The Essential Clone Wars Episodes

Star Wars: The Clone Wars. This animated series got surprisingly little hype for being George Lucas's official follow-up to Episode III. I think everybody, assuming that no more movies would ever be made, wanted a live-action TV series. Not to mention there was a lot of angst over the prequels not matching expectations and people were eager to move on.

But in retrospect, animated was definitely the way to go. A live-action show would have to be on a small scale for budgetary reasons, and this show is anything but small scale. Sure, the animation and visuals are modest at first, but by the third season, Uncle George had cracked open the wallet, and things started looking amazing.

It's not just about the looks, though. The series, which takes place in the three-year span between Episode II (which kicked off the in-universe Clone War) and Episode III (which ended with the Emperor's ascension and the birth of Darth Vader), addresses a lot of the common complaints about the prequels––that Anakin wasn't at all likable, that we didn't get to see his much-talked-about friendship with Obi-Wan, that all the actual star wars seemed to happen offscreen between movies.

That said, the series does swing and miss occasionally, which is why I've created this list of all the guaranteed good stuff. It's worth your time, and it's on Netflix streaming, so it couldn't be easier to jump in.

Clone Wars is anthological in nature, meaning that we don't follow one set of characters through every episode. This is good in that out of nowhere you might get a crazy bounty hunter-focused episode, watch some jobber Jedi go on a doomed mission, or be treated to one of the series' classic genre-themed episodes. But you also might get stuck with a Padme diplomacy episode or Jar-Jar hijinks. (Guess which ones I left off the list?)

To complicate things further, the episodes were produced out of chronological order until the third season. That's why this list starts with the 16th episode of the second season and continues to jump around a bit between seasons––due to the anthological nature of the show, it's not totally necessary to watch episodes in chronological order, but it doesn't hurt, and the last few seasons do tend to add more of the serialized elements that you would expect from a quality modern TV show, often building on seemingly unconnected aspects of early episodes in interesting ways.

This list contains the bare essentials. As you can see, it's weighted heavily to the later seasons, where the show really got rolling. If you get hooked and are left wanting more, you could do worse than watching the whole series, or picking and choosing additional episodes based on their Netflix descriptions. If it sounds like you'd like it, you probably will.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. These are the Clone Wars episodes you should watch! Do it!

Let's Talk About Rambo: Episode 23: Pirate Peril

After coaching KAT to victory in an MMA fight in Hong Kong, Rambo takes the team out for a celebratory dinner on a tiny fishing boat out in the harbor. It's literally just a junky little skiff with a fancy dinner table and chairs set up on it. And they have to wait to order until a "menu boat" pulls up alongside! The menu boat is also a junky little fishing skiff.

Here Rambo learns from his middle-aged Chinese fisherman friend (where does he meet these guys?) that the local fishing community has been having trouble with a bunch of SAVAGE pirates, who are launching strikes against them from their pirate ship, the S.S. Scurvy.

That's when the pirates fly in to attack.

ON HANG GLIDERS!

I love that they brought in hang gliding pirates just three episodes after they had hang gliding ninjas. It's the transportation mode of choice for evildoers everywhere!

After fighting off the pirates thanks to Turbo's boomerang skills, Rambo and co. track the pirates to a tiny deserted island, then, once they land on the tiny deserted island, they track the pirates to the tiny deserted island's pirate bar. After Rambo duels the pirate captain Nomak to draw after an aborted ruse in which the Force of Freedom tried to pretend they were pirate recruits, the salty seamen chase them out of the pirate bar and across the tiny deserted island.

Good thing Rambo always keeps an RPG in his dinghy.

Long story short, Rambo eventually ends up a captive on SAVAGE's yellow submarine, which they stole from some scientists in order to look for a different submarine, a sunken French one. It's this second submarine that they plan to raise and then––in classic SAVAGE fashion!––sell to the highest bidder. Assumedly the yellow submarine is not worth enough to sell? It is not discussed. So where do the pirates come into play in this scheme? Well, they were hired to attack local fishing boats near the search location, of course. Because those tiny boats would surely spot the yellow submarine searching for the French submarine and then they would know something suspicious was up.

This is a complicated plan. It might be SAVAGE's most convoluted plan of all time, in fact. And remember, this is the organization that, in a shocking inversion of priorities, tried to hold all of the world's most famous landmarks for ransom in order to get the funds to get their School for Terrorism off the ground.

Back to captive Rambo. Somebody in SAVAGE has a super weird rat fetish. "Hey, we've captured Rambo! What should we do with him? Shoot him with a gun? Stab him? Drown him? Murder him in some other way? No, let's let a bunch of rats loose near him and see what happens!"

When will they learn Rambo is not weak to rats?

Now free, Rambo leaves the sub and gets into a jetski battle on the high seas! Despite driving a souped-up, rocket-powered jetski that would make Jerry Steve Dave the Magic Man extremely jealous, Rambo chooses a decidedly old-fashioned way to take care of his jetski adversaries.

You guessed it––he lassoed them!

MISSION COMPLETE.

Let's Talk About Rambo: Episode 20: Enter the Black Dragon

In a storytelling flourish the likes of which are rarely seen from this era of animation, this episode starts in media res with Rambo foiling a SAVAGE plot and subsequently getting into a man vs. submarine battle. Warhawk is piloting a submarine in a river as Rambo stands on the banks.

They shoot a torpedo at Rambo. I'm not sure if they thought it was going to continue its path onto land or what, but it doesn't matter, because Rambo shoots it and blows it up, then he shoots the submarine until it explodes. Six or seven times is all that is needed.

Warhawk is driving the damaged sub towards the sea to escape, and Rambo decides to swim after them. Trautman goes "They're out of our territory!", as if to say that they can't be pursued across some kind of national border.

Rambo, like a little kid, goes: "But I'm a free citizen!" and keeps swimming. I'm not sure if either of them knows how international law works.

Warhawk and company do end up escaping in a smelly cattle car on a train.

This is just the first five minutes of the episode. Since there's so much spare time left over, and Trautman is so pleased with the outcome of the mission, he suggests the Force of Freedom go on vacation! Rambo's like "Hey, I could use a vacation!"

Rambo takes Trautman back to his cabin and they have a campfire cookout. Then Rambo hikes further into the mountains the next day for his vacation. "Civilization is great," he says, "but without nature, what's it worth??"

MEANWHILE

Warhawk is tired of Rambo foiling his plans. Luckily, he has heard whispers of the existence of the world's greatest assassin....... BLACK DRAGON.

Not this guy, unfortunately.

This guy.

"Who's that?" the other members of SAVAGE ask.

"When he's on your case, you're as good as gone!" Warhawk explains.

Apparently they've all forgotten that they worked with Black Dragon just four episodes ago. When they tried to blow up the Hoover Dam. In fact, judging by the patch on the shoulder of his ninja suit, I think Black Dragon is already a full and qualified member of SAVAGE.

Anyway, they go to Japan to hire him to assassinate Rambo. After speaking with his ninja underlings, all of whom sound like 60-year-old Italian New Yorkers who have never heard a Japanese accent in their lives, Warhawk is finally able to meet with Black Dragon himself.

"You pay me what I ask, and I will do what you ask!" Black Dragon says.

"I accept your terms!" says Warhawk, as though they just had some sort of in-depth negotiation. But I mean, isn't that the most basic premise of why they were there? What terms are there to accept? They were already hoping to hire Black Dragon to do a job!

Cut to Rambo's cabin, where a dozen ninjas parachute from a plane!

So they're good at something, at least.

But Black Ninja is nowhere to be seen. SUDDENLY! There he is! Hang gliding onto the scene! I believe the implication was that he hang glided all the way from Japan.

They all go into Rambo's empty cabin and start hanging out. Remember, Rambo is on his hiking vacation still. Black Dragon picks up Rambo's bow and gets some sort of sense of him from it, sort of like how you give a hunting dog a piece of the person's clothing to track them. So Black Dragon now knows where Rambo is hiking, and sends his ninja team out to fight him.

Also, here's something you need to know about Black Dragon. Any time he wants to go somewhere that is more than 10 feet away, he covers the distance by doing either back or front handsprings. It's his preferred method of travel. He is the man!

So the ninjas find Rambo and attack him, but as Rambo tends to do, he disappears into the wilderness and creatively takes them out one-by-one. A few examples:

1. He tricks one of the ninjas into thinking that he is hiding underwater and breathing through a hollow reed. The ninja jumps into the water and slashes all the reeds and grass, looking like a fool.

So embarrassing

2. He turns a 30-foot tree into a catapult by tying the top end of it to the ground and luring a ninja into touching it.

3. He uses a forest rabbit as a distraction to get the drop on a ninja.

4. He creates a Rube Goldberg machine with at least four components (one of them being a life-like Rambo dummy) that ends with the ninjas being swept up into a net.

5. He hangs himself by his feet from a tree to make it look like he has been snared by a forest trap. When the ninjas get near, he makes them fall into a 20-foot pit that he somehow had time to dig out and disguise.

Meanwhile, KAT and Turbo have driven to Rambo's cabin to pay him a visit. They don't know if he'll be there, because he doesn't have a phone so they can't call ahead, which explains why Trautman has to fly a chopper to pick up Rambo at the start of most episodes. But it does not explain why, during the opening theme, Trautman picks up a phone and says "GET ME RAMBO!"

As you might imagine, KAT and Turbo are immediately captured by Black Dragon, which leads us to our final confrontation.

Rambo comes home and gets in an epic fight with Black Dragon. They are very evenly matched, even with all of the ninja equipment that Rambo has to contend with. For a while, they get into a cool sickle vs. makeshift whip (made out of a belt) battle. This is Rambo's all-time most challenging fight vs. a human, for sure! I believe one time he had a great deal of trouble fighting a panther. So animals are still his greatest nemeses.

The fight ends when Rambo elbows Black Dragon in the ribs, then picks him up over his head in a gorilla press position and tosses him out of the cabin. Black Dragon decides to come back and fight another day and disappears behind the pink cloud of smoke bomb.

MISSION COMPLETE.

What's Rambo Doing on His Day Off? #12

It's the ceremonial launch of the world's most powerful and deadly nuclear submarine, but John Rambo has has seen plenty of doomsday vehicles come and go. He's more interested in wistfully scanning the crowd for hot chicks.

As seen in Rambo: The Force of Freedom episode 19: Fire in the Sky.