Erin’s Picks: The Slave Empire Arc (The Clone Wars S4, Eps. 11–13)
Can Obi-Wan endure a beating? Is the Jedi Council dumb enough to send the one guy whose REALLY sensitive about slaves to take down slavers? And does Anakin actually have game when it comes to flirting?!? These are Erin’s picks for Season 4 of The Clone Wars, and she did not come to play.
“Kidnapped,” “Slaves of the Republic,” and “Escape from Kadavo” are three episodes that take the show somewhere darker than almost anything before them: the resurrection of the Zygerrian slave empire, Obi-Wan enduring torture as a tactical choice, and Anakin Skywalker standing at a moral edge that looks a lot like freefall. If you’ve ever wondered exactly when The Clone Wars stopped being a kids show, this arc is a strong candidate.
A Darkness That Was Always Coming
Matthew and Erin trace just how carefully these episodes are constructed to accelerate Anakin’s fall—from the moment he lets a desperate Twi’lek slave die rather than blow his cover, to Force-choking a prisoner for information, to impaling Zygerrians with a fury that goes well beyond mission parameters. The Jedi code keeps colliding with the reality of war, and Anakin keeps making choices a Jedi is never supposed to make.
What makes this conversation worth hearing is the question underneath all of it: did the Jedi set Anakin up to fail? Matthew connects the Zygerrians’ history—the Jedi once destroyed their entire slave empire—to Anakin’s unanswerable frustration that the Order never went back for the slaves on Tatooine. Erin brings her deep knowledge of Togrutan biology and culture to a conversation about what this arc means for Ahsoka and her people. And Rex gets his moment—and it is earned.
Elsewhere in the Galaxy
- Anakin watches a slave throw herself off a tower rather than return to “programming” and does nothing to stop her—Matthew and Erin debate whether that’s tactical necessity, a dark-side step, or both.
- The Zygerrian Queen argues that Jedi are slaves to the Republic. It’s a slaver’s rationalization—but Erin and Matthew take the question seriously, especially in Anakin’s ears.
- Obi-Wan’s willingness to absorb unlimited pain for others is turned against him: the Zygerrians figure out the one thing that actually works is hurting someone else.
- The Jedi once destroyed the original Zygerrian slave empire—so why not the Hutts? Matthew finds the answer in Jabba’s political connections, and it doesn’t reflect well on the Republic.
- Rex’s final confrontation with the warden at Kadavo lands as both a character-defining moment and a deliberate echo of The Lord of the Rings’ “I am no man.”
Mentioned in This Episode
Star Wars Content Discussed
- The Clone Wars, Season 4, “Kidnapped” / “Slaves of the Republic” / “Escape from Kadavo” (eps. 11–13)
- The Clone Wars, Season 1, the Lurmen neutrality arc
- Tales of the Jedi (Disney+ animated series—Dooku episodes)
- Attack of the Clones
- The Phantom Menace
Books Mentioned
- Darth Plagueis by James Luceno (Legends)
- Kenobi by John Jackson Miller
There’s no better showcase for what The Clone Wars became in its later seasons than this arc—and no better conversation partners for it than Matthew and Erin.
Links
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