Rebels Revisited: It is Your Destiny

Posted on April 1, 2016by Feature Articles

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So, that happened.

The season two finale of Star Wars Rebels was about as intense and dramatic as I expected, and certainly as intense as I had hoped. From the moment the show’s first season wrapped up, I had a feeling I knew where the second season would go. I’d like to say that I predicted everything that the finale held, but that would be a lie. Even with everything that we knew going in, and all of the previews and teasers that made their way across social media, Rebels still managed to surprise me.

I can go on and on with effulgent praise for the show’s direction, its pacing, the superb voice acting and the way so many of the plots and ideas paid off all at once. But there’ll be plenty of time to gush later on. For now, I want to focus on something that Rebels has done pretty much from the get-go and deserves way more credit for than it gets: shaking up the status quo.

This is your one and only spoiler warning. If you haven’t watched the finale yet, do yourself a favor, stop here, and go watch it before reading the rest of the article. I promise, it’s worth it. Read More

Escape Pod: Imperial Defectors and the Rand Ecliptic

Posted on March 30, 2016by Imperial Court Circular

randMoral relativity is hard to do in Star Wars, because it’s a tale of good versus evil. However, sophisticated storytelling expects that things are rarely black and white. Add in the influence of fans, and it’s not surprising that villains end up being quite popular in Star Wars. The Galactic Empire is probably one of the most popular villains in fiction, and so it’s easy to see why there’s an interest in presenting the Empire as a little more nuanced than purely evil. This always runs the risk of whitewashing Imperial atrocities, or presenting the “good Imperial” – the person who is certainly not a Rebel, but also not a bad person. We’re personally always suspect of the idea of the “good Imperial,” because while we very much enjoy reading about Imperials we also don’t want to sacrifice the theming of the Star Wars saga.

The new Star Wars canon has done a good job addressing this issue so far, from realistically portraying how people end up buying into the Imperial system in Lost Stars, to exploring the loss of innocence and seduction of evil in the Servants of the Empire series, to examining the mindset of an Imperial Security Bureau agent in Rebels. At the end of the day though, the people who stick with the Empire are usually either delusional, corrupted, or participants in the Imperial system – at least those who are involved in furthering its goals. But not always. There are certainly the rare Imperials who serve with honor and distinction, and try to refuse the worst orders – even if they’re not “good” compared to the heroes of the saga, they might be good by Imperial standards. But there are also those who realize their decency isn’t compatible with Imperial service, it’s these people we want to talk about today: Imperial defectors.

In the Legends EU, many prominent Rebel characters – including film characters such as Jan Dodonna, Crix Madine, Biggs Darklighter, and Derek “Hobbie” Klivian – began their careers as dutiful Imperial officers. EU mainstays such as Kyle Katarn, Soontir Fel, and Tycho Celchu also started out as Imperial officers. These officers defected to the Rebellion when they realized that the Empire wasn’t living up to its own honorable ideals, often in response to atrocities they were ordered to commit. Biggs and Hobbie defected almost right out of the Academy, taking their ship – the Rand Ecliptic – with them. Imagine what other defectors flew with them – heroic, goodie-two-shoes aren’t the only kind of people who might’ve left the Empire’s service and we’re missing out on good characters if we think that. Lost Stars and Aftermath both gave us examples of flawed, human Imperial officers who defected to the Rebellion – but there’s such storytelling potential in exploring the different types of people who might come to a realization that Imperial service just isn’t for them.

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Not Automatically Good – Rethinking Star Wars Novels

Posted on March 28, 2016by Scotch Tape and Popsicle Sticks

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“When you’re directing a scene on the Millennium Falcon, it doesn’t make the scene good. Now it’s bitchin’ that it’s on the Millennium Falcon. You want a scene on the Millennium—if I could make a suggestion, direct scenes on the Millennium Falcon, cause it’s hugely helpful. But it doesn’t make the scene automatically good.”

–JJ Abrams at San Diego Comic-Con, July 2015

One of the major recurring topics of Star Wars fandom over the last few years has been the notion that this is, in some fundamental way, a movie franchise. At face value that may seem obvious, but there’s more to it than there might seem right away. For a lot of fans, especially nineties kids like myself, far more of our formative years was spent reading Star Wars books, comics, Essential Guides, and so on than watching the films. Even once the prequel trilogy was coming out, and causing occasional headaches for the Expanded Universe, there was always an understanding that the film aspect of the franchise was not just finite but distinctly limited—they were a storm we just had to weather before the EU took over again. Just like there was never going to be an Episode VII, nor would there be a III.V, or a Zero, or a Negative Twenty. The films were Anakin’s life story, and if that wasn’t the major draw for you, no big deal. If you liked harder military science fiction, Star Wars was a novel franchise about the continuing war with the Empire. If you liked Jedi melodrama, the comics of John Ostrander and Jan Duursema were your Star Wars. If you were a gamer, Star Wars was Dark Forces or X-Wing Alliance or The Force Unleashed.

And yeah, one of the coolest things about it was that all those different pocket universes intersected and fed off of each other—at least in theory—so even if you mostly kept in one or two lanes yourself you still got to feel like part of this grand tapestry of SW fandom. Things are different now, and frankly I don’t blame some people for still not being okay with that, but it is what it is. Movies are once again steering the ship, and will be for the foreseeable future no matter what part of the timeline you’re into; that doesn’t ruin Star Wars, in my opinion, but it does necessitate a degree of realignment. What role should supplemental material—which is what the books are now, supplements—play in a movies-first franchise? What role can they play best? Read More

Rebels Revisited: Not Having Them Around

Posted on March 25, 2016by

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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

The Shadows of the Clone Wars

Posted on March 23, 2016by Obiwomble's Outlook

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This article was sparked off by regular ETE commenter John, in response to the Fantasy Foresight piece that considered how simply killing all Imperials would have been insufficient to stop the Starkiller. What might these shadows be? And how do they play into that superweapon’s development? At the risk that the impending book Bloodline will blow up most of this, let’s consider a few possibilities.

First, the elephant in the room – that the New Republic was caught napping by the Starkiller. Would a government set up by those that destroyed Death Stars really be so spectacularly lacking in vigilance? The answer has to be probably not, but what of time eroding that? A decade on, the need to keep an eye out for threats would have reduced – likely certain politicians would be making political capital out of efficiency measures that reduce the spend on such monitoring. Two decades on? The deck tilts further towards no need for it. Add even more years in and… Read More