How to Bingewatch Star Wars: The Clone Wars

A Guest Post by Sarah Long

Are you ready to set off on an epic journey of suffering and terribleness?! You may have a bad feeling about this but trust me, 'cause you'll thank me later!

The episodes below are largely organized according to release date, but a few I've reordered according to the chronological in-story timeline, but only when they work well watched earlier than their release date order.

I've also just cut out all the episodes you definitely want to skip to save time. The real goal here is to fast track you from season 1, through the two essential arcs in season 2, and then on to when the show gets really good in season 3. If you're already a die hard Star Wars fan, then you might enjoy the "maybe" episodes, too.

Dreams Come True

When I went to visit my grandmother the other day, she said, out of the blue: "Leah died."

"Huh?" I mentally ran down a list of people we both know.

"Princess Leah," she explained. And then I understood. Carrie Fisher.

Public mourning is a weird thing, especially for actors. In the last weeks of 2016, a spate of celebrity deaths caused many fans to engage in something...not quite like grief, more like nostalgia. Carrie Fisher was not Princess Leia, but it can't be denied that what most people are missing about her is the white-clad space rebel she portrayed.

And that's even more strange, because Princess Leia is not dead.

Valentines for Nerds

Valentine's Day has arrived - the central day of the romantic year. It's the day we commemorate the death of St. Valentine, a Roman priest who (probably) got in trouble for marrying Christian couples in the reign of Claudius Gothicus in the 200s. Failing to convert the Emperor, he was then beaten to death and beheaded (still a better love story than Twilight).

Star Wars Trailer Breakdown - Good and Bad

It was one of the great shocks of my young life to find out Darth Vader's true identity. I followed my dad around, badgering him with questions. How could that be? Anakin is dead! He's not dead? Obi-Wan said he was. He LIED? Why didn't Obi-Wan tell Luke the truth? I thought Obi-Wan was a good guy!

It's a Dangerous Business - Tolkien, Rob Bell, and Belief

Yesterday was J.R.R. Tolkien's birthday. I refer, of course, to the man who wrote the best novel of the 20th Century: The Lord of the Rings. And no, that fact is not up for dispute.

Or is it? Among the fantasy crowd, there's a stubborn set of naysayers who deride Tolkien's work as reactionary and cliched. There's some truth in both of these criticisms, but here's the thing: it's not really all that brave to be edgy. These days, it's more cliched to have a main character who is plagued by self-doubt, wrestles with abstract dilemmas, and is always seeking to "find himself," rather than a protagonist who is certain of anything. If they are certain of their faith, they're a religious nut job like Noah; otherwise we reshape Moses into a postmodern skeptic.