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The Clone Wars’s gift to bounty hunting makes his mark
Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Season 1, Episode 22, “Hostage Crisis”
Writers: Eoghan Mahony, Brian Larsen, & Drew Z Greenberg
Director: Giancarlo Volpe
The Clone Wars gave us an amazing number of memorable Star Wars morsels on the way to earning its prized place among fans. The deep cuts into Anakin’s journey toward his true purpose, the expansion of Padmé Amidala’s accomplishments, the layers of Obi-Wan Kenobi, the return of Maul, and the growth of Ahsoka into a truly inspirational and influential character are all part of the show’s legacy. Yet, early on in its run, one of the series’ biggest splashes was the debut of the wide-brimmed hat-wearing, six-gun shooting, Old West-inspired bounty hunter that was cold-stone deadly and uncompromisingly vicious. Cad Bane had arrived, and he brought with him a gaggle of bounty hunters (including cult fan-favorite Aurra Sing) on screen and created an even larger off-screen following of fans.
There are always lessons in Star Wars. Some you don’t have to dig too deep for and others you have to ruminate on. They’re around every corner. It’s part of the fun and purpose of Star Wars. Yet, one should never underestimate the power of cool. Star Wars is also about being cool and there might not be anyone as cool in the Star Wars galaxy as Cad Bane.
Cool?
Yeah…cool.
The episodes of The Clone Wars are out of order. The reasons are too confusing for this book. So, if you watch the series in the chronological order, Cad Bane appears in six episodes before the episode titled “Hostage Crisis.” But if you watch them in the order they were released, “Hostage Crisis” serves as the fandom’s introduction to Bane and he comes exploding into the saga with a bold takeover of a Senate building on Coruscant. His team included the aforementioned Aurra Sing (a blink and you’ll miss her fan-favorite character in The Phantom Menace), a Weequay pirate, and an IG-86 series droid (invoking the popular IG-88 Bounty Hunter droid in The Empire Strikes Back.) It was an all-star team of scum and they weren’t playing games.
Oddly enough, at first glance, Bane’s character design is…silly…offbeat…almost too reminiscent of an Old West gunfighter. I recall watching the episode for the first time and immediately writing off the character as the story began. “He’s got a cowboy hat on,” I said aloud to no one as I was watching the show alone. “I mean, I can’t take him serious—oh. Oh, I see.” My thought was interrupted by Bane and his team killing an entire group of clone troopers. The stakes were raised…and they had my attention.
And that is the importance of Cad Bane in the history of The Clone Wars animated series. Star Wars fans were coming off the soul-challenging prequels and weren’t quite sure of what to make of this “Star Wars cartoon.” Especially considering it started rough with an ill-conceived theatrically released movie in 2008 that only cemented the doubts some Star Wars fans still harbored following Episode I, Episode II, and Episode III. It wasn’t entirely the show’s fault. A lot of us original trilogy era fans remembered the mid-80s animated shows droids and Ewoks. They were unapologetically Saturday morning cartoon fare. They weren’t to be taken seriously and had no place in the “true” Star Wars story. Though you could tell right away that The Clone Wars was aiming for something higher, Ahsoka (mostly referred to by her Anakin-given nickname Snips) was a little too precocious, Jar Jar was bumbling around, and the battle droids came off as a bad slapstick comedy improv troupe. Looking back, none of those moments are as egregious as first thought, but at that time—eeehhh—The Clone Wars hadn’t taken a hold within the fandom.
Yet Cad Bane was a mercenary, a bounty hunter, and killing clone troopers with reckless abandon. Soon he was shooting a senator at point-blank range and taking many of the senators as hostages. It was real and dangerous. In subsequent episodes, Cad Bane tortured a Jedi to death and was part of Darth Sidious’s plan to steal Force-sensitive children throughout the galaxy. Heavy stuff indeed.
The first season of The Clone Wars did a lot to establish the show’s overarching desire to take a prominent place in the lore of the franchise. However, after twenty-one episodes, the big battles, political intrigue, and deeper digs into established characters had yet to get noticed. But, in the final episode of season one, Cad Bane made you sit up a little straighter in your seat. You leaned in a little closer to watch. This sharp-witted, cold-hearted bounty hunter was different than anything you had been watching, yet entirely familiar to the Star Wars galaxy you grew up daydreaming about. The Clone Wars now had an edge to it and was, you know, for the supposedly mature fans in the room, cool.