Part 1: Captain Fordo leads his men against the Tempered Hands. Major Lazarus prepares to make his final stand at the Basilica of Salvation when he receives an unexpected messenger in the form of Farnus.
In Part 2: Tahr Whyler and Palpatine clash. To the Inquisitor's horror, the Sith Lord proves a far mightier opponent than the Jedi, and he is nearly overpowered.
Omega and Oracle Squad slowly begin to overwhelm the Imperial fleet, Omega's ignorance to the fact she is commanding actual Republic ships in a real battle allowing her to enact ruthlessly pragmatic tactics. However, the Imperium discovers their command vessel and disrupts their connection to the fleet, just as Omega finally learns the truth and has an emotional breakdown. While an Eversor Assassin rampages through the ship they're on...
As Ahsoka Tano's blood is tested to prove her claims of being an abhuman rather than an alien, and to screen for other genetic corruptions, and Farnus is interrogated to prove him free of mind control or heresy, Saint Lazarus and Leahandra Ordane debate over Ahsoka's offer of a ceasefire. The Adeptus Mechanicus weighs in on Lazarus' side, determined to recover Nerva Sharp due to her recent bonding with an Imperial Knight. Lazarus decides he has no choice but to meet Ahsoka.
Captain Fordo continues to lead his clone troopers against the Tempered Hands inside the Axumite Spires in bitter combat. His men are ultimately wiped out by a deadly act of sabotage with ship-scale melta-bombs, the Marines sacrificing suits of powered armor as decoys so they can withdraw before the blast. Only Fordo and the Jedi Oppo Rancisis escape.
Tahr and Palpatine take their battle into the mystical realms, their twisted souls confronting each other in the metaphorical arena of the Warp. Tahr unleashes his full, awesome might, but finds himself countered by Palpatine's superior finesse, allowing him to turn Tahr's strength back against him. The duel is so closely fought that the two find themselves pausing for respite, Palpatine challenging Tahr to a duel of words rather than blows and sorcery. Arrogantly believing he can use this to recoup his strength and then annihilate the Sith Lord, Tahr agrees. This nearly becomes a fatal mistake, and in the end, Tahr is forced to flee.
Once Tahr has fled, Palpatine takes stock of the situation. He is confident that he has planted seeds that will allow him to subvert Tahr as his next apprentice. Then he notes that Aayla is still alive and conscious. He considers killing her, but decides to spare her, as perhaps she too may embrace the Dark Side, now that she has seen its power.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: While battling against Sidious inside the Warp, Tahr initially takes the form of a many-armed draconic serpent described as being the size of an Imperial Battleship, which is normally between 8 and 12 kilometers.
- Badass Boast: Tahr gives one to Sidious in response to being called a slave of the Imperium.Tahr: I am no slave! I am an Inquisitor! A Lord Inquisitor of the Imperium of Man! Billions live and die by my WHIM! I command battlefleets and soldiers which shame anything you have ever wrought! My authority is the authority of a GOD!
- Battle Chant: In Part 1, Lazarus and the surviving Imperials in the Basilica of Salvation begins chanting "For Emperor and Imperium!" as they hype themselves up for battle after Lazarus gives his Line in the Sand speech.
- Beam-O-War: In the early stages of their duel in Part 2, we have Palpatine's blue Sith lightning collide with Tahr's black daemonfire. The act is described as distorting reality around them and reshaping the walls of the building they are fighting inside from the sheer power of the two clashing forces.
- Cool Versus Awesome: This episode sees Sheev Palpatine/Darth Sidious take on a rogue Xanthite Inquisitor Lord (who also happens to be an Alpha-Plus Psyker) in a physical and psychic duel to prove which of them is Eviler than Thou. Ultimately, it's Palpatine who comes out on top.
- A Day in the Limelight: Part 1 has Captain Fordo given his chance to shine as he is the POV character for most of Part 1, which culminates in Fordo becoming the first clone trooper in the series to have killed a Space Marine in combat.
- David Versus Goliath: A rare Evil Versus Evil example can be seen in the duel between Tahr Whyler and Palpatine. Whilst Tahr relies on his massive psychic strength, Palpatine counters with far greater finesse and an unmatched expertise at subterfuge and illusions, making him the "David" to Tahr Whyler's "Goliath". During their climactic battle in the Warp, Tahr initially incarnates himself as a gargantuan 100-armed dragon, whilst Palpatine becomes an eerily dark shadow. Tahr's psychic attacks manifest as overwhelming onslaughts of fire and lightning, whilst Palpatine weaves deadly multifacted attacks where repelling one attack only allows two more to take its place, forming intricate webs of death. When their exhaustion snaps them both back to real-space, though Tahr is fully planning on using Palpatine's offer to talk to wait for the chance to rebuild his strength and launch a fresh crushing offensive, he gets outgambitted by Palpatine, who recovers first and uses Tahr's emotional reaction to his words to create a tiny hole in the Inquisitor's psychic defenses that allows him to catch Tahr in a Force-Choke. When Tahr breaks out of the Force-Choke with his pure power, something unprecedented in Sith history, Palpatine still gets the upper hand by slipping away invisibly from Tahr's line of sight whilst leaving behind an illusory double, which Tahr futilely attempts to crush with a massive telekinetic onslaught, only realizing that he's been duped as Palpatine grabs him by the scalp. If Omni-Kraiden hadn't turned out to be Not Quite Dead and used that to teleport himself and Tahr away, Palpatine would have killed the Inquisitor.
- Despair Event Horizon: Aayla's POV section ends with her crossing it after she witnesses Palpatine and Tahr's duel, and the full extent of their power. This brings her to the horrifying realization that the Jedi never stood no chance of defeating either and she gives in to despair before blacking out.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Downplayed. Space Marines are genetically-enhanced super soldiers originally created by the Imperium's God-Emperor and the Imperials view the Astartes as their god's "angels of death." Fordo, an unaugmented clone trooper, kills one in Part 1 by stabbing him in the eye with a vibroblade.
- Doppleganger Attack: When they bring their duel into the Warp itself, Palpatine creates a multitude of illusionary copies of himself to swarm and confuse Tahr with each illusion attacking the Inquisitor with Force lightning.
- Explaining Your Power to the Enemy: When Tahr successfully slashes Sidious across the chest with his daemonfire-wreathed rapier, Tahr arrogantly boasts to Sidious that he might as well have already won since daemonfire cannot be quenched and will consume the soul of whatever comes into contact with it. This explanation likely helped Sidious in figuring out how to extinguish the soul-fueled flames by uttering some Black Speech.
- Evil Versus Evil: Part 2 has Tahr Whyler duel against Darth Sidious while Aayla helplessly watches as she lays defeated on the ground. Aayla honestly isn't sure who she should root for given how both pose an equally massive threat to the Jedi and the galaxy as a whole, though she finds herself preferring that Sidious wins due to a case of Better the Devil You Know.
- Eviler than Thou: Palpatine proves he's a greater evil than Tahr by besting the Inquisitor in battle and forcing the latter to flee.
- Fantastic Racism: While the Imperium hating xenos is nothing new, Saint Lazarus's internal POV narration in Part 2 reveals that he wouldn't even willingly negotiate with a nonhuman (regardless of whether said nonhuman was sincerely acting in good faith) and is only considering Ahsoka's offer of a ceasefire because she is supposedly an abhuman.
- I Am the Noun: Tahr bellows out "I AM the Inquisition!" in response to Sidious reading his mind and suggesting that the rest of the Inquisition would turn against Tahr the moment they found out the dark secrets which Tahr had been hiding from them.
- Internal Reveal:
- Omega and the Oracle Team find out that they've been commanding a real battle all this time. The Oracle Team are the first to slowly come to this realization and they tell Omega the truth after she is tricked by Lesat Gamma into giving the AdMech access to the Republic command ship's computers. She doesn't take it well.
- Palpatine learns more about the God-Emperor of Mankind and the Inquisition's inner workings from mind raping Tahr during their duel. This leaves Tahr shaken and causes him to view Palpatine as a serious threat.
- The Juggernaut: Arks Mechanicus are among the largest and most powerful ships that the Imperium can field. The ones that were called to the Battle of Axum by Orian to assist Rollah for one hour have some of the most powerful armaments in the Imperium, of which devastated 1/4th of the Republic fleet sent to retake Axum. A fleet which numbers in the thousands.
- Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: Midway through their reality-bending epic battle, Sidious proposes to Tahr that instead of fighting a physical duel like they have been doing up to this point, they should instead engage in a psychic duel akin to a Battle in the Center of the Mind. Tahr readily agrees to this as he's convinced his nature as an Alpha-Plus psyker means he will easily crush Sidious in the psychic plane. He's wrong and it's clear Sidious deliberately goaded Tahr into accepting this altered duel because he knew it as well.
- Lightning/Fire Juxtaposition: Used during the first half of Tahr's duel with Palpatine; the Inquisitor's black daemonfire is contrasted by the Sith Lord's bright blue Force lightning.
- Line in the Sand: In Part 1, Lazarus asks for six hundred volunteers from the Imperial Guard to stay behind and hold back the Republic forces invading the Basilica of Salvation while everyone else evacuates.
- Little "No": Aayla starts off Part 2 by quietly uttering "No…" in horror as she lies injured on the ground and watches Tahr Whyler face off against the dreaded Darth Sidious himself.
- Mirrored Confrontation Shot: Done in the background of the episode cover art for Part 2 with Palpatine and Tahr Whyler about to go at each other.
- Mistaken Identity: In Part 2, Tahr mistakenly believes that Sidious is a Jedi Master and addresses him as such during their duel, who is not amused in the slightest at the misunderstanding. To the point that when he gets Tahr in a Force-Choke, he takes a moment to angrily lecture Tahr to never address a Sith as a Jedi.
- Multi-Part Episode: This episode is split into two parts, which are each released separately.
- Mythology Gag:
- In response to Tahr demanding to know how Sidious was able to dispel the daemon fire that he unleashed upon him, Sidious merely replies "The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities the weak and shortsighted consider to be unnatural."
- Palpatine says the line "Search your feelings, Inquisitor Whyler, you know this to be true" while delivering his We Can Rule Together offer to Tahr and claiming that the Dark Side can make Tahr more powerful than the God-Emperor ever could.
- Parallel Conflict Sequence: While Darth Sidious and Tahr Whyler duel each other to prove which of them is more powerful, Captain Fordo and his clone troopers are engaged in battle with the Tempered Hands inside the Axumite Spires.
- Properly Paranoid: While scanning Ahsoka's blood to see if she was an "abhuman" as she claimed to Farnus, Lazarus personally makes sure to check if there's any Genestealer DNA in her. Considering that he had previously encountered Genestealers in battle earlier that same day, seemingly fighting alongside the Republic's forces, this is an understandable precaution.
- Psychic Strangle: Palpatine puts Tahr into a Force-choke out of irritation in response to hearing Tahr continuing to mistakenly call him a Jedi.
- Selective Obliviousness: During the Oracle Team's segment of the episode, it's shown that everyone by this point has deduced their "strategy simulation" is real except for Omega, who is willfully ignoring all the signs and hints which the rest of her team had already picked up on. This is because for Omega, acknowledging the truth would mean having to accept responsibility for the countless lives lost during the space battle over Axum as a result of her tactical decisions. It's not until Omega's command console is hacked into by the AdMech, and Sprout finally tells her the truth in no uncertain terms that she stops being selectively oblivious and immediately has an emotional breakdown from the realization.
- Shapeshifter Showdown: While dueling inside the Warp itself, Tahr and Sidious both shapeshift into different forms throughout their fight. Sidious primarily uses some variant of a Living Shadow, initially appearing humanoid before later shifting to a more arachnid form when he began creating his webs of Force lightning. Tahr starts out by transforming into a colossal Draconic Abomination, then becomes a Blob Monster made of eyes and toothed jaws. After that, Tahr transforms into a silver Sinister Sentient Sun with blades of light. Finally, he takes the form of a simple human man, more specifically Tahr's original appearance before physically altering himself to Look Like Orlok.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Tahr manages to get under Palpatine's skin by dismissing the distinction between Jedi and Sith as irrelevant after Palpatine lectures him about not confusing the two.
- Sparing the Aces: Palpatine chooses not to kill Aayla Secura despite her being a witness to his identity as a Sith Lord because he can sense that her faith in the Light Side has been irreparably shaken from seeing Tahr and Palpatine's power, which drove her to realize that the Jedi never stood a chance of defeating the Sith. Palpatine believes this will lead her to convert to the Dark Side and potentially become useful to the Sith's plans.
- Speed Echoes: During their physical sword duel, both Palpatine and Tahr are described by Aayla's POV as moving so fast that they leave afterimages of themselves.
- Sword Fight: The first half of Sidious and Tahr's duel sees them engage in a physical sword fight with Sidious wielding his dual crimson lightsabers and Tahr wielding his black rapier-shaped power sword.
- Underestimating Badassery: Tahr continually underestimates Darth Sidious throughout their duel despite Sidious repeatedly proving to be more powerful than he expected, to the point where it honestly approaches I Reject Your Reality levels in regards to Tahr's denial at how strong Sidious is. Even when Sidious no sells Tahr's most powerful attacks, constantly outmaneuvers him during their psychic duel in the Warp, and forces Tahr to temporarily submit, the Inquisitor is still somehow convinced that he's going to defeat Sidious any moment now. The only reason he doesn't die is because Omni-Kraiden turns out to be Not Quite Dead and teleports Tahr away to safety due to knowing when a battle is lost.
- We Can Rule Together: A villain-to-villain variant. Once Palpatine is done demonstrating to Tahr Whyler just how much of a Hopeless Boss Fight the Inquisitor is in, the Sith Lord offers the possibility of an alliance between the Sith and the Inquisition, claiming that together they could rule the Republic, the Imperium, and even the entire galaxy. Tahr rejects Palpatine's offer in the heat of the moment and escapes, but Palpatine is confident that he has already planted the seed of an alliance in Tahr's mind.
- Wham Shot: Near the end of the Oracle Team's segment of the episode, when the narrator describes how the Imperials sent an "emissary" to board Omega's command ship, the video then cuts to the image of said emissary: an Eversor Assassin.
- Wizard Duel: Palpatine and Tahr get into one with the former's Sith magic and Dark Side mastery clashing with the latter's Warpcraft and Chaos sorcery.
- You Fight Like a Cow: Inquisitor Tahr Whyler exchanges witty insults with Darth Sidious during their duel in Part 2.Tahr: You truly believe that your childish sorcery can match the might of the Inquisition?
Sidious: Arrogance, hah! Ever the folly of the uninitiated. My order has long mastered the mysteries of the universe; we do not need to brute force our way through it. The Force obeys, for it is our right to command it.
