Bleeding Red: The Grand Army of the Republic and Humanization Through Violence, Part IV

By Anna Heneise

As established in Part I, in The Clone Wars, the clones are characterized through the tension between their understanding of their purpose as soldiers and their growing understanding of themselves as individuals— the conflicting ideals of being good soldiers and of being good people. Because their purpose is war, these individual epiphanies happen in the context of violence; in the individual ways each character reacts to the reality of waging war, and in the ways their trauma manifests. 

Occasionally characters will be placed in parallel to emphasize these differences. In season one, Sergeant Slick trades information on the GAR to Ventress and the Separatist forces in exchange for smuggling him out. His betrayal leads to massive destruction, but before he can make good on his escape he is captured and imprisoned. In defense of his actions, he claims he loves his brothers and was striking a blow for all clones against the Jedi, who he views as slavers and the source of his siblings’ oppression. In season two, Cut Lawquane is introduced, a former GAR soldier who had an opportunity to desert, and took it. He ended up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, married a local woman, and settled down to live his life. When he is discovered by a horrified Captain Rex, and threatened with being turned in— potentially to face the same treason charges as Slick— he defends himself saying he chose duty to his family over duty to the Republic. 

They both saw an opportunity to get out of the army, and took it, but Slick wanted to make his exit a grand gesture and Cut was just happy to leave and to be left alone. And already the Kaminoan’s assertion of the clones as perfectly obedient, perfectly unaffected soldiers crumbles. Cut and Slick were created to be soldiers, but went to very different and very desperate lengths to stop being soldiers. As he tries and fails to fight his way out of the GAR compound, Slick claims, “At least I got something out of all this suffering.” 

The examples are endless. The aptly named Chopper collects droid parts from the battlefield, saying, “I just wanted something back. I guess I felt like they owed me.” The Umbara Arc explores the way an inherently exploitative system will turn those exploited against each other, culminating in clones firing on clones and then turning on the Jedi who ordered them into that massacre. Fives lost all but one of his squad during the Rishi attack, and in tribute painted a Rishi Eel on his helmet. Similarly, Waxer painted on his own helmet an image of a child he befriended during a campaign and will likely never see again. Tup’s relief when he finally dies, mirrored later in Fives death, their pain secondary to the nightmare ending as they breathe their last in their brother’s arms. And in the corner of the screen, as the Jedi strides through the battlefield, untouchable, a clone pauses a moment beside a body they recognize. 

Captain Rex is a secondary lead and the clone character who receives the most focus. He is the character through whom the audience interacts with Slick, and with Cut, and with Umbara. He starts the show a straight-laced soldier and ends it a broken man, his faith in the Republic he was created to serve shattered. In seasons seven, he has a conversation with Cody, where he contemplates the sheer scale of the loss of his friends and fellow soldiers. Cody doesn’t comfort him, but offers solidarity, saying, “Yeah, regular folk don’t understand. Sometimes in war, it’s hard to be the one that survives.” 

The Clone Wars is occasionally criticized for not being a very good war show. The battles and tactics themselves display an unsurprising lack of critical thought from the production team. But in this way, in this line, the show redeems itself. It’s hard to be the one who survives. And that is all. In the prequel trilogy the clones were established to be a people who are not a people so much as an entire army of human weapons. When it came to writing The Clone Wars, the challenge of writing the clones was always going to come down to the challenge of humanizing an entire people and culture solely through their participation in a war. Much of what we are shown of the clones are the ways they are good at war, the reasons they enjoy it, the assertion from the galaxy and from themselves that they were made for it. But we are also shown how, despite altered DNA, a decade of preparation, and widespread denial, the violence they are surrounded by has a very human toll. It is perhaps possible to be both a good soldier and a good person, but not in the Grand Army of the Republic.