Rating: ***
Review Date: 9/22/16
Producer: George Lucas
Cast: Matt Lanter, James Arnold Taylor, Tom Kane, Corey Burton,
Ahmed Best, Liam Neeson, James Hong
Contains 13 episodes
When Disney acquired the "Star Wars" franchise, they abruptly cancelled "The Clone Wars" series and started working on the new "Star Wars Rebels" series. "The Lost Missions" is the unofficial sixth season of "The Clone Wars" and attempts to bring some closure to the series while setting the stage for the "Revenge Of The Sith" (2005) film. It's thematically much darker than the rest of the series and most of the episodes focus on the Jedi Council discovering the true nature of the clone army and the existence of Executive Order 66. It unfortunately also brings back Jar Jar Binks (with a romantic twist!) for a couple of episodes, which is difficult to stomach. You forget just how much you despise him until he's forced into the foreground again. Yoda also gets more screen time and starts developing his more eccentric personality traits as he seeks out the nature of The Force and attempts to learn how to preserve his consciousness after death.
The package includes an unfinished story arc called "Death On Utapau" that's fully scored and acted, but not fully rendered. It's fascinating to watch, and the raw animatic is surprisingly sophisticated. It's an excellent example of how the show was made and what tools were available to the creators. It's also a fun and interesting detective story that has Obi-Wan and Anakin investigating a murder on a remote planet.