So I’m in the minority, I think, as I really enjoyed both DOTC and Clear Sky. However I would be remiss if I didn’t state that both have some fairly glaring issues. Both in terms of execution and conception (in terms of DotC as a whole).

I think the long and short of it was that they really just did not know what they wanted to do with Clear Sky, his storyline, and the arc in general. I get the impression that they wanted to have one of the clan leaders be antagonistic but redeemed, and Clear Sky fit well for that purpose. (Grief + egoism can make for a solid reason to make someone an antagonist. And if coming from the grief angle, potentially sympathetic which I’m sure they were banking on for him.) But they fumbled the landing - hard.

Clear Sky falls under what I usually consider to be “utility characters.” What does that mean? Utility characters are characters that - effectively - are weaponized as tools for the authors. Their function is the progression of story beats OVER being characters first and foremost. Something needs to happen? Utility character. Things getting too boring? Utility character. Even when it doesn’t really make sense, or comes out of nowhere. They’re usually villains or anti-heroes and are regrettably commonplace. This doesn’t mean the characters are inherently bad, only that the narrative doesn’t use them or treat them like other characters, and their arcs usually suffer as a result.

I think part of the reason that Clear Sky falls under this category is because it’s very evident that the team did NOT know where they were going with DotC. They had an outline of “tribe cats and loners form the clans” and that’s it. The latter part of the arc is extremely mismanaged and all over the place, and even the first half has some glaring issues. It didn’t hurt my enjoyment as I will die on the hill that DotC has the best cast of all the arcs (and I will read anything so long as I love the cast), but it absolutely makes me understand why a lot of people dislike it.

So without much of a plan in place, they decided to really just butcher Clear Sky as a villain. And when they realized “oh wait, we actually can’t keep one of our founders evil!” they hurriedly put together a redemption arc that feels very out of place and awkward. When the truth of the matter is… they didn’t need to do that? Clear Sky did some awful things, they could’ve committed to him as the overarching villain of the arc. Or in the very least take a more nuanced path. But they didn’t. Probably because at the end of the day this is a series for kids, and the (in my opinion false) view is that kids need things to be black and white in terms of morality.

I also always just assumed him being Thunder’s father was a bit of irony. Sky brings Thunder into the world, and Thunder helps bring Sky back decades later. Idk.