The Clone Wars supervising director Dave Filoni gave The ForceCast's Jason Swank and Jimmy Mac a few exclusive details about the Cartoon Network animated series in an interview released on Friday.

While discussing the four-part General Pong Krell story arc ("Darkness on Umbara", "The General", "Plan of Dissent", and "Carnage of Krell"), Filoni responded to a question about Order 66 by promising that the show would address this mysterious directive. "Order 66 and how it works, why it works, how it all goes down...I don't wanna say too much about that, except that before we're finished with this show, you will understand it a lot better than you do after Revenge of the Sith, because we have the time to get into things like that. ... It has been thoroughly figured out. It's something we've discussed with George."

Regarding the series' depiction of Sidious, Filoni said, "You'll see a little bit more of Sidious, 'cause we start to deal with bigger issues, we start to answer a lot of the kind of bigger questions, and he's kind of forced to take a more active role. Things don't go as smoothly as some people are led to believe for him. It's not like he just wants these things to happen and he calls Order 66 and it works out perfectly for him. He has to actually maneuver and play the chess game to stay ahead of the Jedi." Filoni clarified that this material wouldn't be coming until next season at the earliest, but he said that "maybe at Celebration VI" he'd preview it. "I am going to do my best at Celebration VI to have some ridiculous footage to show," he added.

When asked if the Zygerrian slaver trilogy meant that the series would continue to adapt Expanded Universe material, Filoni made it clear that that wasn't the case. "That was a really interesting situation," Filoni said of Henry Gilroy and Steve Melching's TV adaptation of their comic book Slaves of the Republic, which was originally written (but never used) for a TCW Season 1 story arc. Filoni said that, while EU material sometimes inspires him and his writers, "I always get worried about disrupting continuity. I seem to get blamed for that a lot," he added with a laugh.

Filoni also gave The ForceCast hosts an exclusive piece of information about the episode Escape from Kadavo, which concluded the Zygerrian slaver story arc. Referring to the conversation between Ahsoka and Kiros governor Roshti at the end of the story, Filoni said, "We had debated ... having Roshti mention that he knows Ahsoka's parents, or knew her parents ... and that that would somehow play out for why she had an instinct to save the people. In the end, we ended up not going with that because ... we don't have something later that goes on to explore that more, and I thought it'd kinda be almost a mean thing to do."

Regarding the series' resurrection of Darth Maul, Filoni recalled an ironic anecdote from his time as a fan watching the Zabrak Sith's demise on the big screen. "I can specifically remember being in the theater during The Phantom Menace and watching Darth Maul ... split apart," Filoni said. "And I literally thought, 'Ha ha ha, that's so no one can bring him back to life.' Because Boba Fett could come out of that sarlacc pit a hundred different times and a hundred different ways, and I bet you George never intended that to happen."

Filoni also spoke about the Jedi and the Sith's competing philosophies of death, and said that the Sith perspective will relate to the resurrection of Darth Maul later in Season 4. Plus, he discussed the hotly-debated Gungan capture of General Grievous (in the episode Shadow Warrior), and explained his collaboration with Lucas Licensing for novels like Darth Plagueis. For those insights and a lot more, check out The Weekly ForceCast for January 20th, 2012.