Author: Ben Wahrman

Mike: Who knew the space whale episode would be so controversial?

Where “The Call” continues Star Wars Rebels’ streak of episodes with gorgeous and interesting new visuals and skillful staging and humor, it has provoked fresh debate amongst many fans about exactly when and why the protagonists will choose to kill people—especially striking after “The Protector of Concord Dawn” dealt overtly with the subject for the first time just a couple weeks ago. In that episode Sabine clashes with Kanan and Hera when she wants to take revenge against the Mandalorian Protectors—potential Rebellion allies—for almost killing Hera. This week reshuffles the deck in an unexpected way by pitting Ezra (and eventually Kanan) against Hera in defense of the purrgil, whose lives Hera could give a womprat’s ass about. For my money, the episode does sufficient legwork in justifying Hera’s flippant attitude by explaining that she’s lost comrades to purrgil collisions in the past (she is a professional spacer, after all), but it ignores a much more interesting point: they’re all totes on board with wiping out the Mining Guild goons.

Now, not much is known about the canon Mining Guild (or the Legends one, for that matter), so it’s very easy to assume that they’re much worse than just innocent civilians making a living. But the script certainly doesn’t seem very concerned with getting that across, so it’s just as easy to assume this episode is about our heroes robbing and murdering people who did nothing worse than stand their ground. The directing all but delights in this; we get a quick look at the second TIE pilot moments before Ezra shoots him down, and a nice long look at Boss Yushyn being carried to his apparent demise in the jaws of an angry purrgil. Read More

Jay: For a while now, I’ve really enjoyed the McQuarrie-esque animation style of Rebels because it brings me back to the original trilogy roots of Star Wars as adventure and space opera. But it wasn’t until this week’s episode that I really put together what the art does for the feel and tone of the show, and how that enhances the storytelling. It helps that there’s been a vast improvement in animation quality — and I don’t just mean the characters, who have far more detail than their season one iterations. The environments have been gorgeous this season: think about Hera flying through the skies of Shantipole, the shattered planetscape of Concord Dawn, and the gorgeous maelstrom of the not-Maw nebula in “Legends of the Lasat”.

The planetary environments have always had a lush, painterly quality to them, even back to the first season — and this seems fairly intentional to me. The views of Lothal/Garel and the new season two worlds resemble actual McQuarrie concept art and matte paintings, and they’re intentionally not computerized. This adds more than an OT feel to it: this makes the story feel like almost like a tableau vivant — but with action! The characters are characters in a painting brought to life, and it adds to the fairy tale and mythological vibe so present in Star Wars.

The otherworldliness had great dividends this episode, as the story took a daring risk in expanding the mythology of the Force. We saw different Force traditions in Legends, and we saw the Nightsisters of The Clone Wars casting spells but the Ashla of the Lasat showed the Force manifesting itself in a more mystical way than we’re used to these days. The Force used to be the province of knights, priests, and/or magicians: Jedi, Sith, and other Force-using traditions that featured people specially imbued with the gift to touch the Force. This time we saw Yoda’s promise in The Empire Strikes Back made real: the Force is in all living things and binds the galaxy together. We’re pretty sure that Zeb is not Force-sensitive in the way that we understand it, he can’t feel what Kanan and Ezra feel. But the ritual had real power to him. The Force is in all things and connects all things — as Lucas and Abrams have said in interviews, the Force is everyone’s common denominator. Read More

Ben: Star Wars Rebels‘ first season was a rather brisk affair. With only sixteen episodes’ worth of run time total, we were delivered character introductions, development of those characters, decisions with consequences and plot twists, and a satisfying, rousing conclusion that led nicely into a future full of possibilities. What that meant in terms of storytelling was there was little to no room for padding; every episode paid off somehow at some point, and plots that you might have thought for sure the storytellers had forgotten about wound up coming back.

The second season, by comparison, has had a good deal more than that, around twenty-two episodes, and of course we were all happy at the prospect of getting even more of the show and characters we loved. What I didn’t count on, and what caught a lot of people off-guard, is that the storytelling gears shifted. Rather than continuing to embrace the same taut pace, season two is taking its time with many things. We’ve been introduced to a load of new characters who all had the potential to recur, both good and evil, and a lot of hints and ideas about characters that may or may not pay off later on.

In “The Protector of Concord Dawn” for instance, we got hints about Kanan’s past during the war (directly referencing a current comic storyline, natch), as well as Sabine’s own Mandalorian pedigree, Hera’s position as Phoenix Leader, and the Rebel fleet’s scattered resources slowly coming together. All of it was following up on things that had been seeded earlier this season, but they’re far from concluded at this point. And we got a whole new faction of characters introduced in the Mandalorian Protectors, who might play a huge role later on, or might not play a role at all. Who knows? Read More

Jay: This week’s Rebels episode featured an interesting twist on the now-familiar Star Wars Rebels cameo. Instead of appearing to interact with the Ghost crew and develop their arcs in certain ways, Princess Leia basically carried the episode herself. This was an interesting approach to take, and while I’m strongly disappointed that Leia and Hera never had the chance to have a conversation about politics and rebellion (I’ve long considered Hera the Leia of the Ghost crew, the true idealist and believer in the cause) I found myself very interested in how they developed Leia’s character in a general sense. In the past, I’ve been pretty opposed to small universe syndrome unless a character cameo benefits the larger Rebels story. Here, I made an exception because I am horribly biased in favor of all Leia appearances in all media but it occurs to me that they did something different and rather interesting with Leia. Rather than using Leia to tease out character growth in the main show characters, they used Leia to tease out more information about Leia and the larger galactic state of rebellion. Without ever lifting the camera from Lothal, we got a look at what things are like elsewhere in the galaxy and that’s a pretty cool thing.

See, we’re usually limited to the perspective of the Ghost crew, which is just one rebel cell among many. A lot of folks in the audience — myself included — got rather antsy over staying on Lothal too long, and while the crew is moving about they’re still just a tiny, tiny piece in a large galaxy. They’ve only attracted Lord Vader’s attention because of Ahsoka’s presence and the whole Jedi thing, but they’re not really that important on the overall stage (yet?) despite running around with Sato and Fulcrum/Ahsoka. But running into Leia allows the small Phoenix operation to intersect, however briefly, with the grand galactic state of play. Read More