Star Wars: The Clone Wars - "The Box" Review

Note: Full spoilers for the episode follow.

This episode's set up had me initially thinking it would be something akin to a Star Wars style Hunger Games, with Dooku and Eval having a group of Bounty Hunters compete in a kill or be killed type contest to find the strongest. Instead, it was a bit different, with Eval putting them through his own version of Arcade's Murderworld, where it was all about survival, not homicide.

Regardless, it was certainly a macabre scenario. And the ruthlessness of the rooms the group – including the disguised Obi-Wan – went through was pretty notable. The first room, where rising platforms could save you from poison gas but then also smash you to the ceiling, was particularly twisted.

It was all very video game like, in a fun way, involving figuring out patterns and moving platforms and surroundings. In fact, the final room, with the flames below, gave me a sudden flashback to certain rooms inside the Sandcrawler, while playing Super Star Wars, where you could fall onto spikes. Probably not intended by The Clone Wars creators, but it was amusing none then less.

While it was all freaky and certainly deadly, as several bounty hunters perished along the way -- the visual of one poor guy's corpse being pushed forward by a moving column was particularly notable -- it actually wasn't quite as intense as it could have been. This was mostly due to the presence of Obi-Wan, who kept rather quickly figuring out how to get through each room.


This was noted in the story, true, with Dooku telling Eval, "Your Box doesn't seem to be as much of a challenge as I thought." But, like the first episode in this storyline, I almost wished we could see this scenario play out without Obi-Wan, where it would have been trickier and others would have had to step up sooner to figure out the puzzles and patterns to survive. Cad Bane (until the very end) and the returning Embo didn't even really get to show their skills at all in this episode, since Obi-Wan was so leading the charge.

Still, it was a cool scenario to see play out. And the end was also notable, as Cad Bane clearly had grown to respect Obi-Wan (or "Rako Hardeen", as he still believes him to be). Seeing Bane first save Obi-Wan, and then tell Eval, "If you're gonna kill him, do it like a man," was a nice switch up – what can I say, I do enjoy seeing the deadly bad guy with his own sense of honor thing play out. This was a man we'd seen (rather hysterically) kill someone because he wanted his hat early in the episode – but Bane would argue he killed him like a man, damn it!

We now have our team assembled (let's hope Embo gets to do some cool, hat-throwing action next week!), as they're sent to kidnap Palpatine. I've certainly enjoyed this storyline without being completely blown away by it, and am looking forward to seeing how it wraps up next week. Eric Goldman is Executive Editor of IGN TV. You can follow him on Twitter at @EricIGN.

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