George Lucas had a strong hand in guiding the course of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It ensured that the era kept much of his signature style, and also carried along some of the ideas he tried to instill in the franchise. The difficult politics of the prequel films became clearer with several seasons to expand on it. But The Clone Wars also showcased some of Lucas' philosophical ideals, and sometimes the results were bizarre. "A Sunny Day in the Void" is frequently disliked for its weirdness. Yet that episode is also George Lucas' favorite.
"A Sunny Day in the Void" was the second episode of the D-Squad arc, which was part of The Clone Wars Season 5. Colonel Gascon, a tiny alien with delusions of being his galaxy's own General Patton, was assigned to lead a squad of droids on a secret mission to halt a Separatist plan. As the second episode opened, the squad had crash-landed on Abafar, an arid world whose void-like desert hid a lone settlement. But this infamous episode didn't deal with much of that. Instead, it spent the bulk of its 25-minute running time ruminating on the philosophical differences between organic thinking and droid programming.
Aesthetically, the episode can be mistaken for one of the most bland. Abafar's void was a flat desert, and its sky was a fading curtain of orange hues. Only the Colonel and his droids, including R2-D2, broke the horizon line. For Lucas, it was a warm call-back to his movie THX-1138 and its abstract spaces, along with its deep thematic oddities. More importantly, Lucas saw the initial story pitch for "A Sunny Day in the Void" as a chance to discuss the reality that droids lived in, and their questionable status as living beings. Dave Filoni worked on the storyboards for the episode alongside Lucas, and later reflected on how bizarre the whole episode was to create.
The final episode broke away from Lucas' original pitch, but still spent much of its dialogue on big, existential questions that are pretty out there for the series' young audience. Colonel Gascon debated on behalf of what he felt was his superior organic nature with pit droid WAC-47, until Nature itself gave him a hand with a flock of indigenous birds. The deeper meaning of all this was left unclear. On one hand, the birds could've been a metaphor for the Force, after Gascon chose to trust his instincts and let them guide him and WAC to civilization, which might've supported his position. On the other hand, it might've been just a coincidence, and the fact that the droids made it to safety first could've been meant to indicate that their programming was superior.
That the episode is Lucas' favorite is, like his love for Jar Jar Binks, a reminder that the way he sees his creation isn't always the same as his massive fanbase. For Lucas, Star Wars was probably meant to be a kid-friendly vehicle to explore the vast possibilities of imagination. That much of his fanbase has grown up with the series and are now adults doesn't often factor into his vision. The D-Squad arc is mostly untethered to the greater story, allowing these four episodes to mix slapstick humor with the kind of beautiful and philosophical emptiness of something like Moebius' Arzach stories.
Reception to the episode remains heavily mixed. While there are some fans that get a glimpse of what George saw and loved in this episode, "A Sunny Day in the Void" is a common guest on lists of the worst Clone Wars episodes. It's also attacked on Reddit when opportunities present, and with a low IMDB rating and mixed reviews, it remains a notorious sticking point for Star Wars fans. It's easy to watch the episode and dismiss it as terrible, because it does fail expectations for the franchise as a whole. But it's also worth trying to view it how George Lucas intended, as a way to use this galaxy far, far away to look within ourselves.