But regardless, why is he so bloodthirsty here? I’m not clear when it was made in the production schedule, but I’m guessing it’s only because of later scheduling decisions we are getting three storylines in a row with Hondo in them, which seems a bit lopsided (and I like the character!). Then you have this current Young Jedi storyline, which at one point wasn’t even going to air as normal episodes of The Clone Wars (it was shown at Star Wars Celebration in August as an edited-together movie). The premiere, “Revival”, was meant to air later – but presumably, the decision was made to move it up in order to bring Darth Maul back in earlier. It’s especially odd considering Hondo worked with Obi-Wan in the season premiere – though that also leads to the fact that we’re seeing these episodes out of order. In fact, when Ahsoka actually brought up that he was being more extreme than usual – “You seem less hospitable than our last meeting” - I thought we might get some reveal that he was being controlled, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

The character's a pirate and has done plenty of bad things (torture included), but killing children? The fact that he would be willing to do that for no good reason beyond accomplishing a theft seemed really out of character. My biggest issue here was the portrayal of Hondo. I had a couple of notable issues with this episode of The Clone Wars and initially thought I’d be rating it lower – but as it progressed, the strengths began to grow and it ultimately ended on a pretty great note.

Clone wars a test of strength