Star Wars Rebels Season 3 Episodes 4-5 review - The Antilles Extraction/Hera's Heroes

The Antilles Extraction

Oh look, an episode that actually acknowledges that pilots’ lives matter to the rebellion and not just ships. Although 2 replacing 12 is a bit of a bum deal.

Wedge Antilles and Hobbie are both pilots from the original Star Wars movies. Wedge is the only person other than Luke to survive the assault on the Death Star and Hobby was Luke’s co-pilot in the battle of Hoth. Sabine goes to recruit them and the one red shirt who dies (which I wish had been saved till later but whatever)

This is one of the stronger showings for the empire, within minutes of the episode they’ve shot down several A-wings and a rebel transport.

No Grand Admiral Thrawn again but it’s worth seeing Governor Pryce establish the threat in her own right. Whilst she’s probably not on the same level of military strategist Thrawn will turn out to be, it’s clear she’s still very smart. She thwarts Sabine’s first attempt to escape with the pilots with a calculated move. Although Sabine’s plan was relatively poor.

This is also the next step in the development of Agent Kallus. Arrested Development last season was a turning point for him. He saw aiding Sabine here as a means to settle his debt with Zeb but he’s clearly no more comfortable with Governor Pryce than he was with Grand Admiral Thrawn in the first episode. Although he’s had to enact near-genocide before it’s clear it does affect him. Maybe the actual genocide of Geonosis being the fault of the Empire lingered on him. Who knows, Kallus is certainly one to watch this season and I like that he’s grown from a relatively uninteresting and

generic character into someone more 3-dimensional. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the Fulcrum agent

Ezra’s journey continues in this episode and… I’ve got to admit I kinda wish they’d saved this for another episode. It just takes time and makes me wonder how a heavy damaged ship managed to somehow be ok in a matter of hours and make it back to the academy in time to pick up our defectors. I get he’s still in his “I’ll never let my friends get hurt again” phase but that could’ve been a strand to pick up later. We still have 17 episodes; you can be a little more patient.

No meme clips this week. But this is a double review so maybe they’ll be one there waiting next week. In the meantime, we have another strong episode to connect it to the original trilogy.

Rating 8/10

Hera’s Heroes

So, no meme clip for this week but Grand Admiral Thrawn is definitely the best part of this episode… but a country mile.

So Hera’s heroes tells the tale of Hera returning to her home, now under the control of the empire thanks to the machinations of Thrawn to recover an heirloom left behind. This feels a bit out of character for Hera, who acted kinda rashly to get an artefact that, in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t really matter.

However, doing so highlights one of the more interesting elements of Thrawn’s character. His appreciation for art. Thrawn’s actions in this episode build his threat up further as he uses his knowledge of art to thwart the rebels’ initial plan, capturing both Hera and Ezra in the process.

The problem is regarding his actual military successes; he’s not really had any on-screen. This will likely not remain the case for very long but I do wish we’d seen Thrawn be the tactician rather than just someone analysing a situation ready to devise that strategy.  

Also in this episode is Captain Slavin, the racist Captain. Given that the Empire is kinda like a version of the Nazis there are bound to be people like him. Watching Thrawn angry at him for not appreciating art was incredibly gratifying and a standout moment of the episode for me

On the other side of things we’ve had the Empire trying to fight off the remaining rebels plus a few Twi’leks (including our old friend Sham Sindula). It was not a particularly interesting action scene, the rebels could’ve taken out the walker with that rocket launcher instead of taking down a few rocks that bought them maybe a few seconds. Don’t believe me? We see Kanan actually doing it in one of the closing scenes. There don’t appear to be any casualties on either side, so there’s very little reason to care.

I also wish there was a bit more of a human element to this story. I wish we’d seen the plight of a Twi’lek servant or something through the episode. The human element is very important for building stakes to something and honestly, this episode really needed there to be more at stake

But it was a strong enough episode, and really gave a punch to Grand Admiral Thrawn

Rating 7/10

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Images/clips 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