The Reason General Grievous And Anakin Skywalker Never Met During 'The Clone Wars' Series
It is crazy to think that Anakin Skywalker and General Grievous never met during The Clone Wars. Not even once. Despite the fact that Anakin was a Jedi General for the Republic, and General Grievous was, well, a general of the Separatists. From a storytelling standpoint, Anakin is one of the central protagonists, and General Grievous is one of the main antagonists. They also fought a war against each other for three years! I suppose it is a big galaxy, but you would think they would have done battle at least once in their three-year military career. However, there is actually a reason why those two enemies never met each other.
As we all know, General Grievous was first introduced in Revenge of the Sith. At the beginning of the film, Obi-Wan and Anakin were captured by General Grievous. Grievous remarks that he thought Anakin would be older, and Anakin retorts that he assumed Grievous would be taller. This entire exchange implies that the two were meeting in person for the first time. While this could have just been a throw-away line in a movie, it seems Dave Filoni and his team wanted to take this seriously. They could have ignored this line, but when they made The Clone Wars prequel series, they decided to strictly adhere to this seemingly canon first meeting. As far as I can tell, it wasn’t mandatory to adhere to this for the show. It seems they had free reign to tell the story however they saw fit, but they took it upon themselves to make sure that the two never met in The Clone Wars series, which is kind of impressive from a writing standpoint.
Of course, Anakin and Grievous have come extremely close to meeting several times. Once they almost met on the Malevolence, and then they almost met again during the Separatist attack on Kamino. Fortunately enough, Obi-Wan faced Grievous while Anakin had a duel with the assassin Asajj Ventress. Then they technically met during a prisoner exchange. Anakin, however, was unconscious during the exchange, so I suppose that one doesn’t really count. I can only imagine this was a cheeky way for the writers to get as close to breaking “canon” as they could without actually doing it. Although, it may also be quite the challenge to write out a fantastic episode only to realize that it has to be changed because of two lines in a movie that has to be its sequel.
There is a fan theory giving an explanation to Anakin’s line Revenge of the Sith, however. While Anakin never met Grievous during The Clone Wars, his padawan Ahsoka Tano did. The theory suggests that Ahsoka, who was young and quite small compared to Grievous, described him to Anakin. In her description, she must have said he was a giant robotic monster because to her he would be. This would have led Anakin to imagine Grievous as a giant, looming threat, so when he finally saw the General, he realized his actual size must have been slightly exaggerated by his former padawan.
Whatever the real reason they decided to adhere to this specific line in the film, I think it shows the true talent of the creative team behind The Clone Wars. It also shows the dedication of Star Wars fans. Star Wars has always been a series that would try to largely adhere to the story in order to make the world feel believable and cohesive like a real universe. Even if it is just one line in a movie, it is nice to know there are Star Wars fans working to keep things concise and cohesive.
Source(s): Screen Rant