#Filoni is holding mostly steady

[takadasaiko]

Me: I just want to Sabine fight like the Mandalorian she is.

Sabine:

Me: SABINE!!!!

[bi-furiosity]

ok hi here’s some detail shots because while the whole piece is pretty baller i did a lot of detail work and want to properly appreciate it lol. also i have meta to go along with this ig. feel like it’s mostly self-explanatory but gonna talk about why i chose rex to take the place of the Father in this weird mortis redraw/revamp thing i put a stupid amount of time into. this is long as hell so the meta is under a readmore after the comparison pics.

[ID: a previously posted digital painting of Ahsoka, Rex, and Anakin mimicking the Rebels mural of the Mortis gods. the second image is the referenced mural from Rebels, for comparison. end ID.]

first off, dave filoni has literally said that he sees rex and ahsoka as the main characters of the show. 

“Each story arc in the last 12 episodes gives you an important piece of the end of the war. The clones’ perspective, Ahsoka’s perspective, and then the finale, which brings both of those two together,” Filoni said. “Because, in the end, The Clone Wars to me is about Ahsoka and Rex.”

so like...no shade to obi-wan but despite it being a lot easier to have justified his placement as the Father, i wanted to look at the actual narrative purpose of the Father in the Mortis arc, which isn’t so much as a father figure but as a mediator or someone who balances the extremes of the Son and the Daughter. obi-wan tries very hard to be a mediator, but in terms of pure practicality, mediation is essentially rex’s job. he’s a mediator between his troops and high command, ahsoka and anakin, etc. 

we see this in moments like the premiere of season 7, when anakin literally has rex keeping watch while he calls padme. he’s the mediator between fives and anakin during the end of the chip arc. he’s the mediator between his troops and krell on umbara, and we see in the final arc how anakin and obi-wan both misstep when trying to reconnect with ahsoka, while rex doesn’t have the same issue. he knows that her return was never inevitable, but he was also the one who had no opportunity to say goodbye. he knows, better than anyone, how much has changed since she left. this is a rex who has seen fives’ die and echo essentially return to the living. he is the one who is most likely to witness anakin’s downward spiral after ahsoka leaves. out of anyone, he spends the most time with him, in the most stressful situations.

in many ways, rex is the only one to really see both anakin and ahsoka, as they are. because that’s his job. rex’s role is to be an anchor, the steady support for his narrative counterparts. of course, narratively it’d be boring as fuck if he always succeeded at that. rex is frequently put in situations where it is impossible to mediate (ie umbara, fives’ death, etc.) he was created with the purpose of overthrowing the republic. the purpose dictated for him by his creators is deception, violence, etc. but he spends the entirety of the series working against that purpose. whether or not rex recognizes it, pre-order 66, he is witness to both Light and Dark both because of the chip inhibitor and because of his relation to anakin and ahsoka. 

ultimately, he is used as a pawn, but his dedication to his values and loved ones fights against that manipulation. he’s as neutral a party as you can get in the fall of the republic, and it’s not because he does nothing. he does both-- aiding the collapse of the republic and resisting it too. to me, the removal of the chip is kind of a death of his connection to the Dark side. it’s a physical tie being cut, but also it’s the end of his service as a soldier of the republic.

were this piece to be rebels-era or later, i think ahsoka and rex would maybe be switched. on one hand, ahsoka’s sabers being white is meant to be a visual embodiment of her balancing of the Force, and we see her distancing herself from the others throughout rebels and the mandalorian. she’s keeping secrets and almost falling into the flaws of the Order, probably because of her realization that anakin was vader. on the other hand, morai is still very fond of her in rebels, which is a pretty fucking strong indicator that she’s still a champion of the Daughter. 

feel like anakin is pretty straightforward so. yeah. lol. this is long as fuck so i’ll slap a readmore somewhere up there.