Star Wars Rebels Season 2 Episodes 16-18 review - Shroud of Darkness/The Forgotten Droid/The Mystery of Chopper Base

Shroud of Darkness

We’re coming down to the end now, to my knowledge there are 4 more episodes left of the series, so it’s time to return to the core conflicts. Helping the rebels establish a base, fighting the inquisitors, Ahsoka’s journey and generally the story of master and apprentice fighting against themselves and the Empire.

The only big issue I have with this episode is the route of the conflict “everywhere we go we run into these guys” would’ve been more poignant had they appeared in any episode since the mid-season break. I have one more minor issue but I’ll get to it

Kanan, Ezra and Ahsoka head back to the Jedi Temple on Lothal hoping to speak to Master Yoda, each of them end up on their own vision quest and discover new information to help them in the future, but also a dire warning of things to come.

I suppose then, I’d best break down each one. Kanan finds a temple guard with an astonishingly familiar voice. Yes, Jason Isaacs, the voice of the Grand Inquisitor from the last season has been given a role here, and no, that role was not chosen by accident. Kanan faces a trail, having to acknowledge that he can only do what he can and let fate do the rest and he is officially granted to rank of Jedi Knight. That’s nice enough but what was more interesting is the final reveal. The Grand Inquisitor was once a jedi knight himself.

Ezra finds Yoda once again. He warns that fighting may not be the answer to end this conflict (although it kinda was). Ezra’s young and his drive to fight comes from the right place, Yoda’s concerned, he himself admits he was tainted by fear during the clone wars, a discovery I think he made around the same time he went on that vision quest during the clone wars. His advice for Ezra to find Malachor will also earn favour of those who liked the expanded universe stuff

Ahsoka’s vision was shorter, she is confronted by Anakin, confronting her own guilt of leaving him, whilst he becomes Darth Vader. She has yet to reveal that to any of them and she may never do so her ultimate realisation that there might still be hope is nice and it was also a nice touch to have Yoda wave to her at the end.

My other minor gripe of the episode comes with the Inquisitors, faced off against the Temple Guards/possible illusions are surrounded but nothing seems to come of it, they’re alive in the next scene.

Overall though it’s a fantastic episode with more of what this series really excels at

Rating 9/10

The Forgotten Droid

This is a Chopper focused episode…. Yay!?

Look, my opinion of Chopper as a character is… is… is… I don’t like him, at all. It’s not so much his grumpiness that matters, or even his ego it’s more those mean-spirited moments like when he runs over Ezra’s fingers as he’s hanging on for dear life.

But of all the characters in the show, he’s the one we know least about so it’s fine that they dedicate this episode to him. Better yet they put the overarching theme, helping the rebels establish a base, front and centre this episode, so it doesn’t feel like a filler episode.

But quickly we come across our first problem. Chopper deliberately goes off mission for selfish reasons and there are no consequences to this action. When I first saw the Ghost take-off I thought the Empire had taken it but nope, mission accomplished and Chopper was very unimportant, I suppose it kinda justifies him doing so but it’s not a good trait to be selfish and not have it blast back in your face

So he steals the leg and thanks to Stormtroopers unable to see something turn right when it’s 5 metres in front of them, he manages to stow-away on an imperial cargo ship where he meets AT-5, another old droid from the Clone Wars and they manage to bond and take the ship for themselves

Oh and because of this, they get valuable intel to the rebels that results in the not walking into an imperial trap. So chopper stealing the leg was a good thing! This episode is pretty much a miss from me I’m afraid.

It’s not devoid of entertainment, it’s got a few laughs and to be honest I found the relationship between Chopper and AT-5 quite endearing and his sacrifice (well, murder really) actually hit me, which was nice, but it was soon undone since Chopper sacrificed his new leg (why couldn’t they just use parts from his old leg?) to repair him.

The episode is otherwise pretty uninteresting, the chase scenes aren’t memorable really and neither is the stupid as f*ck Captain. Better luck next time rebels

Rating 5/10

The Mystery of Chopper Base

We’ve found a new Planet to call our base, let’s go murder the local wildlife!

So when one of the rebel pilots finds the wildlife to be quite unfriendly, the rebels set out to rescue her, a task which is soon forgotten as basically the rebels set out to rescue Rex instead. Yeah, if this episode had one major flaw, it’s how quickly the pilot was forgotten. But that’s been par the course for this season and I’m beginning to sound like a broken record continually spewing that out

There are 2 big plotlines going on in this episode. The first is regarding the spider creature inhabitants of the planet. They’re big, strong, and Ezra isn’t able to connect with them through the force, much to his disappointment. It’s a good story really, even if it’s not a major event or even that big a threat for the rebels but it lended itself to a few good character moments like Rex standing his ground and Ezra coming up with the plan to save the day and even a couple of funny moments like Zeb’s fear of creatures with more than 2 legs (well, more than 4 anyway, since he’s fine with cats and things)

Despite the episode being named after him, this episode is not heavy on Chopper, which fine for me because I still don’t care for the character but it seems like an odd episode name choice.

The second plot is that Ezra and Kanan, along with Ahsoka are heading out on their own to stop the Inquisitors. The finale – Twilight of the Apprentice is, I’m told, more or less entirely focused on the 3 of them. So a portion of this episode is dedicated to them saying goodbye.

Most importantly it’s been Kanan and Hera and honestly they need to give us something between the two. It stuck me in this episode that there hasn’t really been an episode dedicated to their relationship, we don’t know how they met and why they decided to stick together and I think that’s an interesting story that deserves some exploration.

It’s clearly not going to happen this season, but it’s something that might be worth exploring as Star Wars Rebels has been renewed for a third season. It also got us to see Kanan and Ezra in combat together. Ezra’s pretty much on par with Kanan now, we see the fight ending in a draw, apparently not for the first time. But Ezra’s willingness to kill the Inquisitors might be his weakness.

Rating 7/10 

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Images used in this review are from Star Wars Rebels, which is owned by Disney. Images used in this review are subject to fair use.