Category: Feature Articles

Rebels’ second season is fast drawing to a close; the two-part finale is next week and there’s a lot that could still happen in it. What we do know, thus far, is that Darth Vader will make his grand re-entrance into the story and throw down with Kanan, Ezra and Ahsoka, and somewhere in there we’ll also have three Inquisitors and the Maul formerly known as Darth as well. It’s going to be an intense and packed finale.

Because of that, though, the show had to spend some time a week in advance giving the other characters, the ones who aren’t strong in the Force, a chance to say goodbye. The finale is already set in terms of the heroes cast, we’re going to be focused entirely on Kanan, Ezra and Ahsoka. The interesting (and painful) spin on that is that the characters within the show know that something climactic is happening, as well.

When Malachor was first mentioned “in canon” it was used as a euphemism for hell or another similar terrible place, almost an expletive. Now, three of the heroes of the fledgling Rebellion are going there of their own free will, in search of something that will give them the edge against Vader and the Inquisitors. They are almost literally walking into hell in search of a solution to their problem. And Hera and the others are terrified that they may not walk back out again. Read More

Ben: Something that I’ve praised Star Wars Rebels for for a long time now is its character development. Because it focuses on a central core of characters and tells its story in a chronological order, the show gives the characters the opportunity to learn and change as the story progresses and time passes within the narrative. We’ve seen Ezra, Kanan, Sabine and even Zeb evolve their personalities and beliefs (some more than others) as their horizons have changed, their viewpoints have been challenged and they’ve been through increasingly difficult trials.

But there are a couple of characters in the show who haven’t really evolved in that sense as we move toward the end of the show’s second season. Hera is a major one, as is our favorite ISB officer Agent Kallus. And, of course, Chopper. Character development in that sense hasn’t really happened, because none of them have really changed. The Hera we meet in this show, for instance, is basically the same Hera that we see in A New Dawn, give or take a few circumstances.

There’s another aspect to character development, though, and that’s how an audience’s perception of a character changes as we see more of them. We see Hera and Kallus differently now than we did at the beginning of the show because we’ve learned more about them. And the same can be said for everyone’s favorite grumpy astromech droid after this week’s episode. Chopper’s character after his adventure with AP-5 is the same as it is before, but we learn more about him and our own view of him evolves. Read More

Jay: Force visions are interesting — like the characters, the audience wonders if they depict literal truth. This was a thought-provoking episode, not least because folks were immediately wondering what exactly happened in those visions. Rebels Recon basically told us that Yoda had sent those visions to the characters, but the discussion of what actually happened isn’t nearly as interesting as what the visions mean. And just as each character got a different vision, I suspect each of us have our own take on what those visions meant.

What actually, canonically happened is therefore a lot less interesting than what the visions mean for characters and for us. I find it most interesting to see these Force visions as externalizations of the character’s inward struggles. As metaphors.

Kanan gives name to his fears and he defeats them by realizing that he can’t control everything, he can only be responsible for himself and do the best that he can do. As a result, he passes the test and becomes a Jedi Knight. Is he an actual Jedi? I hope not for saga reasons, but let’s play with that idea a little bit. Read More

Mike: The good news is, this is the episode I’ve been waiting for since Star Wars Rebels began. I am a giant sucker for “the bad guy comes around” stories; it’s a big reason why I was such a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and it may explain why the original trilogy spoke so strongly to me when I was younger (or maybe it’s the other way around). While the institution of the Empire is quintessentially one-dimensional, puppy-kicking, muahaha-ing capital-E Evil, Star Wars at its best has never been a one-dimensional story; it’s about—pardon the word choice—human characters making human decisions in the midst of galactic-scale moral crises. As The Clone Wars got on in years it started moving characters around on its moral axis, usually toward the “more evil” side, and it’s very exciting to see Rebels finally take its first steps past a one-dimensional Empire by nudging Agent Kallus, its longest-surviving antagonist, ever so slightly toward the “good” column.

The bad news is, I’ve been waiting for this since the show began. As much as I want to see the show make Kallus sympathetic (at all), I can very easily see an argument for it being too late. Kallus may not be an evil force of nature like Vader was, but he’s hardly a confused teenager like ATLA’s Prince Zuko, either. He’s performed any number of evil deeds in his career, even bragged about them, and forcing him to develop a grudging warrior’s respect for Zeb, while very welcome, isn’t exactly the profound moral crisis Vader faced when expected to kill his own son.

Of course, this could simply be an attempt to add more dimension to the character—and give the amazing David Oyelowo a little more to work with—without really changing his alignment. Maybe it’s about motivating Kallus to investigate the disappearance of the Geonosians, so that he might stumble upon the Death Star—a much bigger moral crisis for an Imperial “everyman”. Or it could be akin to Ventress’s arc in TCW; Kallus decides he doesn’t want to serve the Empire but isn’t about to oppose it, either. But wherever the story goes, the reason for any character development along these lines would be to earn some degree of sympathy for Kallus from the audience, and after a season and a half of mustache-twirling, that would be a huge task for a show that delights in presenting the deaths of stormtroopers as comic relief. What do you guys think? Could you actually see your way to rooting for Kallus someday? Read More

Friction between characters is effective drama, especially when those characters are ostensibly on the same side. In Rebels most of the friction has been between the characters on opposing sides, like Kallus and Zeb, or of the more playful and familiar sort, like between Ezra and Chopper. In “Homecoming”, we got something new: friction between members of different rebels cells and their different approaches to the war against the Empire.

Of course, the drama was multiplied quite a bit by the fact that the cells involved were led by Hera and her father, Cham, making his return appearance to our screens after The Clone Wars ended. And it was multiplied again as they argued, revealing that, while their philosophies and perspectives on the war were very different, both of them had valid ways of thinking that were based on the same events.

Cham is determined, right from the beginning, to destroy the ship not because it will be a material loss to the Empire, but as a symbol to galvanize the flagging resistance on Ryloth. He’s been deeply wounded by the death of Hera’s mother, obsessed with finishing the battle that she gave her life fighting for, to the point where he has long alienated his daughter. He has the same passion he did in TCW, but his perspective is narrow, he lacked the vision to see the bigger picture of the galaxy around him. Read More