We Didn’t Like… That Dooku’s Fall Is Made About Sidious, Not the Republic (or the Jedi)

The first two Dooku shorts, “Justice” and “Choices,” steadily set up the undercurrent of Dooku’s distaste for the steadily corrupting effects of the Galactic Senate, and the active harm this is causing the Republic it is meant to serve—and just as equally, how that corruptive effect is rotting the Jedi Order as it aligns itself closer and closer to the political whims of the Senate. But the last one, aptly titled “The Sith Lord” fast forwards to the closing minutes of The Phantom Menace to reveal to the audience and Yaddle alike that Dooku has been working as an agent of Sidious for an undisclosed period of time, actively sabotaging the Jedi’s archives, ordering the Clone army on Kamino, and ultimately murdering Master Sifo-Diyas to cover up his duplicity.

It’s fine, but it makes Dooku’s exit from the order feel more like it’s because he’s been secretly influenced by Sidious to fall to the Dark Side, instead of his genuine distaste at the bare corruption in the Senate—a corruption the Jedi Order is unwilling to stop as it buries its head in the sand over its own high-on-its-own-supply attitude. Fighting Yaddle, Dooku cares less that he’s known as an enemy of the Senate and more that he could be exposed as a Sith, and it just makes him feel like much more of a generic bad guy than someone who could clearly see the recalcitrance of the systems around him. Which is a shame, because…