10 Smartest Decisions In Star Wars History

4. Ahsoka Tries To Save The Clones - The Clone Wars

Star Wars The Clone Wars Ahsoka Order 66
Lucasfilm

Star Wars: The Clone Wars manages to elevate the Prequel Trilogy in a great many ways, but especially when it comes to the depiction of the Clone Army.

In Episodes II and III the clones take a back seat. There's the implication that they're expendable and no real effort is made to explore the relationship between them and their Jedi generals, bar a few lines of dialogue shared between Obi-Wan and Commander Cody before the Siege of Utapau.

Revenge of the Sith didn't devote much time to unpacking the nitty gritty details of how Order 66 worked either, but thankfully The Clone Wars did. CT-5555 (or 'Fives') manages to uncover the conspiracy behind Order 66 in The Clone Wars' sixth season after one of his comrades unwittingly executes the order prematurely, and realises that every clone has a chip installed in their brain that'll activate when given the command.

Fives dies before he can expose the conspiracy, but Ahsoka uses his research to free Captain Rex from his programming in the series' final arc. The important thing here though is that Ahsoka's first instinct isn't to massacre her own troops. Instead, she endeavours to figure out what happened and tries to save as many of them as possible - a stark contrast to the way Yoda and Obi-Wan behave in Episode III, and a prime example of how Ahsoka was able to chart her own path away from the Order after she left.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.