Highlights of The Clone Wars Google Hangout with Dave Filoni and cast

With some big happenings in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, supervising director Dave Filoni took to the Internet with three cast members to discuss today’s episode, ‘The Lawless’, which concluded the Maul storyline and also preview the final story arc of the season, featuring Anakin and Ahsoka. Hosted by Pablo Hidalgo and Christian Blauvelt, the entire video session from Google hangout (more than 50 minutes) is now available online at Youtube, but here’s some of the key points (trying to keep it free of major spoilers for this episode and ones to come):

• Sam Witwer talked quite a bit about Maul’s motivations for his entire story arc – getting from Spider-Maul to how he toys with the bounty hunters in ‘Eminence’ to his role in ‘The Lawless’.
• One early scene that was voice recorded but cut out of ‘The Lawless’ before it was animated would have brought Anakin and Ahsoka into the episode.
• Ashley Eckstein and Dave Filoni broached the final story arc a bit, with a big appearance of a returning movie character, who is viewed very differently by Ahsoka and Anakin.
• We got to see a bunch of concept art, from ‘The Lawless’ and from next week’s ‘Sabotage’ as well as a preview clip of ‘Sabotage’, which introduces a David Caruso-inspired investigator, complete with sunglasses-on-and-off-ness.
• Pablo Hidalgo took a couple questions from Twitter for Dave Filoni and the cast to answer, including some about the fate of Echo and Gregor, and the return appearance of Twilight, and the return of the Wolfpack.
• Ashley Eckstein shared a great story about her first encounter with Matt Lanter on the set.
• Dave Filoni started talking about the machinations against the Jedi – not just in reducing their numbers, but in how Palpatine works to reduce their reputation and influence.
• Noticeably not answered: anything specific about season six.

Overall, a lot of fun and I hope that we get more of these types of events with the cast and crew, especially with some of the voice talent of recurring but not main show characters, like Sam Witwer (who gave a great interview with Christian Blauvelt on Hollywood.com).