The Clone Wars review roundup: Nightsisters trilogy

Now that Star Wars: The Clone Wars has aired all three parts of the Nightsisters trilogy introducing Savage Opress, let’s see what the reviewers have been saying about this story arc. We’ve got our reviews of ‘Nightsisters’ and ‘Monster’ already, and Stooge’s word on ‘Witches of the Mist’ is coming soon. Will the critics be savage?

• Big Shiny Robot calls ‘Witches’ intensely satisfying, with Katie Lucas doing “a masterful job in putting all of the players into place for this third act … an excellent and emotionally satisfying crescendo.” Coming after calling ‘Monster’ brutal and dark, but a “great stepping stone”, and ‘Nightsisters’ a “a very well put together set up,” leaving Swank “thirsty for more”.
• IGN rates the three episodes in order: 8.5, 9, and 9.5 out of 10. Dooku love in the first act, liking the not-evil background Savage in the second, and sums up part three (aka “The dark side vs. the dark side vs. the dark side”) with “damn, that was cool!”
• Eric at TheForce.Net calls ‘Monster’ a monster of an episode, introducing a “dynamic charater right out of the gate” but also showing how lethal Assaj is, building on the greater personality seen in her in ‘Nightsisters’, where Eric also found Dooku’s combat “refreshing” and Dathomir “creepy and ominous” and good connections to the EU, but pointed out Dooku’s inability to sense that Asajj survived his initial betrayal from a distance. As for the finale, even knowing that it would an action packed episode, it was still exciting and held together well by the characters, getting in Savage’s growing fury and Asajj’s anger ruining her fighting ability, and some thoughts about the end revelation.
• Clone Wars Reviews calls Asajj the Sith Ahsoka in 4.5 out of 5 star review of ‘Nightsisters’, while ‘Monster’ earns 5 stars, with Savage seen as a monster “all the moreso for having been once generous and good” and pointing out that other than Dooku, all the characters here are Clone Wars characters and not movie ones. So how many stars will ‘Witches’ earn?
• Den of Geek calls the trilogy an instant classic, giving props to this incredibly layered addition to Star Wars galaxy written by Katie Lucas, and gets geekbumps aplenty from the third act, calling the climax “a beautiful sight.” ‘Monster’ gets high marks as well, but cautions that “Never before in the onscreen Star Wars adventures (big and small) has there been such a sustained level of cruelty, evil and violence with abandon.” Meanwhile, the first act is “filled with many memorable moments” and is “bookended by two glorious lightsaber battles” and is the perfect place to hop into the show if you’re a little late in getting started.
• Daemon TV calls the final duels of ‘Witches of the Mist’ “pure visual candy” but knocks the arrival of Obi-wan and Anakin for causing it to lose momentum – overall, the episode had “quite a lot of awesome to deliver.”
• Examiner.com‘s Damon Blalack compared ‘Monster’ to James Whale’s 1931 film version of Frankenstein, and links the change in TCW’s timeslot (pushed back a half hour) to the increased carnage.
• Amy at Newsarama calls ‘Nightsisters’ a hard hitting story of betrayal and revenge and reminds you that Asajj Ventress can kill you with her brain.
• Riley at EUCantina likes the primitive fighting styles seen in ‘Monster’ and wonders at Mother Talzin’s game.
• Fandomania gives ‘Witches’ five stars, stating “good plot development, tons of fighting, some explanations, and a big, big reveal. The three-way Sith battle … is the treachery of the Sith at its finest.”
• Dauntless Media points out that ‘Nightsisters’ “covers so much ground that it’s not too difficult to forget that it is, after all, merely a half-hour installment” and gives it a B+.

So did anyone not like this trilogy of Sith?