Like The Mandalorian before it, Disney+ is forgoing Netflix’s “all at once” model and releasing one episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars per week. More shows should be put out that way, but there is a downside: if you’re waiting to binge the final season, Twitter is a spoiler minefield on (in the case of Clone Wars) Fridays, especially last Friday, when many of the day’s trending topics concerned the new episode, “The Phantom Apprentice.”
I am one of those people who’s waiting to watch the season (the final season!) all at once, but I was aware of the buzz surrounding “Phantom,” which is not only apparently a series highlight, it’s also one of the highest-rated episodes in TV history on IMDb.
As with all things voted on by anyone with decent wifi, you shouldn’t take IMDb’s “User Rating” metric too seriously, but it’s still an interesting indication of what fans consider to be the best episode of a series (like “Homer’s Enemy” for The Simpsons) and the worst (“Lisa Goes Gaga”). “The Phantom Apprentice” is currently sporting a near-perfect 9.9 rating, where it’s in a second-place tie with the series finales for Six Feet Under and Chernobyl; “407 Proxy Authentication Required” (Mr. Robot); “Mizumono” (Hannibal); and multiple episodes of Attack on Titan, Game of Thrones (“The Winds of Winter,” “Battle of the Bastards,” “Hardhome,” and “The Rains of Castamere”), and Breaking Bad (“Felina,” “Face Off”), among others. Speaking of Breaking Bad, it has the distinction of having the only 10.0 episode on IMDb: season five’s “Ozymandias,” where [spoiler] is killed and Walt [spoiler]. I probably don’t need to include spoiler warnings, as the episode came out seven years ago, but I wouldn’t want to ruin the “Ozymandias” experience for anyone. It truly is the best episode of Breaking Bad, and that’s saying something.
It’s hard to get two people to agree something is good on the internet, let alone 113,939. How many thumbs up do Saul and Kim give “Ozymandias”?
(Via IMDb)