Star Wars Rebels episodes 10-12 review

TV is back on schedule folks, all the major shows (aside Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. which has taken a break whilst Agent Carter is on) have returned including our second favourite band of misfit agents (after team Skywalker in the originals, of course) the Rebels. Let's take a look at the next 3 episodes and see how things are going.

10 – Path of a Jedi

Ezra’s journey from street urchin to jedi padawan has been the centre of this series, and a lot of time is dedicated to it. Once again here Ezra takes centre stage as we see him take the cavern of fear training that Luke once took.

Here Ezra confronts his fears, losing his new friends, having them feel like he’s not ready, disappointing or letting down Kanan, and to an extent, the Inquisitor, he confronts all of them within the first half of the episode, preparing for a guest voice actor.

Yes, Frank Oz is doing Yoda. Yoda has a very distinct voice, that whilst Tom Kane did a decent job of replicating, he could never match it exactly. It’s nice to hear his voice, even if we don’t see his face in this, and he helps bring to light the truth behind our two jedi characters.

We see Ezra’s fears come to light, and his angles of selflessness and revenge on his want to be a jedi, Yoda tries, all be it with subtlety to ward him away from the revenge path, a path which is not the true jedi way.

We have always been told that Kanan is flawed as a master, citing that he had never truly graduated from being a jedi padawan, but here we see it’s a bit deeper than that. Kanan had fallen, embraced the dark side if only briefly (I’m not sure how much of them is going to be explained here, and how much in tie in comics) he must possess considerable strength of character to come back, but it does make him question his ability to be a master.

Of course, the problem is, there are 6 characters aboard the ship, and I still think 4 of them are underdeveloped. This series needs to get us to care for all 6 of the characters for a battle between all of them to work, but I trust in the series to try, and I think this is a great episode to come back on after the mid-season episode last week.

Rating 8.5/10

11 - Idiot’s array

So, let’s introduce our guest star for the week, Lando Calrissian, hey there were reports of him being on the show fairly early on, so… Good. Of course Lando pursues things from an angle, and that’s no different in this story

So Lando ends up winning Chopper in a card-game bet (which he may or may not have cheated on) if the rebels can end up taking a piece of mining equipment past the imperial blockade, they can have their droid back, plus a few credits for their trouble, but Lando is being his usual economical self with the truth.

This story is a bit more of a light-hearted episode than the last one and suffice it to say it isn’t as good, but it’s not a complete loss. Lando’s presence in the episode provides another reference to the larger Star Wars Universe at hand, we see Chopper proving his worth by stealing fuel for the crew and we see that Ezra has a built in blaster in his lightsaber (which is good as his catapult thing was pretty useless)

But the issue is that very little is actually accomplished, Hera is supposedly bargained as a slave, but it was an intentional double-cross by Lando, as he knew that Hera would escape and the warlord somehow walked, from a spaceship to… you know that doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Because so little happens, I actually don’t have a lot to say about this episode, erm… erm…  Rating?

Rating 6/10

12 - A vision of hope

Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice… ah you know the rest

So, after gaining another message from Trayvis (you know, the guy who lead them into the Luminara trap) wanting them to meet up, the Rebels agree to do it, little do they know, the Empire are onto it and have set up a trap for them.

Ezra has a vision that excited him as it implied that Trayvis might know something about his parents, but he didn’t, in fact all he knew is what everyone knew, they sent out secret messages against the empire.

So yeah, Trayvis is a trap set by the empire to capture rebels or eliminate them, and thus that vision of hope ends. And this is what some people thought was going to be too light-hearted

OK, this show still needs to dive into characters more, we’re 12 episodes in (10 if you exclude spark of rebellion) and we know jack about either of the ladies and very little about Kanan or Zeb. Chopper is… Chopper

Meanwhile, we get a very black and white painting of the empire. One of the things the Clone Wars series occasionally explored was the fact that not all separatists were bad people, just people who believed that the republic was corrupt (and they were right on that) and became victims of people like Dooku.

But here, the empire is evil, and the rebels are good, and that’s just about it, for a series to expand its universe (and sure, people like Lando tip the balance a bit, but…) it needs to explore that concept as much as it needs to develop its characters.

Hera is obviously smart, she spotted the clues that suggested Trayvis was from an Imperial spy but we know very little about her, and he past, with and without Kanan. Sabine we know is Mandalorian, loves explosives and was briefly in the stormtrooper, again we know very little else.

This episode also brought back Zare from the stormtrooper academy episode, that was nice…

Rating 7.5/10

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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.