GOOD SPOILERS FOLLOW ORDERS
Senator Riyo Chuchi meets with Separatist Senator Avi Singh in the opening moments of this shadowy clone-focused two-parter. Once on the opposite side of the Clone Wars, these two now both object to Imperial occupation. Despite being surrounded by protection (from Rex, no less!) a Clone “Operative” attempts to assassinate them.
As I watched this scene, in this fantastical world, all I could think about is our very real world. When I was a kid watching Star Wars in the early 80s, it felt as if it was referencing bygone wars: Vietnam, World War II. Wars that lived in my parents’ memories or realities, not mine. When I watched the prequels, I had a different experience, seeing how the second and third films were responding to the George W. Bush Presidency and the post 9/11 world.
Now, we’re living in a time of imperiled democracy worldwide, and political violence. Russian President Putin just jailed and then murdered the heroic Alexei Navalny, one of many political and institutional foes he’s poisoned and assassinated. He’s openly invading a peaceful neighbor to conqueror it (and some people in the US think we should just let him). China is an authoritarian state. Donald Trump wants to be “dictator for one day,” argued that former Presidents should have “absolute immunity from prosecution,” and put an end to the US’s ideal of a peaceful transfer of power. Orban. Bolsonaro.
And a part of the reason this is growing, at least in the US? Is a confusion between loyalty to an ideal and loyalty to an institution. In “Infiltration” and “Extraction,” we see the clones, once the unified Army of the Republic, as a house divided. Some have remained, essentially, in their old jobs for a regime that simply changed its name. The Empire, after all, appears to be the former Republic. It exists in the same buildings, at least, and the leader is the same: Palpatine was the Supreme Chancellor and now he’s the Emperor. Same boss, same job, if loyalty is your lone and highest principle.
But it’s a mistake in kind, mistaking the label on the container for its contents. The Empire is not the Republic, it is its antithesis.