Star Wars: Disney’s Five Saddest Clone Stories
In the Clone Wars, some of the clone’s stories were a one way ticket to Sadooine, while others were an absolute punch in the gut, but which are the saddest?
The animated Star Wars series managed to take characters we hadn’t given a second thought to in live action and make them into fully realized individuals with hopes and dreams and feelings. And then Star Wars used those same exact characters to hurt us. If you too were emotionally compromised by Star Wars and Jango Fett’s million other sons, this is the group therapy session for you.
Echo
Echo is a clone you’re made to assume is gone after the battle at The Citadel. Caught in an explosion while trying to save a shuttle Echo is gone leaving his scorched ARC helmet on the ground. It was a sad loss to be sure, but not one that sat well with all of the character. In the most recent and final season of Clone Wars Rex finally tracked down Echo and found him alive. The reunion was bittersweet as Rex finds his friend hooked up to Wat Tambor’s machines and having his mind mined for information with little memory of how he got there or how long it’s been since he’s seen his team.
99
99 is that character who makes you realize that 1) Clone Wars was a very well thought out show with a lot of thought given to world building and 2) maybe the science in the Star Wars galaxy isn’t always perfect. Something apparently went wrong in his production leaving defects that realistically wouldn’t be a big deal, but when clones are seen as a commodity and nobody is going to be pay for a defective product…. It’s a sad arc that makes you realize just a little how insidious and weird the idea of cloning sentient people to be soldiers is. 99 stays in Kamino to act as maintenance, and in the end dies doing the one thing he really wanted (or maybe just what he felt he was meant to do) fighting against the Seperatists to defend his home.
Heavy
Heavy was a member of the Domino squad whose first off-world assignment was on the Rishi moon. Here he quickly found himself under attack by battle droids in a scene that felt very much like watching the last quarter of Rogue One. It’s impossible not to root for Heavy, but you also know when a character is doomed. In the end he detonated the listening post, dozens of battle droids and himself in a move that may have saved a lot of other clones.
Tup
Tup’s modification behavioral biochip malfunctioned and caused him to execute his own, tiny order 66, kicking off an exhaustive series of events that leave the characters confused and helpless and the audience almost frustratingly aware of what’s going on. This arc answered a ton of questions regarding if clones could have turned down the order and how some managed to rid themselves of the chips in question, but once again opened a window into just how dark a clone existence can be. After an attempted kidnapping by the Sepratists and a series of unconvincing lies from the Kaminoans, Fives was able to remove the decaying and malfunctioning chip, bringing Tup peace before he died.
Fives
After traveling to Kamino with Tup, it was Fives who investigated the circumstances of his friend’s death, the inhibitor chips, what they really were, and who was responsible for them. Fives is the clone the viewer is rooting for as he slowly figures out what we already know, but he’s also killed moments before he could tell Rex what he discovered and potentially stop order 66 before it ever happened. This is one of those awful scenes you know is going to happen because you already know the future looks like, but it doesn’t make it any less sad.
Did your favorite tragic Clone Wars trooper not make my list? Were you somehow completely unmoved by any of the clones? Who was your favorite and why? Let us know in the comments!
May the force be with you, Adventurers!
