Star Wars: The Clone Wars Season Finale - ‘Hostage Crisis’

The end is near. The first season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars is coming to a close. With Count Dooku backed against a wall, the ex-Jedi leader of the the separatist forces decides to play his last card against the Republic.

In the season finale of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the folks over at Lucas merge spaghetti Westerns with the Force. Introducing Cad Bane, the galaxy’s most fearsome bounty hunter, as ruthless as he is deadly. He’s the Star Wars version of Roland from Stephen King’s “The Gunslinger” - only evil.

Supervising director Dave Filoni said, “This episode gave us the chance to do something totally different, to go in a new direction with the series… We’ve seen the good guys and the bad guys, from the top of the food chain to the cannon fodder on the front lines. Now we get to look at some of the opportunists, at the mercenaries operating without a side. It’s a whole new dynamic we haven’t seen yet, and at the same time it’s very Star Wars.”

Patterned after the laconic gunslingers of spaghetti Westerns, Bane is lethally cool and relishes being a bad guy. Bane is unflappable in the face of danger, and even welcomes the opportunity to pit his formidable skills against the legendary prowess of the Jedi Knights.

Filoni says the inspiration from the red-eyed bounty hunter came directly from George Lucas. “He had a clear idea for this bad guy who plays by his own set of rules, whose moral code is dictated by his fee… And he had sketches and concepts dating back to the original films. If Boba Fett was sort of the Man With No Name of the Star Wars galaxy, then Cad Bane is his counterpoint – his Lee Van Cleef.”

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Be sure to catch “Hostage Crisis,” the exciting conclusion to the first season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, airing at 9 p.m. ET/PT Friday, March 20 on Cartoon Network.