When Season 2 of Cartoon Network’s
Star Wars: The Clone Wars premiers on Friday, ruthless bounty hunter
Cad Bane proves a real game-changer. “We have our battle droids and our clones but this guy is the new third party in the Clone Wars—he symbolizes a big shift for our series,” says supervising director
Dave Filoni. “There’s a lot we don’t know about Cad Bane and it’ll slowly be revealed. We’ve yet to see how lethal he can be and what circles he travels in. He’ll take on some pretty big tasks.”
Bane will have help in the form of Todo 360, a lovable little butler droid. Says Filoni: “He’s kind of like R2-D2 only he’s not an astromech—he’s a new kind of design people haven’t seen yet in the Lucas universe.” Providing his voice is
Seth Green, a self-proclaimed Star Wars geek. (“I can personally list the names of over 50 different models of droids in the George Lucas universe.”) “Todo’s a nice, funny little guy working for the badass villain, but you can’t hold that against him,” Green says. “Droids are programmed to do their jobs. They don’t get to have opinions.”
The future of Padawan heroine
Ahsoka Tano has fans concerned, since she clearly does not appear in
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, the film that follows this series in Star Wars chronology. “I can’t reveal Ahsoka’s fate but the arc of her emotional evolution is very important this season,” Filoni states. “She’s no longer the young bratty upstart we first met. She’s more dynamic, more aggressive. You’ll see her dealing with the consequences of the war. It will affect her greatly.”
That goes double for her Jedi master
Anakin Skywalker. The series will begin to reveal hints of the dark-hearted bastard he’ll become in “Sith.” Says Filoni: “You’ll see an increasingly bigger divide between the way Anakin and
Obi-Wan Kenobi see the war. It’s a crucial development. Anakin will do things that are not very Jedi-like.”
Star Wars: The Clone Wars premieres Friday, October 2, 8/7c, Cartoon Network