just digest and consume. Like good little piggies.

Critical thought and analysis should, in fact, be discouraged and eventually purged from our schools and workplaces.

Amiright, comrades?

Now, bring on the High Republic!!! We will like it no matter what! We will be thankful to stand in line for more Star Wars! Those in charge clearly know what's best for us!

Is it male or is it female? To even ask means you are on the wrong side of history!

All you should know is that a truly diverse team of writers you've never heard of developed this character to be the bestest Jedi AVAR!

😉

[From StarWars.com: "Avar is the brightest, most noble example of Jedi-hood. She is an inspiration for those who work with her. Avar Kriss is the best of the best."]

Oh hey, thinly-veiled bigotry and pretending that "um, actually"-ing is criticism and not self-aggrandizement. Truly the most expected of combinations.

I thought the most compelling moment came when Obi-Wan saved commander Cody, realizing that in a few days Cody will call in an artillery strike on Kenobi’s position.

4 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

Oh hey, thinly-veiled bigotry and pretending that "um, actually"-ing is criticism and not self-aggrandizement. Truly the most expected of combinations.

Yeah, as much as I started this discussion I was in no way envisioning it would come to this. I distance myself from it.

6 hours ago, Harlock999 said:

All you should know is that a truly diverse team of writers you've never heard of developed this character to be the bestest Jedi AVAR!

Well, I’d heard of all but one of them prior to the announcement. And, considering every Star Wars era to date, both Legends and canon, has featured a (checks notes) “bestest Jedi AVAR,” and that I haven’t seen anything to turn me off from it so far, I think I’ll wait til it’s released to decide whether or not I enjoy it.

3 hours ago, Nytwyng said:

Well, I’d heard of all but one of them prior to the announcement. And, considering every Star Wars era to date, both Legends and canon, has featured a (checks notes) “bestest Jedi AVAR,” and that I haven’t seen anything to turn me off from it so far, I think I’ll wait til it’s released to decide whether or not I enjoy it.

Yeah I am of the lets see if they fall into the same traps the sequels fell into. Be sad if they did. would be great if they learned their lesson and actually gave use great characters instead of 2 dimensional cut outs.