[MUSIC PLAYING]
[LIGHT SABER]
- Welcome to "Star Wars The Clone Wars" download.
In this episode, we're going to take
a look at "Gone With a Trace."
- My name is Ahsoka.
- Lovely name, Ahsoka.
- Fresh from walking away from the Jedi Council
and the life she once knew, Ahsoka makes her way
to the lower levels of Coruscant,
crash landing onto a platform on level 1313.
[CRASH]
- Ah.
Ugh.
- Ahsoka is greeted by Trace Martez,
a mechanic who agrees to give Ahsoka a place to fix her bike.
- How's it going down there?
Need any help?
- Not if you're going to charge me.
- After hearing how Trace feels about the Jedi,
Ahsoka chooses to keep her past a secret,
but steps in to help when Trace and her sister, Rafa,
get in over their heads.
- Set, set.
[MECHANICAL SCREECHING]
- We took a deeper dive into "Gone With a Trace"
with cast and crew.
Here's what they had to say.
- My reaction to "The Clone Wars" coming back
was honestly just disbelief.
In fact, I didn't believe it until I
was physically in the studio recording the first episode.
Even though I get to use my own voice for Ahsoka,
I had been doing "Rebels" Ahsoka for so long,
and she was so much older.
And truthfully, I spoke in a much lower register in my voice
for "Rebels."
So I had to go back in time and remember,
OK, how old is Ahsoka now?
I watched a lot of the episodes in season 5,
and I tried to get my voice back to that place.
It definitely took a couple of takes,
a couple of conversations with Dave Filoni,
but eventually, we got there.
- In the beginning of the episode,
Ahsoka isn't it the greatest mindset.
We need to remember that the Jedi had betrayed Ahsoka.
She begins her journey still a little wounded and feeling
abandoned.
She hasn't really been on her own before,
and she doesn't really know if she fits in anywhere
after leaving the Jedi Order.
- There was a sequence where we first see Ahsoka.
She's riding in on a speeder bike.
But it's a kind of, like, junky speeder.
And she's going into traffic, and the speeder
starts to malfunction.
And I remember struggling so hard to get that right.
I had all the classic speeder bike
sounds that we usually use.
But it just wasn't quite junky enough.
So I remembered that Ren Klyce, who's
the sound designer for "The Last Jedi"
had created these, like, jalopy skim speeder sounds.
And so I found those.
And I started cutting bits of that
in with our original speeder bike sound,
and then just combining those two layers.
I was like, finally, that scene was working.
- We were really applying ourselves to that underworld.
And we tried to build on that underworld.
So we built our muscle on the early "Clone Wars."
So we had a lot to reference.
But then we needed this Trace and Rafa area.
So for me, that garage for Trace and Rafa
needed to feel like, you know, it's not flattering.
It's a service area.
So we needed to separate that out quite a bit from what
everyone knows of 1313.
This is Trace and Rafa's little world.
- Trace and Rafa are two girls that live
in the underworld of Coruscant.
They represent kind of the average citizen that's
going about their daily lives.
And I wanted to show that, in many ways,
the Jedi were out of touch with those people,
that Ahsoka's taught that they're keepers of the peace,
and that they had this great job,
and that they police the galaxy.
But they've gotten so top heavy, that they don't even
realize that most of what they're doing
isn't helping the average person.
And that the average person has no contact with a Jedi knights.
The average person really doesn't know what they do.
And from afar, it can seem like they're not actually doing
a lot of things to help them.
- When Ahsoka meets Trace and Rafa,
her eyes are truly opened.
To meet girls her age that have a completely different
life experience from her, truthfully,
it kind of rocks her world.
She has no idea how other people live their life
and that they look at Jedi in a different way than she does.
But, you know, Ahsoka was already questioning the Jedi.
So to hear these other opinions, it's
really eye opening to Ahsoka.
- Trace is the younger, slightly more
naive, but ambitious Ahsoka.
And Rafa is the potential slightly bitter,
going dark, doing whatever it takes
to achieve an end possibility of who Ahsoka could become.
So they represent two different possible characters
that Ahsoka could be at this crossroads in her life.
Really, I think Ahsoka, as a young person, wants to fit in.
And her world view's getting challenged by these two girls.
And her world view is just kind of broken by the Jedi.
So what does she do and where is that going to end her up?
And those are the questions that I wanted to kind of attack
as we see her making these life decisions heading
towards the end of the war.
- Last week, we asked for your questions
about unfinished business.
AtDeadzilla asked, "What was the design
process for Clone Force 99?
I noticed that Hunter has a very Rambo like look to him."
Killian Plunkett, art director, answered, "the Bad Batch are
a squad of Republic commandos, and that was the starting point
for their armor.
They were meant to feel closer to the archetypal '80s action
heroes than the regular clones.
Both the mullet and the headband were staples of the era.
These classic elements help signify
Hunter as the team's leader."
Have any burning questions about "Gone with a Trace?"
Tweet us your questions using the hashtag CloneWarsDownload.
Maybe you'll see your question answered on the show.
Want to learn more about this episode?
Head to starwars.com/gonewithatrace
to check out the episode guide.
And don't forget to check back next week for a deep dive
into "Deal, No Deal."