Anakin Skywalker usually gets along with clone troopers fast. He treats them like people, not numbers. He fights beside them, jokes with them, and you can tell he actually cares what happens to them.
So it’s kind of hilarious when one clone shows up and Anakin immediately looks thrown off.
Not because the guy is a traitor. Not because he’s incompetent. But because he’s the first clone Anakin ever meets who talks back like he doesn’t care who’s standing in front of him—even if that person is a Jedi.
The Kamino Attack That Put Anakin Beside Alpha-17
This comes from the Kamino attack in Star Wars: Republic #50. The Separatists don’t show up looking for a clean victory. They’re trying to choke the Republic at the source by smashing the cloning operation itself. If Tipoca City falls, the Republic doesn’t just lose a battle. It starts losing the war by running out of replacements.
Inside the city, it’s chaos. Defensive positions keep dropping. Droids are pushing deeper into the facility and getting closer to the cloning labs, the place where entire new generations are still growing in their tubes. Lama Su is basically watching his entire life’s work get invaded room by room, and Shaak Ti is there trying to keep the situation from turning into a full collapse.
That’s when Lama Su reaches for the option Kamino normally doesn’t want anyone thinking about. The ARC troopers.
They’ve been kept in stasis because they aren’t like the standard clones. They’re elite, but they come with the kind of independence Kamino doesn’t love, the kind that makes them effective and unpredictable at the same time. In a perfect world, you keep them asleep. Kamino doesn’t have a perfect world that day. So the stasis pods open, and Alpha-17 drops into the fight like someone who’s been waiting for a reason to be unleashed.
Then Obi-Wan and Anakin arrive and meet up with Shaak Ti and Alpha in the middle of the firefight. That’s where the clash starts. Anakin expects clones to be sharp and disciplined around Jedi. Alpha doesn’t act that way at all. He’s blunt, dismissive, and he talks like the mission matters more than anyone’s rank. Anakin has never dealt with a clone like that, and it throws him immediately. Obi-Wan looks less surprised, because he’s met Jango Fett before and he recognizes that same edge coming through.
Alpha-17 Was Loyal, But He Didn’t Care If Anakin Liked Him
Once they push into the cloning labs, the situation gets worse in the one way it can’t. The droids aren’t just trying to kill soldiers in a hallway anymore — they’re about to get their hands on an entire generation that hasn’t even stepped out of a tube yet.
And Alpha’s response is instant. He doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t ask for permission, doesn’t “check with the Jedi.” He opens a panel and starts punching in a code.
Obi-Wan asks what he’s doing, and Alpha answers like the question is almost stupid. He’s arming the self-destruct.
Shaak Ti is stunned because she understands what that means. If that code finishes, they don’t just lose the fight. They lose the facility, the labs, the growing clones — everything. Alpha isn’t thinking like a Jedi protecting lives. He’s thinking like a failsafe. If the Separatists are about to take Kamino’s work, he’s going to deny it to them completely.
And that’s where Anakin snaps.
Because Anakin doesn’t look at those tubes and see “product.” He sees kids. Future brothers of the men fighting outside. Lives that haven’t even started yet. So the idea that a clone trooper is standing there ready to wipe them out, calmly, while they’re still trying to save the place, hits Anakin in a way the droids never could.
Alpha doesn’t soften. He throws it back in their faces that these were Jango’s orders. If clones are going to fall into enemy hands, they don’t grow up at all.
Then Alpha proves he isn’t suicidal. He has a plan. He gets the Jedi to tear open the corridor barrier with the Force, turns the ocean itself into a weapon, and uses the flood to rip the droids out of the labs. When the crisis is under control, he shuts the self-destruct down like it was just another tool he picked up and put away.
Shaak Ti thanks him. Alpha barely reacts. He didn’t do it for praise. He did it because it was the job, and because those were the orders.
And that’s why Anakin can’t stand him. Alpha is brave, effective, and completely loyal… but he’s also the first clone Anakin meets who feels like Jango Fett walking around in clone armor. A soldier who doesn’t care about being liked, and who’s willing to make the ugliest call imaginable if he thinks it’s the only way to protect the Republic.
And the funny part is, Alpha still saves the day.
Once the flood plan works and the droids get dragged out, the self-destruct stops being “the end of Kamino” and goes back to what it really was in Alpha’s mind. A switch you flip if you have to. A last resort you keep ready because you don’t get to be sentimental in a place like this.
Shaak Ti thanks him, and Alpha barely gives her anything back. No pride, no speeches, no “glad we all made it.” Just that same hard edge. He wasn’t trying to impress Jedi. He was following the orders he was built to follow, and he would’ve burned the whole lab down if it meant the Separatists didn’t walk away with a new army.