Rebels: 2x20-21

[jedi_of_urth]

Star Wars Rebels: 2x20-21 – Twilight of the Apprentice

To again try and avoid saying how this episode is weird, I’ll say this. Parts of this episode are really good; parts of this episode are bad; parts of this episode are annoying; and parts of this episode are built on narrative contrivance that is also annoying.

So…I’m supposed to hate Ezra, right? I’ve been assuming that his Gary Stu-ness meant I was supposed to like him and I just didn’t, but right now I don’t see how I’m supposed to like him. Kid’s a moron; to the extent where Darth Maul seems to think he’s an idiot. And Darth Maul got himself chopped in half by a padawan who was literally hanging over a chasm while Maul had the high ground. Ezra also basically has a highly condensed Anakin arc in an episode that shows where Anakin’s arc leads. And I don’t think Ezra actually knows what he did wrong here, which makes it hard for me to think he actually learned anything.

The thing about this episode (and for convenience I will refer to it as a single episode), is that it’s the climax to Ahsoka’s story; but neither the arc leading up to it or this episode’s story are actually about Ahsoka. Kanan is basically just a sidekick that tags along, and then you have the idiot who the story seems to think is a hero…maybe…unless I am supposed to hate him this much.

And I really don’t know. Because the first thing Ezra does in this episode is get them all sucked off the surface of the planet. He is worse than dead weight on this mission. But it’s still not focused on him learning something that will make him a better person/Jedi. If anything, they seem to be setting up for him to go further toward the Dark Side. And while that could be interesting if I had faith that the writers would actually go there and (more importantly) not fuck up telling that story; but I don’t have those faiths so I expect to go right on hating Ezra and the story not letting him become more likable.

There’s a part of me that wishes it hadn’t been Maul they ran into. I can see a reason for that though, as Maul does have a backstory that can justify his role in this story of not being on anyone’s side but his own. Which balances out the fact that a surprise would have been appreciated somewhere in this. But it also makes Ezra look even dumber since the audience can ID Maul pretty early. And it’s not like Maul doesn’t behave like an evil bastard; so if it had been a new character designed to be an independent agent and the audience like Ezra wasn’t sure what to make of him, there would be some stories in that.

As is, I found myself spending a notable amount of attention on trying to work out how well this disjointed continuity syncs up. How did Maul fall so far in the time since whenever Solo supposedly happened? Or did he not and all of it is fake? But he seems a bit too crazed to be the crime boss we saw there (and previously on TCW, there he was at least only sometimes crazy). Ahsoka does clearly know Maul in this phase of continuity, so that tracks with TCW s7; but he also references what he knows about her to be that she runs away, and I’m not sure that tracks with the confrontation we saw between them. They could have seen each other since then, but then Ahsoka would probably just have more reasons to mistrust Maul. And while the show makes Ezra look like a complete dumbass, it also isn’t quite willing to make him…defiant in his dumbassery. Not because he backs down when confronted, but because the show doesn’t have the others confronting him with how dumb he’s being and all the reasons he should really stop and think for about four seconds.

And some of the dialog between Ahsoka and Vader/Anakin seems unsure whether they’ve seen each other since she walked away from the Jedi Order. And sure, they didn’t catch up a lot when they saw each other again, but it is a slight difference that I feel this episode isn’t sure about. Though again, the episode isn’t focusing on their reunion and confrontation and how they’ve changed since one of the last times they saw each other. It’s just a thing that happens in the background of Ezra being a dumbass.

Which makes me feel really bad for Rex; if in kind of a backwards way. If we had been following Ahsoka’s story through this, including giving the relationship between her and Rex more time to be on display, this could have been utterly heartbreaking to think of him being (to all appearances) left to grieve for her too. But because the show didn’t give us that buildup, and tried to cram it into their talk at the beginning of this episode, Rex just feels forgotten. He feels like an old relic who isn’t able to affect what happens to the friends he has left. Plus the show is a little all over the place with keeping in mind that Rex is actually younger than Ahsoka (though not by much…maybe). It seems a little like the pair of them remember somewhere inside the writing that doesn’t; which clearly makes no sense, but that’s how I’m going to phrase it.

I also feel bad for the rest of the cast being left out of this. I feel like Hera almost gets to count even if she doesn’t get any lines. As the camera was going through the ship at the end I literally had a moment where I thought ‘oh yeah, Sabine is a thing.’ And I’m not even sure I had that much reaction to Zeb.

This is really a different problem to how I got tired of TCW. So much of TCW was just so much more boring than it should have been and aside from the rarely appearing Jar Jar I didn’t really hate anyone. I didn’t like anyone half so much as I should have (even the ones I liked I should have liked more), but the main frustration of the show was how underwhelming it was. This show is just wrong. It’s somehow even less ambitious than I thought TCW was. It picked the wrong structure and focus and dynamic right from the start. And while I may occasionally still say something like ‘I like the version of this show that I can recreate in my head,’ the version of things in my head has to do away with the show’s main character and that’s huge problem saying something like I like it in theory.

It's just so painfully obvious that half of the reason Maul is here for this episode is so none of the heroes have to be the ones to kill the Inquisitors. He’s necessary for the plot obviously, but this episode is also clearing the board of this season’s threat but it doesn’t want the heroes to kill them. And when those kinds of things happen, it makes me dislike the characters a big more; because what was their plan if Maul hadn’t been there to take out the threat? Which makes it feel like they end up needing him around so they can succeed, but will hold it against him that he did the things that let them succeed. This is less an issue for me with Kanan and Ahsoka, partly because I think they would kill if necessary (even if they were dumb enough not to kill the first Inquisitor they came across), so it really is just the plot that won’t show them that way. And partly because with Ezra…him not killing ends up just feeling like another dumb thing he does. Even though I do think it’s the choice he should have made, he’s not so far to the Dark that he’s ready for that kind of execution.

Look, if the show actually builds something on this (and I mean for Ezra, I’m sure they’ll hint at good stuff with other characters that just won’t be developed) I would love to eat these words. That this was a necessary point on his story arc. But so far he’s just getting worse as a character and I don’t know if the show knows it or still wants me to think he’s a likable protagonist. Either way I don’t think that, but there’s a difference between an intentionally written dumb-spell and just more Gary Stu-ness where he won’t suffer any consequences or even be expected to grow from his dumb ass behavior.

…That was a very disorganized review. And yet also very focused on just how dumb Ezra Bridger is. He’s real dumb people, like super super dumb.