Last week I mused about my top five most wanted female characters from The Clone Wars cartoon, so it seems natural to make my list of male characters this week. The Clone Wars series was full of colorful, bombastic heroes and villains that would make great action figures, especially super articulated Black Series figures.
My first runners up is a group of characters that got a lot of screen time during The Clone Wars series, the clones themselves. Hasbro has done a good job making Clone Troopers and their commanders and I hope they continue and get to guys like Echo, Fives, Heavy, Dogma, Tup, 99, and Fox. Heavy clones in the style of Battlefront II heavy troopers would not go amiss either.
The other big group that has a lot of members that jockeyed for position on my list were all the prequel Jedi. Plo Koon especially gets a lot of nice screen time that makes his death at the end of Episode 3 quite a bit more poignant than it is without watching Clone Wars. The first time I watched that scene after doing a re-watch was really eye-opening. Anyway, Mace Windu, Ki-Adi, Saesee Tiin, Even Piell, and Kit Fisto would all be fantastic Black Series figures.
The final runner up on this list is General Grievous. He’d normally be my number one with a bullet, but I have heard and believe the rumors of his upcoming release in the Black Series, so I didn’t include him.
#5 Pong Krell – The Jedi of the Prequels and Clone Wars are mostly benevolent and kind, so I always had a hard time believing them as characters. Pong Krell was different. He was a straight-up a-hole and though he is later revealed to be under the sway of the dark side, I enjoyed him more as just a regular jerk, showing a range of personalities in the order.
He’s also toyetic as it gets, a massive chunk of a wicked looking alien Jedi with four arms and two humongous double bladed lightsabers. He’s like an organic General Grievous who actually knows what he’s doing and is a great villain.
#4 Pre Vizsla – My Mandalorian love is showing with this pick. When George Lucas introduced the Mandalorians to The Clone Wars, he threw a bit of a curve ball to older fans by making the infamous warriors from the EU into pacifists. It was a little shocking and unexpected, but Pre Vizsla and his group of old-school warrior holdouts made the change more palatable.
Pre Vizsla was armed with the traditional weapons we associate with Mandalorians due to Boba and Jango Fett, but he also wielded the Darksaber, an ancient Mandalorian take on the lightsaber, that ups his cool factor quite a bit.
It would be nice to get that saber so you can give it to (spoilers!) your existing Black Series Maul and Sabine figures too.
#3 Embo – I’ve said before how much of a bounty hunter fan I am and The Clone Wars really scratched that itch for me. It’s the one aspect of the show that I like more than Rebels. Embo first appeared in a Seven Samurai homage episode and his alien race, Kyuzo, is named after the enigmatic sword master from that film. I eat little references like that up, but this guy also has a super cool design and features in a few killer action sequences, the best of which has him snowboarding down a mountain, firing his bowcaster, while using his over-sized hat for board.
Plus, he’s also got a cool dog.
#2 Hondo Ohnaka – Hondo also originated in that Seven Samurai homage episode that gave us Sugi and Embo, except Hondo is an homage to Eli Wallach’s bandit from The Magnificent Seven. As time went on he seems to have picked up a bit of Wallach’s character Tuco from The Good the Bad and the Ugly and Long John Silver from Treasure Island. He’s an archetypal character, the self-interested criminal with a heart of, well, not gold, but definitely at least bronze.
Anyway, he’s the King of the one-liners and the most amusing of all of The Clone Wars characters. Not only that, but he’s got a striking design as a Weequay and sporting a nifty space turtle-shell hat and long coat. Interestingly enough, there’s been talk that he will feature in the upcoming Galaxy’s Edge theme park attraction at Disneyland. It’s just good corporate synergy to release a figure!
#1 Cad Bane – Finally, with Cad Bane we have a character that had to grow on me because the initial design got my “that’s not Star Wars” hackles up. He wears a massive cowboy hat and leather duster for crying out loud. I felt like it was a bit on the nose, but I grew to love Cad Bane’s ultra-competent Bounty Hunter over time. He has the gear and the nerves of steel to take on Jedi in one-on-one battles and prevail.
The voice is great too. I’m not sure if it’s an accent or some post processing, but he’s got a great growl that goes perfectly with his sneering, flint-eyed face. I do feel like he owes a lot to Lee Van Cleef, another favorite archetypal character actor of mine.
Well, that’s my list of most wanted Clone Wars male characters for the Black Series, what’s yours? Let me know below or on our forums!
