I've just rewatched The Ghosts of Mortis ep from season 3, and it seems to have some massive implications regarding Anakins eventual turn to the dark side - beyond what features in RotS.
The whole Mortis arc is pretty interesting, but several things in the GoM episode not only foreshadow Vaders rise, but actually seem partly responsible for it. For a start, this unknown, uncharted place is about as strong with the force as anywhere featured in the series. And Anakin flies to the centre of it, to the very 'Well' of the dark side. Where he becomes poisoned by it, as the Son shows him his future.
Now at this point in CWs, apart from his hatred for what happened to his mother (and sand) he has proven to be a heroic Jedi on an epic scale. His turn from Jedi to Jedi killer has always been jarring, and his reason for suddenly killing children in order to save his wife has always seemed flimsy at best, even with Palpatines manipulations (and I guess I'll never give up hope for a better explanation, heh.)
So on Mortis, he goes to the Well. Which looks just like Mustafar, as far as volcano interiors go. The Son poisons him with the dark; and then shows him the atrocities in his future, telling him that the only way to prevent them is to join with him; he also shows him that the Jedi are responsible for the imbalance in the Force. This CWs Anakin is horrified, he's totally against what he sees, and can't believe he'd do such things. But now he's poisoned, like Ahsoka was for a time - he sees that he has to stop this future of himself at all costs. But interestingly at this point, Anakin becomes just like he later appears in RotS. Yellow eyes, dark rings under his eyes, and a mad, unreasonable sense that he needs to bring balance, even if he now has to kill Jedi to do it.
That is, until the Father touches him, and makes him forget the vision, and removes the poisoning effect.
What struck me watching it this time was... what if the close proximity to the Well, the poisoning by the Son, and the Mustafar-like surroundings were never fully eradicated by the Father? That his later growing distrust of the Jedi, plus Palpatines offer, triggered him back into the state he had already previously been in? Seriously, in RotS, he goes from flying away from Padme in a reasonable state of mind, to his meeting with her on Mustafar, where he starts talking about ruling the galaxy, and how from his point of view the Jedi are all evil. It would be really nice if this episode was actually intended to give a better or deeper reason for the sudden change in the movie. I might just choose to believe it anyway!
There's a lot to absorb in that episode, I love it. Another thing, it looks like the way that the three embodiments of the force fall foretells the future, or even causes it. When the Daughter dies, the Father says that out in the galaxy, the Sith will become more powerful - predicting/causing the death of so many Jedi, and the Emperor's rise. Then the Father betrays the Son, using Anakin to kill him - Anakin defeats the dark and returns the balance, as the Father says he will do in the future.
I wonder how intentional the links with RotS are. Most of the commentaries about this ep focus on the Darth Bane/Darth Revan deleted scene.
This post has been edited by Traveller: 16 February 2017 - 09:14 PM
So that's the story. And what was the real lesson? Don't leave things in the fridge.