Trust placed in another is trust earned.
Back on Anaxes, the Separatist forces led by Trench no longer have the advantage of the strategy algorithm thanks to the rescue of captured ARC trooper Echo. However, the Republic is still losing on most of the over a dozen active fronts around the planet. Echo, despite Rex thinking he's not ready for battle yet, has a plan: since Trench doesn't know he's been rescued, he can deceive the Admiral into a plan that will wipe out the Separatist forces on Anaxes.
But the plan involves having Echo, along with Anakin, Rex, and the Bad Batch, infiltrate Trench's flagship, and the odds are good that they'll eventually be discovered...
Originally released as part of an unfinished story reel, the completed episode premiered on March 13, 2020.
Tropes:
- Arm Cannon: Trench's first secret weapon is an electric net gun in one of his prosthetic arms.
- Badass Boast: Mace informs an army of Separatist droids that he has personally dismantled over 100,000 B1 battle droids, so they should lay down their arms and surrender. The droids decide to open fire instead.Mace: My name is General Mace Windu of the Jedi Order. At this point of the Clone War, I have dismantled and destroyed over 100,000 of you type one battle droids. I'm giving you an opportunity to peacefully lay down your weapons, so that you may be reprogrammed to serve a better purpose than spreading the mindless violence and chaos which you have inflicted upon the galaxy.
Battle Droid: [Beat] Blast them!
Obi-Wan: Well, I guess it was worth a try. - Bomb Disposal: Mace has to disarm a bomb that's powerful enough to destroy the planet. The protective ray shield is not a problem, but Echo getting shocked unconscious before he can tell Mace the final number in the code is.
- Book Ends: Chronologically, the first and last opponents that Anakin goes up against in the entirety of The Clone Wars is Admiral Trench.
- Brick Joke: As the group prepare to infiltrate Trench's dreadnought, Wrecker repeatedly expresses his disappointment at having to take a stealthy approach rather than just blowing up everything in sight. At the end of the episode, Anakin rigs the ship to self-destruct... and gives the detonator to Wrecker with a smile.
- Brutal Honesty: After unleashing a feedback overload on the Separatist droid army at the assembly plant, Echo asks his teammates if there was "ever any doubt". Tech replies "Some", as the Bad Batch was openly cautious about Echo's intentions until that point since he was recently tampered with by the Techno Union.
- Call-Back: The com-vault on Trench's flagship that Echo and company infiltrate is the same kind as the one that D-Squad infiltrated back in "Secret Weapons".
- Call-Forward:
- Trench's planet-busting bomb is stopped just in time, but fans of Rebels will remember that Fort Anaxes first appeared on a planetoid in the middle of an Asteroid Thicket…
- When Trench assumes that Anakin won't kill him because that's not what Jedi do, Anakin retorts that he no longer has such "weaknesses", indicating his growing ruthlessness.
- The entrance of the clone troopers sent into battle at the assembly line possesses visual similarities to how they will join the fray at Utapau in Revenge of the Sith. For bonus points, among the ranks of the clone troopers joining the fray in the episode are members of the 212th, the same battalion present in that battle.
- Crazy-Prepared: Trench notes that the algorithm has never failed him before, but he still has a backup plan ready in the form of a planet-destroying bomb, just in case.
- Deflector Shields: Trench's bomb is protected by a ray shield that locks out Mace when he tries to get to it. Of course, being a Jedi, this hardly stops him from being able to telekinetically disarm it.
- Doomed by Canon: Anaxes was shown in Rebels to be in pieces fifteen years from this episode. So when the presence of a Planet-Killing bomb is revealed, it seems that the Republic is doomed to fail. But Anakin and Mace indeed manage to get the codes and shut down the bomb. Anaxes does not die this day.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: As a measure of last resort, Trench has a bomb in the fusion reactor of the droid assembly plant that will destroy most of the planet if detonated.
- Foreshadowing:
- Echo's new armor already has a skull marking on it, similar to the ones that are the Bad Batch's unofficial unit patch. At the end of the episode, he joins them.
- The Emperor’s Theme playing when Anakin kills Trench, coupled with Anakin’s angry face and claiming Jedi nobility as a weakness, is a chilling reminder of what Anakin is going to become very, very soon...
- Gory Discretion Shot: The camera cuts to behind Trench's chair as Anakin impales him, his lightsaber poking through from the other side.
- Guns Akimbo: Wrecker hands his DC17 to Hunter before “releasing the wrecking ball” on some droids. Hunter handles Wrecker’s weapon and his own in this fashion, but we never get to see him actually use them like this.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Echo disables the Separatist droid army by sending them all to the droid assembly plant and then initiating a feedback pulse which overloads their circuits. Echo falls victim to the same trick when they realize where he is and send their own pulse, which knocks him out just before he can finish deciphering the code for Trench's bomb.
- I Choose to Stay: Echo joins the Bad Batch rather than stay with Rex, since his augmentations make him more like them than regular clones.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Anakin kills Trench this way when the Admiral attempts to electrocute him with his cane.
- Killed Off for Real: After having cheated death at least twice before, Trench is stabbed by Anakin, and his corpse is left behind on his flagship before it's blown up.
- Manly Tears: Wrecker sheds Tears of Joy when he gets to blow up a Separatist dreadnought.Wrecker: Oh, seriously? I get to blow it up? The whole stinking thing? This is the happiest day of my life.
- Mirrors Reflect Everything: Crosshair has some small mirrors that he uses to reflect his shots to destroy a lot of battle droids.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Republic is able to get the drop on Trench because Wat Tambor refused to inform Trench of Echo's escape in the previous episode just to keep the Techno Union's numbers up.
- Oh, Crap!:
- The reaction of everyone on the Republic's side when they realize that there's an incredibly powerful bomb hidden in the shipyards.
- Trench gets two. The first is when Anakin turns up at his doorstep and the second is when Skywalker severs his prosthetic limbs to show he's not screwing around.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: Anakin confronting, threatening, and then killing Trench helps save the day for the Republic at Anaxes since he gets the last number in the code to disarm the bomb, but it also demonstrates his slide towards the Dark Side.
- Self-Destruct Mechanism: Anakin sets the one on Trench's flagship, and then gives the detonator to Wrecker to activate after they escape. The resultant explosion destroys not just Trench's ship, but also its escorts.
- Super Window Jump: Obi-Wan and Mace lead an attack on a Separatist installation by jumping out of hovering gunships, breaking through a huge skylight, and then continuing a considerable distance down to the floor. Their men follow on jetpacks.
- Sword Cane: Trench's second secret weapon is a stunner in his cane.
- Tempting Fate: After Crosshair destroys a large number of battle droids with his mirrors and a single shot, he's confident that Wrecker won't be able to top it. Then, Anakin hands him the control to blow up Trench's flagship...
- Time for Plan B: After Echo misleads Trench to shut down his army, Trench decides to move on to his backup plan of "total annihilation" by detonating the planet-busting bomb he hid in the assembly plant's fusion reactor.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Downplayed. Echo's plan to infiltrate Trench's flagship so he can mislead him and then shut all the droids down goes off without a hitch, but then it turns out that Trench has a backup plan...
- Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Echo's plan to shut down the droid forces on Anaxes worked! ...and there's still far too many minutes left in the episode for things to be completely over. It turns out Trench has an explosive backup plan they have to stop as well.
- You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Anakin threatens to kill Trench unless Trench gives up the last digit of the bomb shutdown code. Trench doesn't buy it since Anakin is a Jedi, so Anakin slashes off Trench's artificial limbs to convince him otherwise. After giving up the code, he shocks Anakin with a taser hidden in his cane, so Anakin stabs him in the chest.Anakin: Tell me the sequence to shut off the bomb!Trench: Never! Dooku would kill me for losing Anaxes.Anakin: (in a deadly voice) And you think I won't?Trench: You're a Jedi. Your nobility does not allow- [Anakin slices his prosthetic limbs off]Anakin: I don't have such weaknesses! Now, let's try that again.
