Cargo of Doom

The second episode of the season 2 premiere of The Clone Wars sees Anakin Skywalker and his Padawan, Ahsoka Tano, pursue the cunning bounty hunter Cad Bane in an attempt to regain the stolen Jedi holocron. Meanwhile, Bane tortures General Bolla Ropal in the hopes of getting him to unlock the holocron, thereby meeting Bane’s objectives.

The most talked-about aspect of this episode must surely be the zero-G battle sequence. It truly is a thing of beauty, and director Rob Coleman should be commended for how adeptly he pulls it off. (This is not surprising; his episodes are always stunningly cinematic.) But from a writing standpoint, the real drawcard here is the thematic continuity between this episode and the previous one, Holocron Heist.

Anakin battles Bane in a zero-G environment

“Overconfidence is the most dangerous form of carelessness” declares the fortune cookie for Cargo of Doom — a core theme throughout the entire Star Wars saga. Overconfidence was the downfall of the Jedi Order, the Achilles heel of the Empire and the one thing Yoda warned Luke against when confronting the Emperor. In Holocron Heist, Ahsoka’s overconfidence manifested in her disobeying orders on the battlefield: there, it resulted in her being moved to guard duties; in Cargo of Doom, however, it almost costs her her life.

It’s one of those paradoxes of life that the more we learn, the more aware we become of just how much we don’t actually know. This is far too scary an idea for some people to face: they latch onto religious dogma, political ideologies… anything to provide the illusion of certainty. These are the people who refuse the call to adventure, instead holing themselves up inside their personal comfort zones.

Then there are those who embrace the call. They are willing to “let go” and let the Force guide them, so-to-speak.

In Cargo of Doom we have a moment of great irony, as Ahsoka follows in her Master’s footsteps as she impulsively pursues Bane just as Anakin did with Dooku in Attack of the Clones. “I’m not impressed,” she quips to Bane, believing she has bested him. Yet soon the tables are turned, and she becomes Bane’s captive.

Ahsoka, captured by Bane

Here, once again, we see the price paid by those not fully willing to surrender to the Force. The Ego, the seat of consciousness, is throwing its weight around while the Self, that which speaks to us when we quiet our mind, hardly gets a look-in. This is the real crux of the tension between knowledge and wisdom. Ahsoka has been well-trained — she has knowledge to spare — but her wisdom is solely lacking. She has yet to fully embrace the Force on its own terms.

By the end of the episode, however, Ahsoka herself is reminding Anakin to be patient — in other words, to listen to the Force, the Self — as he runs off in pursuit of Bane. He claims to be determined to retrieve the holocron, but is it a noble cause driving him, or is it really just a personal vendetta against Bane, now that he has hurt someone Anakin feels close to (i.e. Ahsoka)? Yoda observed as far back as the Clone Wars feature that having a Padawan would force Anakin to confront his issues with attachment. And attachment, of course, is all about the Ego.

If Ahsoka is slowly learning the truly Ego-less intent of the Jedi, Anakin’s still not listening to his higher Self. And it will cost him more than he could possibly imagine.

A Wasteland of Dry Stones

With time comes change. We get older; our family and friends die; our skin loses its elasticity; our eyes become weak; our hair becomes grey.

Depressing, isn’t it?

Buddhism recognises this as a fact of life, and it is — it is “the first noble truth”. The second noble truth is that the reason all of this is depressing to us is because we wish things to be otherwise.

Now, in a moment of great joy, you might exclaim, “I want this moment to last forever!” But it never does.

Perhaps you’ve had great friendships that have eroded with the passage of time. Maybe the area where you grew up is now unrecognisable. Or is it just that you can’t physically do what you could 20 years ago?

In any case, it’s only by fighting this very fundamental aspect of life that you find the experience depressing, frustrating, maddening. Embracing life means, necessarily, embracing change — embracing death: the death of people, the end of relationships, the falling away of things we hold near and dear at this moment. But it also means simply enjoying the promise of new possibilities on the horizon.

This is an active choice that we must all make in our own lives: enjoy the moment, but free yourself of attachment to that which can never last.

On Mustafar, Anakin fully refuses the call to adventure.

In Campbell’s monomyth framework, this choice appears as the first stage of the hero’s journey: “the call to adventure”. The hero or heroine who embraces life accepts the call to adventure, for better or worse. He or she is lifted out of the ordinary world and placed beyond the boundaries of rationality, ready to be transformed and renewed. A refusal of the call, however, is a clear rejection of the essence of life itself and its endless cycles; to quote Campbell himself, the end result of this refusal is that the hero’s own “flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones”. The lifeblood has been drained from the earth, leaving only barren plains.

Enter Anakin Skywalker.

Despite his mother emphasising to him upon his initial departure, “Don’t look back,” Anakin indeed does look back. Superficially, he accepts the call to adventure, but his heart is never truly in it. Throughout Attack of the Clones in particular, he acts as Anakin first and as a Jedi second. This is what the refusal of the call actually looks like in everyday life, be it a married man who continues to act as if he were single, or a political leader who places personal loyalties above the duties of the office: the choice made is to hold onto the old ways of being. Like Peter Pan, they refuse to “grow up” — to grown into their new roles and accept the call to adventure.

This is Anakin’s weakness, and he pays dearly for his mistake. He is possessive, jealous and greedy, craving control over life, love and nature itself. He doesn’t accept life on its own terms, instead insisting that it bends to his will. The cost for this attitude is nothing less than his humanity — his soul.

Anakin transformed into Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith

Of course we should try to help others and continue to make the world a better place, but the choice is not between passive acceptance and active betterment; the choice is between living in accord with nature and merely treating life itself as a commodity.

Once we stop respecting life, we lose that which makes us human. That is they way of the Sith. That is the Dark Side of the Force.