Star Wars fans love, perhaps more than Star Wars itself, the minutiae of a galaxy far, far away. How, why, and when things happen can often be as exciting as the circumstances or thematic meaning. How Star Wars has navigated that desire, especially in recent years post-canonical reboot, has varied wildly—but 20 years ago today, the beloved 2D Clone Wars series provided at least one hilarious navigation of that struggle in one simple hand motion.
March 25, 2005—just months before the release of Revenge of the Sith—saw the 25th and final chapter of Genndy Tartakovsky’s 2D Clone War series release, climaxing a week-long drop of mini episodes that bridged the path between the series and the opening events of the upcoming movie. Much of the final arc depicts the siege of Coruscant mentioned in the opening crawl of Revenge, as Clone Wars‘ arguable main villain General Grievous—one of its most fascinating contributions to Star Wars of the era—carved a brutal path through the city-world to locate and capture Chancellor Palpatine, with Chapter 25 culminating in his defeat of the Jedi tasked with guarding the Chancellor and making his escape.
The Grievous of Clone Wars and the Grievous fans would meet a few months after in Revenge of the Sith (and, years later, the Grievous of the 3D CG Clone Wars animated series) are markedly different characters. If Revenge‘s Grievous is a bit more of a sci-fi serial villain, cackling and orating even in his repeated moments of failure throughout the film, Tartakovsky’s Grievous is almost more like a slasher villain: cold, mechanical, ruthless, an unstoppable force that comes smashing into the show’s view of almost mythical, high-action Jedi and brings them crashing down to the surface with a combatant that can humble them.
But there’s another big difference between Tartakovsky Grievous, Revenge of the Sith Grievous, and the eventual, retroactively-canonical 3D CG Grievous. Revenge of the Sith‘s Grievous coughs like he’s deep into a five-pack-a-day deathstick habit. Tartakovsky’s Grievous does not.
So how did Clone Wars answer the question of how and why this change occurred? What possible deep secret could have given Grievous his trademark hack-and-wheeze? Mace Windu just crushes his entire chest cavity in.
It’s a tiny moment, literally the penultimate scene of the whole series: Grievous is escorting the captured Palpatine to his ship, Mace swoops in to try and stop him. Grievous twirls around towards the Jedi and flourishes his four arms, lightsabers igniting. You’re expecting cool stuff, because Clone Wars has been about, more than anything, showing you cool stuff, and especially with Grievous and Mace. And all Mace does is raise his hand, and poof: there goes Grievous’ chest! He buckles, his eyes bulging wide in surprise at what just happened, he begins spluttering, and the ship door closes. That’s how Clone Wars bids farewell to its ominous contribution to the galaxy far, far away.
It’s so good, not because it is deeply hilarious—the look on Grievous’ face as he realizes he’s feeling the consequences of his actions is priceless—but because it also plays with that expectation that fans have that everything has to have some grand, fated reason to it. In modern Star Wars continuity, the answer to Grievous’ cough is far less funny, but still has that kind of vague banality: it’s just simply a side effect of his cybernetics, their rudimentary technology only barely sustaining what’s left of his biological parts. But it hits on a similar idea: we might want something bigger and grander, tragic or intriguing, to be the reason behind this fundamental aspect of a character like Grievous—beloved in that Star Wars way in that he’s an incredible piece of design, with only enough of his story pencilled in to keep you wanting more.
But Star Wars is often at its best when the answers to these so-called mysteries are just relatively normal. Not every detail of a person’s life story is majestic, or fated, or even particularly important, because that isn’t what makes telling stories about them interesting. Fictional characters do not exist to be a collection of facts about themselves; they are vessels for emotion, theme, and symbolism, and being that kind of narrative engine means that sometimes things just happen because they do. Because at the end of the day, it’s not as important as a fan thinking about all those little details thinks it is.
Not everything has to happen for a divine plan. Sometimes, like this day 20 years ago, you just get your chest caved in by Samuel L. Jackson.
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