Star Wars Rebels episodes 4-5 review: Fighter Flight/Rise of the Old masters

We take a look at Star Wars Rebels once again, as the show continues to follow the adventures of the crew of the Ghost as they take a stand against the empire

Episode 4 – Fighter Flight

After an episode that focused on Zeb and Ezra we get… another episode focused on Zeb and Ezra, and it’s not very good.

You know how I said this show doesn’t the scale of scope of something in the clone wars, this week they went out to buy food from a market. I know they want to give us a sense that this life is a real life, but it doesn’t make for great Star Wars.

Of course things go a bit awry as we get more Stormtroopers and a TIE Fighter and a quest to free some workers from the empire. The problem is, it just isn’t very interesting. There’s nothing specifically wrong with the episode, but it is just strictly filler, with little if anything that will affect the overall story.

•  You can’t make Ezra’s character likeable and annoying at the same time – his oh come on, I saved your life routine got old to me as well as Zeb quite quickly
•  What is chopper up to, I don’t know what’s going on inside his circuit
• Does that catapult ever work? I think we’ve found about the only thing in the known galaxies a stormtrooper is immune to
•  Those people being friends of Ezra’s parents would’ve been good if it amounted to more than jack squat.
•  Sabine currently has the personality of paint, and I’m pretty sure that’s more insulting to the paint

Rating 4.5/10

Episode 5: Rise of the old masters

Well, it seems we finally meet our villain, and his ridiculous-looking lightsaber

I just heard the Kanan call it a laser sword; I think my inner nerd just cried.

But to business. Kanan, being an undertrained Jedi himself, struggles to teach Esra anything, even trying to give Ezra the Yoda lesson, whilst barely understanding it himself (you and most of the fans of the show, mate)

Anyways, so they get an alert that Jedi Master Luminara survived and is in an empire prison, so they set off to rescue her, but of course Luminara is dead, and it’s a trap set by the Inquisitor, and did I mention his ridiculous looking lightsaber, because it does look ridiculous.

Oh, and Hera’s cloaking tech makes a sound that is mating call to some flying beats, it’s sort of clever, well done.

The rest of the episode is pretty formulaic. They fail, they battle, they escape. And of course Kanan decides that he will train Ezra, not try (because that implies a lack of belief that they can succeed, although the following statement “you may fail, I may fail” has a pretty similar implication)

On Ezra’s side, I can see why he feels like he’s being shunned by his mentor potentially onto Luminara, and is making mistakes because of it, so… good job?

Rating 7/10

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Images used in this review are from Star Wars Rebels and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use.