Return to the Clans – Trip Through Time | Warriors Analysis

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The time has come to cover the last entry in the Tigerstar and Sasha series: Return
to the Clans.
This last piece of the story ties more closely into what we already knew about Sasha and
her family than either of the previous two did, which makes spoilers somewhat inevitable
if you have kept up with the series before this point.
From a writing standpoint, though, it also means that there were certain things that
simply had to happen based on what had already been said, and if the story being written
doesn't seem like it would lead to those ends…well it might end up feeling like a
clunky, disconnected, or confusing book, and Sasha's character and motivations might
end up muddled in the long run.
I already spoke in the episode on Escape From The Forest about how her decision to leave
the boat captain and return to the clans wasn't given much of an explanation, but the meta
reason is of course because we know Sasha and her kits did end up in the clans somehow,
and let's just say that this book will have a lot more confrontations with parts of the
plot that they will have to include regardless of what the characters should or would choose.
But we can get into that later.
Return to the Clans came out on June 9th of 2009, a month and a half after Sunrise, a
little over 5 months after Escape from the Forest, and the same day as another book that
we will dive into in the next episode.
Considering the comic is still written by Dan Jolley and illustrated by Don Hudson,
people who don't work on the main series books, I am glad they had 5 months rather
than 3 to make this entry.
As with all the previous comics, this one begins with an anonymous Erin note.
This particular one explains that, as Sasha returns with her kits, she is scared they
will be taken by Tigerstar until she hears he is dead.
In a similar way to how they wanted us to feel something more complicated at Tigerstar's
death in The Darkest Hour, Sasha feels complicated about his death as well, seeing as her kits
will now grow up without the father who would have been proud of them.
She also still respects the ways of the clans, and has experienced several different walks
of life now.
What will she choose for herself in the end, and what about her kits?
Well, anyone who has read The New Prophecy will know the ultimate answer but now we'll
be able to see how that decision was reached, as soon as we check in with our statistics.
Return to the Clans has a speaking cast of 26 cats, 12 of which are named, and the top
5 of those characters get 83% of the lines, even less than before.
Sasha does still have the vast majority of the lines, but she seems to be sharing the
spotlight this time with familiar characters back near the clans along with a few new faces
who get the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th amount of lines in the book: Sasha's kits.
Speaking of, it's about time we meet them, so without further ado, let's dive into
this last entry of the Tigerstar and Sasha series.
We pick up with Sasha trying to care for her kittens alone in the woods, realizing she
has to hunt every day to feed them and that prey is getting scarcer as the season turns
to leaf-bare.
She contemplates whether she has done the right thing, but does believe she at least
chose good names: Hawk, Moth, and Tadpole.
She has decided that as soon as they are old enough to travel, she will take them as far
away from Shadowclan and Tigerstar as possible…like, I don't know, maybe towards a boathouse
that you lived in just a short while ago, or in the woods away from the clans that you
had to pass through in order to return here.
Perhaps this decision stems from the fact that she still wishes her kits could know
how strong and commanding their father was, and that although she has never met him again,
she does often see him in her dreams, where she turns around and refuses to talk with
him each time.
One day, Sasha accidentally crosses Shadowclan's border while chasing prey and is immediately
caught.
She is worried they will recognize her or take her and her kits to Tigerstar, but she
lies and says she recently lost all her kits to the cold and they let her go.
When she gets back, she lets her curious kits explore outside a short distance, and we learn
that Tadpole is definitely the strongest and most adventurous so far, being able to climb
where his brother can't and his sister won't.
Sasha tells her kits a story of her past, including a mention of Ken.
She reflects on how her kits need her now as much as she needed her housefolk and promises
to take care of them forever, not letting Tigerstar get his paws on them.
The next day, Russetfur appears with prey for her and asks immediately if her kits are
Tigerstar's.
She then lets Sasha in on some news: Tigerstar is dead.
Russetfur advises Sasha to leave with her kits as soon as possible, since any other
Shadowclan cats might want Tigerstar's kits in their own clan.
Sasha agrees, Russetfur wishes her well, and the family is left alone again.
With Tigerstar gone, Sasha feels free to think of him positively again, knowing she loved
him deeply, that he was kind and brave and that he taught her a lot…I don't know
that any of those are true from the text and I'm still unsure why she liked him in the
first place but okay.
That night, when Sasha sees Tigerstar in her dream, she intends to talk to him, but this
time it is he who walks away.
Sasha thinks about how she hasn't ever told her kits about their father.
We then have a montage of her hunting over several days, fighting for food and going
further and further from the den as prey grows more scarce.
Her kits take her old collar out of the den and she reprimands them for it, but she quickly
deflates.
The best she can do is take it one day at a time, lacking in Ken or Tigerstar to help
her...or, you know, the boatman.
He'll never be mentioned again.
Meanwhile her kits are worried about how sad she is and decide to go find Ken for her,
wherever he went.
When Sasha leaves for hunting, they venture out towards the twolegplace with Tadpole leading
the way, encountering many dangers along their path.
Sasha finds out they're missing and travels to try and find them.
She meets Shnuky, who also saw her kits and offers to help her find them.
The kits run into some Bloodclan cats and then some dogs and run into a house to escape
them, but get caught inside.
Sasha interrogates the Bloodclan cats while posing as a clan cat and gets a new lead on
where her kits are.
It's a good thing, too, because inside the den a pipe bursts and water starts spilling
in on the kits.
Sasha finds them and encourages them as they climb up a pole to get away from the steadily
rising water.
Hawk gets up first, but Moth is having trouble.
Tadpole helps her up, but gets swept away in the current himself.
As soon as Moth and Hawk are safe, Sasha dives back in to rescue him, asking him to grab
her paw, but he has already passed out and he sinks away into the water.
Hawk cries out for him frantically but Sasha holds him back, numb with shock and grief
herself.
Still in a daze, Sasha barely notices as Shnucky offers them to come back to her house, but
Sasha says they have to go home, into the woods.
None of the family want to talk when they get home, and just go to sleep, where Sasha
meets Tigerstar again.
He says Tadpole isn't with him, but he is safe now, and leaves.
Days later, Sasha hasn't been able to hunt and she and her kits are getting very hungry,
which is when Pine finds her and catches her up on what happened between Bloodclan and
the forest clans, including a detailed description of Tigerstar's death.
He can see Sasha is very tired and suggests she move to the barn where some nice cats
live.
He even offers to guide her, which she accepts.
On the way they go past Riverclan, but don't stay.
As they arrive, though, Sasha sees every cat already there glaring at her and her kits.
She knows she isn't welcome.
As soon as Pine is gone, they say her kind of filthy rogue isn't welcome, scratch her
kits' ears, and tell her to leave.
Sasha, filled with a mother's fury, attacks them.
They are quickly defeated and assume she must be a warrior, which she agrees to in the moment.
They still leave the barn though and Sasha immediately realizes they need to go to Riverclan.
While on the stepping stones, she finally tells Hawk and Moth about their father, about
how brave and strong he was and how he saved her life from a fox.
She says they may one day hear other stories of him but they need to remember she loved
him and that he would be proud of them…you know what?
We'll get back to this.
She makes them promise to never mention his name to anyone, and with that done, she offers
herself and her kits to Riverclan, to Leopardstar specifically.
They are taken to the camp and Sasha meets as many new cats as she can.
Her kits are quickly taken care of, she likes most of the cats in camp, finally getting
a chance to relax and contemplate her choice.
Her kits are half-clan, not *this* clan but still, so maybe this is where they belong.
Tigerstar doesn't visit her dreams this night, and she misses him, a lot.
She isn't left alone with her thoughts, though, as Leopardstar calls a meeting to
welcome Sasha and her kits into Riverclan, for some reason declaring Hawk and Moth too
young to get new names but offering Sasha a warrior name, which she declines as she
isn't ready for it.
Even as she says it she admits to herself that it is a lie and she can't ever take
a warrior name.
A lot of the Riverclan cats aren't too happy about that, though, especially as they weren't
keen on inviting in an outsider to begin with.
A very short montage of Sasha settling into the clan despite this plays before it is time
for Hawk and Moth to become apprentices: Mothpaw and Hawkpaw.
They quickly begin learning all the skills of the clan, which was going well until the
other apprentices played Tigerstar being evil and getting killed by Scourge as a game.
Mothpaw and Hawkpaw didn't understand this, so Sasha takes them aside and insists the
other cats only knew one side of him and didn't know him like she did, which is why they talk
about him and will continue to talk about him that way.
Leopardstar takes Sasha aside and asks again if she could give her a warrior name, since
the gathering is coming up.
Sasha realizes that if Shadowclan saw her, they would recognize her and her kits would
be in danger, which only makes her more anxious as the days go by.
One day, Hawkpaw and Mothpaw find and play with the leftover bones from the bonehill
Tigerstar left and the clan is horrified.
Leopardstar explains to them what happened there and Sasha, too, finally gets to learn
this part of Tigerstar's history that she missed.
This convinces her that Hawkpaw and Mothpaw won't be safe with her in Riverclan.
She first asks them to leave with her and become loners again, but her kits want to
stay, and Sasha realizes the real thing putting them in danger is her being recognized.
Sasha tells Leopardstar she is leaving, says goodbye to her kits, and, with a heavy heart,
leaves.
She knows they will be strong thanks to Tigerstar's blood and feels his spirit next to her, saying
he is proud of them and promising to watch them forever.
The end.
Okay we…we have a lot to discuss here, some new and some that have been going on through
this whole three-part story.
Let's start off with the positives to this book, which aren't nonexistent.
Unlike in the first book, characters here all have notable personalities and relationships
and most of them have clear drives to act in the way they do.
Almost every character from the first book returns here, which gives the whole story
a sense of finality and makes the world feel richer.
The big new characters: Tadpole, Moth, and Hawk, also get some time to shine, more than
Patch did, in fact.
Patch had the advantage of being a single cat rather than three cats consistently presented
as a group but he only got to be a part of the story for a few pages, most of which were
montage.
Tadpole, Moth, and Hawk are here through the whole story and even get sections devoted
to their escapades, the reason for their choices, and their perspective on the world they've
grown up in, which is a great advantage.
It can still feel rushed, but we quickly learn that Tadpole, as the oldest, is the natural
leader and the most adventurous of the trio.
Moth is the most timid but always sticks with her brothers, and Hawk wants to be as brave
as Tadpole but often fails to be.
They also all care for Sasha a lot and can see when things are worrying or bothering
her, but don't have enough of the context and act on their best guesses for what she
would want, such as trying to look for Ken, her old twoleg who they don't know died.
When the time comes for Tadpole to die, something we knew had to happen given that this is the
first we've heard of him and Moth and Hawk went on to be notable members of Riverclan,
it is able to be pretty heart wrenching.
Tadpole spends his last moments helping his sister to escape by climbing the pole: something
she had been scared to do before.
As Sasha reaches out for him and he is shown to be unreachable, already sinking into the
flood, it's easy to feel a similar grief to Sasha, even though we didn't know him
especially well.
I also enjoyed seeing Shnucky and Pine come back, both trying to help Sasha for more than
an expository conversation and giving what aid they could to her and her kits.
Russetfur's immediate recognition of Sasha and approaching in secret only to help her
after confirming what she already knew was also an especially sweet moment.
The brief connection the two of them shared was quite nice, and all of this truly makes
it feel like Sasha does have a social circle she could rely on to help her if she was willing
to accept it.
The problem is, she isn't.
She did accept Leopardstar's help at least, but only insofar as it meant keeping her kits
safe in a clan.
She didn't want Leopardstar's help emotionally or physically when it came to herself, and
consistently drew away from the other she-cat as she tried to reach out.
Looking back on the trilogy, that does seem like a consistent trait of Sasha's in general:
fiercely pursuing independence and a guard from cats around her even as she also yearns
for connection and belonging.
That's a contradiction that was built up consistently and makes sense, considering
how many people in our world fall into it.
In that way, the series did succeed at helping us learn about and understand its main character.
But now uh…we need to discuss the rest of it.
I don't envy the team who had to put this together and justify Sasha, who likely had
to be a sympathetic protagonist, giving up her kits to a clan they had no relation to
and leaving them behind to grow up without her.
It's honestly hard to make a convincing case, in general, that anyone not born in
the clans and brought up to believe in them would think that the clans are a better place
for any kits to be raised.
Sasha was continuously presented with other, often better options that seemed like they
would appeal more to her given her values.
She didn't want to be a kittypet again out of fear that the housefolk would eventually
just leave like Ken had, which makes sense, but it would always be possible to switch
between housefolk as needed in the way she was already capable of when she was with the
boatman.
With woods nearby and an understanding with her twoleg, Sasha and her kits could have
explored, learned to hunt, and been independent as often as they wanted.
They could have even left to become loners at any time.
If, for some unspoken reason, she didn't want to be around twolegs at all anymore,
Pine was right there offering to live and hunt with her in the last book and he would
have happily supported her while she was nursing before it got to the point where she was barely
alive and needed more help than he could provide.
Even Shnucky could have been a good source, at least for the period where Sasha was just
raising the kits.
Her and her twolegs were very welcoming and if Sasha wanted to move on when her kits were
old enough, she could have.
Ultimately the only thing that made the clans appealing to Sasha, the reason she gives,
is that her kits have clan blood in them.
It all stems back to Tigerstar.
And why Riverclan?
Well, she's been afraid of being recognized by Shadowclan for the whole book so they're
out, but rather than just avoiding the clans entirely like Russetfur suggested, she chose
to go to Riverclan, and they didn't give a reason for that other than that “it's
obvious.”
Um…speaking for myself, at least, no, no it isn't.
Riverclan territory is pretty, sure, but before Sasha and her kits walked up and asked to
stay, they had never met or even heard the name of a Riverclan cat before.
What made her trust them or want them specifically?
Who's to say.
In addition to having shaky reasoning at best for why her kits should live where they end
up, Sasha's feelings about and actions around Tigerstar have been relatively indiscernible
throughout this arc.
She definitely uhhh had attraction towards him, because he was handsome, and he wasn't
as mean as he could have been one time, and for reasons I still cannot fathom, he decided
to let an ex-kittypet go free after trodding on his territory and spent multiple nights
expositing to her about the clans.
We didn't ever really see a connection between them or understand what either of them saw
in each other beyond physical attraction, and the relationship itself didn't last
long at all before Sasha learned of Tigerstar's actual character and immediately decided to
leave.
Given this context: the lack of a honeymoon period or any successful manipulations and
neither cat really having a motivation to stay with each other, it made perfect sense
in the second book when Sasha barely even thought of him and only brought him up to
remind us she was done with him and didn't want anything to do with him...until she went
back to the clans since they had Tigerstar's strong blood in their veins, I guess.
It seems like, as soon as Sasha finds out Tigerstar was killed, she becomes more enamored
with him and more in denial about his character than she ever was when they were actually
together.
It is the first time when she actually tells her kits about their father, and in both this
case and the two other instances in which she pulls her kits aside to talk about him,
she explicitly chooses to ignore every bad thing about Tigerstar that she knows (and
tell her kits to ignore them and any more bad things they hear too) and only thinks
about the few good things she has to say about him.
She has no particular reason to remember him fondly, at least not one she shares.
Considering how little either of them connected in the first place, and how little time they
shared together, it seems like the evil Sasha has learned of and keeps learning of would
outweigh any positive feelings she had.
The reactions she has in this book, especially her denial of Tigerstar's poor character
and longing to be with him again for security, reads a lot like the aftermath of an emotionally
abusive relationship…which could honestly be what they were going for given that it's
Tigerstar, a blatant villain.
But the portrayal of their relationship in the first book: brief, shallow, fleeting,
lacking in any connection or manipulation, doesn't support that idea and makes this
reaction seem out of place.
I wouldn't harp on this idea so much if this wasn't the main rationale we have for
her making the decision to leave her kits alone with incorrect worldviews in a strange
clan while she goes off to…wait she still never told us what she was doing with her
own life, did she?
She's not joining a clan.
Is she going back to Shnucky?
Or Pine?
Is she rushing off to find the boatman?
She can't delete herself from the world completely, she needs to find somewhere to
live.
Are any of those options she could choose really worse than being alone in a strange
clan without their mother?
Why did her kits need to be in the clans so badly?
Why can't she insist to her six month old kittens who have only known the clans for
a month at most that they leave with her?
Why is she so sure Tigerstar's spirit of all things will watch over them?
Does she believe in Starclan?
What does she imagine their future to be?
Or her's?
Why do you do the things you do, Sasha!?!
Anyway, I believe this concludes the final entry of the Tigerstar and Sasha manga arc,
a story named for one character who barely features and who doesn't make sense for
the time he does and, secondarily, for the actual main character.
Looking back, it seems all of the most engaging, heartfelt, and understandable pieces of the
story were those that had nothing to do with that relationship and every time we got into
or referenced back to that particular romance, the story became shallow and indiscernible.
Maybe a relationship as abusive and manipulative as this one would need to be was deemed too
grim for its audience, but in that case they might have needed a different approach entirely.
Oh well, we have what we have, and there are some pieces I still genuinely appreciate.
For now though, with both this arc and Power of Three complete, it'll soon be time to
open some new chapters in Warriors history when we return in a future episode
of our trip through time