Tag: Rebels Revisited

Ben: Sometimes long-form storytelling doesn’t work out. For example, when The Clone Wars was canceled after five seasons on the air and a movie, it still left many plots and characters hanging. Many fans assumed that there would be no resolution to these things, and not without reason. With new movies in the post-Return of the Jedi era emerging and Rebels taking TCW’s place, a new focus on the original trilogy era seemed poised to doom characters like Ahsoka, Ventress and Rex to obscurity, perhaps not for forever, but for a very long time.

Fortunately for the legions of TCW fans out there, there has been a steady, if much slower than previously, flow of information, references and details from TCW postmortem. Starting with the “Lost Missions” from the unaired sixth season being released on Netflix, we’ve had story threads picked up by a comic series, a novel, and now in Rebels, each one giving us a few clues as to what would have happened if the show had continued into seventh or even eighth seasons.

But what about after the end of the show? Even if the show had continued, there would still have been an end, likely corresponding with the events of Revenge of the Sith. So what would become of those characters in the years after the Republic and Separatist Alliance had collapsed? Read More

Ben: A number of TV shows, especially the successful ones, have a problem with the status quo. Once a show is established, the easiest thing to do is leave things as they are, repeating a successful formula ad nauseam until the ratings stop coming in. This is especially true about typical kid’s cartoons, where the stakes are microscopically low and conflict is played for laughs. A list of examples would take up most of this page. But right from the beginning of Season Two, Star Wars Rebels proves that it is not one of those shows.

“Siege of Lothal” is an intense and dramatic story about the consequences of the actions taken and done through the show’s first season. The heroes thought that they had won, if not a war, at least a very great battle. They had defeated Grand Moff Tarkin, destroyed his flagship, saved Kanan’s life and united with a larger rebellion than any of them had known even existed. But the realities of what little good their action had actually done, how little they had accomplished, came crashing back down on them throughout the events of the hour-long season opener.

How willing Rebels is to shake up and alter its own status quo has been subtly working its way through the first season, with neither characters nor plots staying stagnant. But there has not been a point where more has changed in such a short time as this two-parter. The foremost agent of these changes is, of course, Darth Vader, a foe far above and beyond anything that the Ghost’s crew has ever faced. He wipes out their allies, destroys their hiding places, and sends them on the run to somewhere, anywhere that is not Lothal. There is nothing they can do to stop him, or even slow him down, they can only run for their lives and hope that he does not follow. Read More

Any look ahead at Season 2 of Star Wars Rebels must first reflect on what’s come before, and who can forget the end of Season 1, when the Empire Base Delta Zeroed the hell out of Lothal once and for—oh, wait, no, that didn’t happen (yet). Whoops. In reality, Kanan was rescued, the Inquisitor went swimming in a fireball, and Ahsoka Tano showed up to see our heroes safely away from the Empire’s clutches.

There have been two previews for next season so far, the one linked above and the three-minute trailer that premiered at Celebration Anaheim. The hour-premiere, “The Siege of Lothal” airs this Saturday, and whatever the state of the planet at the end of the titular siege, it appears that the Ghost crew, with Ahsoka in tow, will be spending a good chunk of the season out in the rest of the galaxy, evading Darth Vader and/or sparing Lothal from further Imperial attention. Read More

Ben: When Star Wars Rebels started, we were privy to a very small knot of rebellious souls. A former Jedi turned drunken gunslinger, a Lasat with a chip on his shoulder and temper to match, a Mandalorian who loved to paint as much as fight, a street-rat orphan who stole for a living and a cranky patchwork astromech droid, all held together by a Twi’lek pilot who kept them pointed at the Empire instead of each other. The season went on; we got to see more of their personalities and hints of backstory, and caught occasional glimpses of a wider picture, of a bigger plan than just the group on Lothal. It wasn’t until the finale of the first season, however, that we finally saw what that meant.

We had hints from the beginning that the Lothal rebellion was just one of many in existence. Agent Kallus’ report to the Inquisitor at the end of the show’s pilot told us as much. The segmentation of the organization, keeping each cell separate with as little knowledge as possible of the others, is intelligent strategy taken from real-life resistance groups, such as the French Resistance in World War II. You cannot betray what you do not know. While Lothal seems a rather unimportant backwater world, the Empire is there, and that is (seemingly) enough for Hera. But this would be far from a normal cell, and their impact would be far larger than Hera would ever have guessed at the beginning. Read More

As the first season of Star Wars Rebels draws to a close (and lack of pre-viewing prospects prevents us from writing a piece involving the finale just yet) “Rebels Revisited” is looking back at the setting for a majority of the show’s events thus far. When the show was first teased to Star Wars fans, via propaganda posters and images at conventions, the creators told us that, unlike The Clone Wars that hopped from planet to planet on an almost weekly basis, Rebels would be much more focused and grounded, with a central base for the heroes and villains alike to operate from. Thus, we were introduced to Lothal.

The planet itself is not as visually striking as many planets within the GFFA, it does not have Tatooine’s stark wastes or Felucia’s vibrant life, but its origins as concept art by Ralph McQuarrie lend its landscapes a watercolor feel and texture. It is certainly beautiful in its own way, a very sparse and restrained beauty, with lone structures rising to the sky here and there and mysterious mounds studding the landscape. The sense that this is a large, and largely unspoiled planet permeates almost every outdoor shot of the show, be it the Ghost sitting by itself in the middle of a field that stretches from horizon to horizon, or Ezra resting his chin on the rail of the lonely communication tower he called home. Read More