What does mind control have do with anything
You haven't seen the Mortis Arc, obviously.
and who cares about a character retconned into existance who has no effect on the prequels?
If you're talking about Ahsoka, then she's part of the continuity and depending on what happens to her in TCW, she'll have a huge implied impact on everything that happens in Anakin's mindset in the future, including ROTS. TCW is a big fat retcon and getting bigger and fatter all the time, but as long as the retcons are better than the canon they replace, I'm perfectly fine with it. And regardless, whatever TCW does as a retcon is the new canon and we all have to adjust (or just not watch TCW, stick fingers in our ears and say la la la I CAN'T HEAR YOU!)
There's no way Anakin could know that Palpatine was lying.
Palps confessing to being a Sith wasn't a big fat honkin' clue that he wasn't trustworthy?
As as you pointed out Palpatine didn't outright lie to him.
Which goes to show how dumb ROTS Anakin was - Palps didn't even bother to lie to him. (But what he said strongly implied that he could save Padme - that's a politician's definition of "not a lie.")
Their discussion on using peacekeepers as generals seemed to be more befitting Anakin's general disdain for the Jedi than the whole "waa Padme's dying waaa!" movie plot.
That's far from being the first time they've implied that impatience with the Jedi's restraint in battle was Anakin's true motivation and all that stuff with Padme was...whatever.
But an even bigger factor is him being effectively told
and shown in the Mortis Arc that "the Jedi are beneath you." Far from being an arrogant pup who threw a fit and demanded that the Jedi give him power he hadn't earned, now he's looking like someone with admirable restraint and even humility, who is reluctant to believe all that BS about being the Chosen One, even when he directly experiences it.
It's becoming inevitable that eventually he will come to the conclusion that "everything is frakked up and only I can fix this." The threat of Padme dying no longer needs to be part of the story and in fact is just a distraction even if it weren't so idiotic.
Maybe we got the "wrong impression" from ROTS about what was really going on in his mind, because they neglected to show us all the relevant scenes from the real story?
I liked part 2, but I don't think a part 3 was really necessary. Starting to feel like a lot of unnecessary running around.
Maybe, but they have lots of time to fill. The core story is pretty simple and doesn't require five seasons to tell - honestly they could have told the whole thing just as well by condensing it into three fast-paced and tightly scripted movies, the PT as it should have been.
Also, who knows what part 3 might bring? This show has a way of doling out important elements with an eyedropper so that it's not always easy to tell what is important at first.
It would have been so much better if Anakin's fall had been slow and subtle as alluded to by that conversation.
They could have done it by doling out the elements over 2 1/2 movies (especially if the first movie starts with Anakin as a teenager - starting with him as a kid just wasted a lot of screen time.)
But it's not just conversations, there are crucial plot elements that needed to be included: the Republic really
is corrupt (prove it to us unambiguously); there are Separatists who are motivated by "good" motives and they're not just Sith and greedy capitalists. And the stuff in the Mortis Arc is vital to the story - that's where we understand that Anakin isn't an arrogant, petulant brat but a perfectly reasonable guy who sees that he's the only one with the ability to rescue a totally unravelling situation.
I'd also have done a lot more with the idea (implied by Tarkin) that the military officer caste of the Republic are resentful of having to take orders from a pack of weird warrior monks who give the rank of "general" to
children and are known as diplomats and peacekeepers, not ruthless fighters. Tarkin was totally right, I love it!
As things go increasingly to hell because the Jedi can't run a war, guys like Tarkin should be thinking about a military coup as the only option to prevent total disaster, and they would certainly line up the support of any Jedi who might be friendly to their ideas.
Tarkin, not Palps, should have been the guy recruiting Anakin, and Anakin should have already been thinking along the same lines. Palps could have been pushing Tarkin, or maybe not. Palps sets things in motion and then sits back and lets them take their natural path.
