“Mistakes are valuable lessons often learned too late.”
Hello and welcome to Laughing Place’s weekly recap of the final season of the Disney+ animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars from Lucasfilm Animation. This week’s episode, entitled “Deal No Deal,” picks up where we left off at the end of the previous installment, with Ahsoka Tano (voiced by actress Ashley Eckstein) hanging around Trace Martez’s (Brigitte Kali Canales) fix-it garage in the Coruscant underworld. They’re fixing Ahsoka’s bike together and also getting Trace’s ship the Silver Angel back in spaceworthy shape.
As the opening narration reminds us, Ahsoka has recently learned that “not everyone sees the Jedi as heroes,” so she continues to hide her true nature from Trace and her sister Rafa (Elizabeth Rodriguez). Ahsoka learns more about the two sisters’ pasts, how they came to own and run their two shops, and how Trace acquired her ship. Trace manages to convince Ahsoka to stick around a little while longer in order to complete and test their repair work, when Rafa enters and tells them she had hired a crew for a job, but they abandoned her.
Trace jumps at the opportunity to captain the Silver Angel on this mission for Rafa, enlisting a hesitant Ahsoka as help. Rafa is still wary of Ahsoka’s presence in her sister’s life: “You ever thought you might be the trouble she needs to stay away from?” They take off in the ship and Trace accidentally enters the military lane of in-atmosphere traffic around Coruscant. Admiral Yularen (Tom Kane) is infuriated as they pass by his command tower and is about to issue an order to have the three women arrested, but Anakin Skywalker (Matt Lanter) senses Ahsoka’s presence and allows them to pass.
The Silver Angel jumps into Hyperspace, but the Martez sisters still won’t tell Ahsoka where they’re going. Finally they arrive at Kessel in pursuit of “fortune and glory,” according to Rafa (the first of several references to the George Lucas-created movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in this episode, which should give us a good idea of where exactly this story arc is headed). The ship lands at a palace in the middle of a jungle– yep– and is greeted by Kinash Lock (Cory Burton), the Twi’lek majordomo to Kessel’s so-far-unseen King Yaruba. At a banquet inside the palace, Lock discusses the transport of spice with Rafa, and Ahsoka is taken aback, insinuating wrongdoing. She says the spice-running profession is dangerous and warns Trace away.
The mission continues despite Ahsoka’s misgivings, and the three adventurers leave for the mining zone… “Now this looks like the Kessel from the stories,” says Ahsoka, in an obvious nod to Solo: A Star Wars Story. From a distance, they see a mass workforce of what they assume are droids, but upon closer inspection the group turns out to be made up of actual people. Rafa doesn’t believe they’re slaves, and tells Trace she doesn’t like Ahsoka behind the Togruta’s back. After picking up the spice, they jump back into Hyperspace and head for Oba Diah, home of the Pyke Syndicate to deliver the shipment to the crime boss Marg Krim (Stephen Stanton).
Naturally, Ahsoka doesn’t approve once she finds out where they’re going, and says she’d prefer to deliver the spice to somewhere in need of medicine. While Rafa and Ahsoka bicker, Trace dumps the spice in mid-Hyperspace, upsetting both of her companions. After the dust settles, Ahsoka comes up with a plan: “I’ve got a trick or two that you don’t know about,” she says. On Oba Diah, the Pykes withhold payment until they receive the spice, but Ahsoka pulls a Jedi mind trick and gets them to give up the credits before opening the containers. The Silver Angel begins to take off when the cargo is opened to reveal empty boxes, and the Pykes send patrol ships after them, capturing the ship in a tractor beam as a cliffhanger ending.
The first six episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ seventh and final season are now available to stream exclusively on Disney+.