The Only Reason This Arc Exists Is To Justify Why Anakin Doesn't Trust Obi Wan In ROTS - Tumblr Posts

What’s your opinion of the Rako Hardeen arc ?

i'm glad you asked, because i just rewatched it, and putting forth an earnest effort to try and understand the narrative dave filoni hands to me on an ikea plate in these episodes has become a subject of fixation for me. note: i am not invested in what dave filoni was trying to say. i am invested in what he actually presented me.

the layers of things that are deeply, deeply befuddling about what happens in the arc are many; we'll start with the perspective we actually have, that of the jedi and of obi-wan. obi-wan is in a position of significance in the grand army of the republic. associated canon lets us know that obi-wan is the commander of the open circle fleet, and if you check the associated wookiepedia page, you find that includes almost every major battle group we see on the show; he's not just anakin's commander, he's plo koon's commander. he's yoda's commander. in terms of military decision-making, that would make obi-wan the be-all-end-all of the GAR, the-buck-stops-here, legitimately the final resting place of the biggest decisions of the war. that makes it a) insane that they allow him to be in actual combat and b) insane that they faked his death and then relies on publicized it for an intelligence mission. the morale loss and the potential of the separatists to see an opportunity and strike was insane, and, like, while obi-wan's dead, the war has to continue and those decisions have to continue to be made. who the fuck makes them?

even if you cut out the associated canon and decide obi-wan is Just Another General, he's still in the confines of TCW a general. what happens to the 212th when he's fake dead? the trust between soldiers and their commanders is genuinely one of the things that is most important about military success, so what happens - and what would be the point - of sacrificing that for the sake of an intelligence mission that genuinely didn't require him? i am not of the understanding. even if palpatine requested obi-wan specifically for this mission, by this point the council does not trust him, and the council retains the ability to have that level of autonomy over missions because in ROTS, when palpatine requests anakin be sent after grievous, the council denies that request. we know they have the power to deny requests from the chancellor all the way up until that point. so why obi-wan? why not Black Ops Jedi #5? why was this arc not about, i don't know, what character had a well-established backstory specifically about being an undercover operative, maybe his name was quinlan fucking vos?

but that's an aside. let us continue; moving away from why the choice of obi-wan makes little sense in-universe, the actual plan itself is kind of batshit, genuinely. it goes:

we have obtained intel that there is a plot against the chancellor's life

the viewer of this television show will not be allowed to know what that intel was or how it was received, but from that intel the jedi synthesize that a dude currently in the custody of the republic is behind it

[this is the point where anyone with common sense would probably, i don't know, move moralo eval to maximum security or some shit. can i remind the audience, also, that this arc occurs after the jedi have, onscreen, used the force to rip thoughts out of cad bane's mind, so that, too, is an option available to them. because i cannot emphasize this enough: they already have the guy they're looking for in custody.]

the plan then becomes........ for the jedi to, under disguise, hire hardeen to kill one of their own jedi, who then dies very publicly, and then has to go undercover as hardeen.

and then Obi-Wan Who Is Posing As Hardeen has to..... fake gossiping about how he killed obi-wan kenobi, who he is, and then fake getting arrested by a guy who is his own padawan, and then fake going to prison.

and then. and then. instead of using any jedi powers to surreptitiously gain information. instead of simply befriending moralo eval and getting the details that way. this was the last stopping point before we go batshit insane, but instead, the plan then is, and this is fucking crazy, fake a prison break with multiple other mercenaries.

if The Real Hardeen gets away and talks, it's the end of the mission, and also obi-wan is embedded in an undercover mission surrounded by people who want to kill him, if word gets out it's an op, he's dead meat. at any point during this process, the jedi could have accidentally set loose mercenaries that they had previously captured, especially cad bane, who, you know, wanted to murder actual jedi younglings that one time. these points are purely logistical, and the plan continues to fall apart when you apply any kind of pressure to the rest of it; deception is fairly close, narratively, to ROTS, a film in which the council has (extremely fairly, he murders many people in this movie) lost an enormous amount of trust in anakin, so why in god's name does the heart of this plan rely on the council trusting anakin to, i don't know, not do the thing he has always very reliably done? why in god's name did the council genuinely expect anakin - who is a loose cannon on the best of days - to simply not go after obi-wan's killer, who has just escaped from republic prison?

further; in the process of arrest, many many times jedi have taken limbs from the individuals they're arresting. obi-wan chops the arm off the changeling they're chasing at the very beginning of AOTC. how could the council predict that obi-wan wouldn't get very seriously hurt in the process of being arrested by a jedi - especially a jedi that close to obi-wan - when they themselves tacitly approve of amputation during the process of arrest? obi-wan got off easy getting roughed up a little bit! he himself has done much more lasting damage to people he's apprehending! (i am not going to analyze the morals of that here. that is an entirely different and equally as long post.) why would you risk any jedi's safety that needlessly? why would anyone trust anakin to follow the rules in the one scenario where he has proven to genuinely never follow the rules, and yet, in the one scenario that has much more controllable variables - if anakin had been informed of the plan, and expected simply to just act well at the funeral - that's simply out of the question? david i have several questions about this. david please return my emails.

so that doesn't make sense. sure. cool. got it. this post is already frankly enormous but i would like to highlight for one individual minute that, as much as i enjoy palpatine's plans being completely impenetrable, i just want you to know that this is what (i assume) palpatine's thought process looked like:

time to check in on Untitled Sith Apprentice Project. let's see if he's ready.

[this is the part where a logical individual would have done literally anything else.]

so the way to test my Untitled Sith Apprentice Project will be to tell my current sith apprentice to hire a guy to design a plan to kill me. cool.

do that. and then the guy my sith apprentice hired comes back and says, so, to pull this off, i want to build a box that's the hunger games for mercenaries, and this might cost a few million space dollars.

cough up a few million space dollars, and because all sense has left the building, let's...... leak this plot to kill me to the jedi council.

do that. the jedi council then proceeds to arrest said guy.

proceed to tell your sith apprentice to create plans to bust him from prison, and then immediately leak that impending prison break to the jedi.

watch the jedi make choices that are really, really bad. just absolute dogshit. stare in wonder.

tell anakin to go do the thing anakin literally always does.

anakin does the thing. i've got a sneaking sense of glee at the idea that anakin might actually kill obi-wan himself.

become the damsel in distress and watch my current sith apprentice test my dream sith apprentice

like, an insane plan that makes himself a damsel in distress is par the course for palpatine, because that is literally everything he does in ROTS, right? being batshit is completely normal. i buy this as a thing palpatine would do. i don't...... buy whatever was the motivation that dave filoni had for the jedi, because, simply put, they are not supposed to be the maniacal sith doing shit just to do it. what is happening. help