Rebels: 3x19-21
Dec. 20th, 2021 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jedi_of_urth posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tori_reviewsLong one here, but not quite so long that I felt right dragging it out over two posts.
Rebels 3x19 – Twin Suns
Long time readers (if there are any) might recall me saying at times that I don’t notice music all that often in shows. And that means that when I do, and can spot the emotional manipulation of it, and still fall for it, it has to be a piece that strikes a chord with me (pun partially intended). And that’s how I feel at the end of this one, instead of ending with the Rebels’ bombastic closing, we get the…is that Luke’s theme or the Force theme I forget? Either way, I respond to it on some primal level that comes from watching Star Wars so many times as a kid that it’s imprinted into my brain as something that I like. Or John Williams’ music is just that noticeably better than basically anything else. Either way, thanks to the closing music, I’m probably going to be more positive about this episode than it deserves, because it managed to leave me with a good feeling.
Another reason might be that, while Ezra is an absolute idiot here, he’s the same kind of idiot all the way through, so I almost don’t need to complain about him being a moron because he just is. And the show…kind of knows that. It still expects me to care, but it does know he’s an idiot, so it’s right on one count, just not both.
I’m more inclined to complain about how that narrative here means that Ezra never actually overcomes Maul. He falls for Maul’s trap again, Ezra never confronts Maul, and then Maul dies because someone else pulled Ezra’s fat out of the fire. So Ezra’s arc with Maul is never resolved and now it won’t be. It’s not even like I was invested in that, except that it was a way the show could have chosen to explore Ezra’s temptation towards the Dark Side, and that isn’t at all a part of this story. Once more, Ezra doesn’t grow from his dumbass decisions, he just gets handed a way out of consequences.
I would remiss if I didn’t comment on Obi-wan’s (or is it Ben now?) line about how he’ll resolve the old wound with Maul. And I’m not entirely sure what he was referring to; that Maul is an old wound on the galaxy? Qui-gon? Satine? If he’d said something more like unfinished business, it could encompass all of it, but especially the fact that Obi-wan killed Maul decades ago and it was time for Maul to actually die. But something about it being an old wound makes me wonder just what he meant. And it could be the reason there was the reference to Satine earlier in the season.
And then there’s his words with Maul as Maul is dying. The part of me that has always thought Anakin’s place in Star Wars was to be the father of Luke and Leia, the real chosen ones to bring balance to the galaxy, wants to take Obi-wan’s comment along those lines. But the other idea is that he’s kind of lying to Maul about who it is that he’s protecting, because there’s always the off chance that Maul won’t die this time either so Ben’s not giving out extra information.
Now’s as good a time as any to bring up something that’s been on my mind, kind of ever since the Kenobi show started to take form. It’s been almost as many years in the real world since Revenge of the Sith as there were in-universe years between RotS and New Hope. And Ewan McGregor doesn’t look like Alec Guiness; he’s aged a lot more gracefully than his character must have. This show makes him look more like OT Obi-wan, which makes sense seeing as this is only a year or two before ANH…probably.
Which is another point I need to bring up. Ezra and Luke are supposed to be basically the same age. They were both born right around the day the Empire was started, so they’re basically exactly the same age. So it’s kind of weird that the ending scene (that’s still super effective with me) seems to have a younger Luke. And you might think that Obi-wan would consider that Luke isn’t quite a child now; Ezra’s the same age and has been fighting this war for years. But we know Ben’s going to wait until Luke comes to him instead of telling Luke that he’s the new hope of the galaxy.
Now, in a way, that’s kind of sweet; to let him be a child a little longer instead of making him grow up fast like Ezra and to a certain extent Leia. On the other hand…Obi-wan fully believes that it is Luke’s destiny to save the galaxy and yet he’s ignoring the fight that other people are dying in to let Luke have a normal life a little longer. And especially with Ezra showing up and showing that even if Obi-wan does tell Luke the truth, there would be others out there, so Luke wouldn’t be facing it alone if you give him time to prepare to be the savior.
One thing that has been fairly well done about this plot is how Maul looking for vengeance and Ezra wanting to know how to defeat the Empire lead them to the same place…only not really. Because the actual hope that for defeating the Empire isn’t the great Obi-wan Kenobi, it’s the farm boy fifty or a hundred or so miles away (ballpark estimate, Obi-wan wasn’t exactly a neighbor or anything, but R2 did get most of the way from Luke’s to Ben’s overnight; somewhere in the fandom people probably know the distance).
Which means Ezra is still an idiot. The Force got him pretty darn near the answer to his question (once again, I’m reminded how unlikely it is to find someone on a planet when you don’t know where to start looking, this is also relevant to telling Ezra that he knows all of Lothal better than anyone), but because it wasn’t the answer he was looking for he didn’t see it.
Also, when did they realize Obi-wan would be on Tantooine? If they’ve known that for a while then why would they not have gone to investigate (aside from it being a planet and they don’t know if the person they’re looking for is even alive)? And why is Kanan so uninterested? Alternately, why don’t we get a parallel to the s1 story where Ezra felt like Kanan wanted to pawn him off on another master, only here Kanan’s feeling like Ezra’s looking for a more useful master.
As usual, the show picks the least interesting aspects to build the story on. I should be used to it, but it still disappoints me.
~~~~
I debated going on a ramble about our rp game and our Jedi characters not exactly being out saving the galaxy. But my point in the review was that Obi-wan believes that of Luke, and all of our Jedi characters didn’t have someone who expected them to be saviors. I could say a lot more on the subject, but I don’t need to rehash it for me and I doubt anyone else cares.
Rebels 3x20-21 – Zero Hour
Alright, so this is one I basically liked less and less as it went along. I was still feeling pretty positive towards it by the end of part 1, but it had already taken a few dips, and then part 2 just dragged on and on.
Some of that is perhaps to be expected. In a lot of two-parters, the first part is in some ways easier. Buildup is always a bit easier than payoff. And when this show attempts to pull off any payoff it does so with one hand tied behind their backs because there wasn’t going to be either great victory or great defeat, or even that big a shakeup to the status quo.
And the fact that I don’t classify what we get here as much change to the status quo, is definitely me saying something about the supposed big moments of the episodes. The Admiral had been around for basically two seasons on and off, and I felt nothing for him making a big noble sacrifice because he’s not actually a character.
I still feel more for Callus than I do most of the other characters (which remains something of a condemnation of how little impact the show’s leads actually have on me), and even his story feels…shortchanged. Yes, Thrawn did ultimately get important intel out of that arc, and yes it led to a decent Imperial victory in the end, but there’s so much more potential it could have had. (Also, why aren’t the Rebels smarter than having him call directly to their secret base?) But I wanted Thrawn to be playing 4-D chess; yes, he’s winning 2-D (kind of), but he’s capable of more. Except then they’d have to write the protagonists as smarter to play on his level and that would be less appealing to the kids, so they nerf Thrawn instead of writing a smarter story.
I also wanted Callus to outright fail because of his choice to stay with the Empire longer. Thrawn plays the thing more skillfully and lets Callus pass along a bit more information that Callus thinks he’s getting away with, only for Thrawn to slip some false info and play everyone. Now, that might run the risk of seeming a bit Emperor at Endor if not handled well, and this show probably wouldn’t handle it well. But Callus doesn’t even fail because he got cocky or careless, he fails because the Rebels are dumb and don’t bounce their signal around (when…Callus can’t have been communicating directly with the base until a few episodes ago since he didn’t know where it was, so they must have been bouncing signal around before that, right?).
I suppose I do have to give Ezra a small amount of props for the beginning of the story, because he knows that he has nothing to do with how well things are going. Everyone else has been doing so much more than his dumb ass has ever accomplished running after manipulation after manipulation. But I have to take the props away from the show since this brief moment of self-awareness just becomes another opportunity to build Ezra up when he doesn’t deserve it. I’m not even saying I want Kanan to go ‘yeah, you’re pretty useless’ because that wouldn’t really fit their relationship, but Ezra is useless so I don’t like being told that he isn’t.
Pretty much all through the episode I wanted there to be a cost to this at-best-pyric victory (I wasn’t sure the show would stick to canon that the Rebels hadn’t really won much in the way of victory before ANH). And there never was. Blow up Chopper and have them have to rebuild him, have them lose the Ghost, have one of the leads captured so next season has to start with a rescue arc, just something that actually feels like they lost something. Sato is as much as gets, and I already said I didn’t feel much for that.
As I’ve said before, I’m actually more invested in how the show uses Thrawn than I care about any of the show’s main characters. And something the show could have done is have him be unfinished or untested as much as he would be by the time of HttE (which I’ll remind you again is more canon to me than anything in the sequel movies or Disney era). Don’t have him be a Grand Admiral, have him be a regular Admiral who sometimes misses details, but gets better with every confrontation he has with the heroes. That would have been something of an interesting arc, but they would have had to commit to it and stick to it. And probably let him win in the end, which I am pretty sure the show won’t do.
Thrawn won this battle by any actual measurement, as the Rebels took a lot of losses and just narrowly escaped because a deus ex machina. But the end of the episode doesn’t feel like they’ve lost and are going to be at an even greater disadvantage in the next fight. If it seemed like everyone else was down on what happened but Kanan was being an optimist, there could be some power in that, but the overall tone is a hopeful one instead an uncertain one.
I suspect that’s made a little worse because the real defeat of the Empire isn’t going to involve these guys, and Thrawn is (as far as I’m concerned) going to go on and be a thorn in the Rebels and New Republic’s side for the better part of a decade; at which point these people still won’t be the reason he’s stopped. I want them to be hopeless (or for the show’s tone to be one of marginal triumph at most) because I think they are. They’re holding back the tide and moving a few pieces into play, until the actual wars are in other people’s hands.
But also the pacing of this story, especially of part 2, was not good. In a lot of part 1 I was thinking how, maybe the show does just need to be longer so that they could throw some character word and atmosphere into regular stories they tell. But if that’s true, they apparently should only be about actually 30 minutes instead of 30 minutes including commercials or 60 with/45 without double episodes. Although, again, they could use the time they have better and earn the full double length time. As is, part 2 got pretty dull by the end.
Rebels 3x19 – Twin Suns
Long time readers (if there are any) might recall me saying at times that I don’t notice music all that often in shows. And that means that when I do, and can spot the emotional manipulation of it, and still fall for it, it has to be a piece that strikes a chord with me (pun partially intended). And that’s how I feel at the end of this one, instead of ending with the Rebels’ bombastic closing, we get the…is that Luke’s theme or the Force theme I forget? Either way, I respond to it on some primal level that comes from watching Star Wars so many times as a kid that it’s imprinted into my brain as something that I like. Or John Williams’ music is just that noticeably better than basically anything else. Either way, thanks to the closing music, I’m probably going to be more positive about this episode than it deserves, because it managed to leave me with a good feeling.
Another reason might be that, while Ezra is an absolute idiot here, he’s the same kind of idiot all the way through, so I almost don’t need to complain about him being a moron because he just is. And the show…kind of knows that. It still expects me to care, but it does know he’s an idiot, so it’s right on one count, just not both.
I’m more inclined to complain about how that narrative here means that Ezra never actually overcomes Maul. He falls for Maul’s trap again, Ezra never confronts Maul, and then Maul dies because someone else pulled Ezra’s fat out of the fire. So Ezra’s arc with Maul is never resolved and now it won’t be. It’s not even like I was invested in that, except that it was a way the show could have chosen to explore Ezra’s temptation towards the Dark Side, and that isn’t at all a part of this story. Once more, Ezra doesn’t grow from his dumbass decisions, he just gets handed a way out of consequences.
I would remiss if I didn’t comment on Obi-wan’s (or is it Ben now?) line about how he’ll resolve the old wound with Maul. And I’m not entirely sure what he was referring to; that Maul is an old wound on the galaxy? Qui-gon? Satine? If he’d said something more like unfinished business, it could encompass all of it, but especially the fact that Obi-wan killed Maul decades ago and it was time for Maul to actually die. But something about it being an old wound makes me wonder just what he meant. And it could be the reason there was the reference to Satine earlier in the season.
And then there’s his words with Maul as Maul is dying. The part of me that has always thought Anakin’s place in Star Wars was to be the father of Luke and Leia, the real chosen ones to bring balance to the galaxy, wants to take Obi-wan’s comment along those lines. But the other idea is that he’s kind of lying to Maul about who it is that he’s protecting, because there’s always the off chance that Maul won’t die this time either so Ben’s not giving out extra information.
Now’s as good a time as any to bring up something that’s been on my mind, kind of ever since the Kenobi show started to take form. It’s been almost as many years in the real world since Revenge of the Sith as there were in-universe years between RotS and New Hope. And Ewan McGregor doesn’t look like Alec Guiness; he’s aged a lot more gracefully than his character must have. This show makes him look more like OT Obi-wan, which makes sense seeing as this is only a year or two before ANH…probably.
Which is another point I need to bring up. Ezra and Luke are supposed to be basically the same age. They were both born right around the day the Empire was started, so they’re basically exactly the same age. So it’s kind of weird that the ending scene (that’s still super effective with me) seems to have a younger Luke. And you might think that Obi-wan would consider that Luke isn’t quite a child now; Ezra’s the same age and has been fighting this war for years. But we know Ben’s going to wait until Luke comes to him instead of telling Luke that he’s the new hope of the galaxy.
Now, in a way, that’s kind of sweet; to let him be a child a little longer instead of making him grow up fast like Ezra and to a certain extent Leia. On the other hand…Obi-wan fully believes that it is Luke’s destiny to save the galaxy and yet he’s ignoring the fight that other people are dying in to let Luke have a normal life a little longer. And especially with Ezra showing up and showing that even if Obi-wan does tell Luke the truth, there would be others out there, so Luke wouldn’t be facing it alone if you give him time to prepare to be the savior.
One thing that has been fairly well done about this plot is how Maul looking for vengeance and Ezra wanting to know how to defeat the Empire lead them to the same place…only not really. Because the actual hope that for defeating the Empire isn’t the great Obi-wan Kenobi, it’s the farm boy fifty or a hundred or so miles away (ballpark estimate, Obi-wan wasn’t exactly a neighbor or anything, but R2 did get most of the way from Luke’s to Ben’s overnight; somewhere in the fandom people probably know the distance).
Which means Ezra is still an idiot. The Force got him pretty darn near the answer to his question (once again, I’m reminded how unlikely it is to find someone on a planet when you don’t know where to start looking, this is also relevant to telling Ezra that he knows all of Lothal better than anyone), but because it wasn’t the answer he was looking for he didn’t see it.
Also, when did they realize Obi-wan would be on Tantooine? If they’ve known that for a while then why would they not have gone to investigate (aside from it being a planet and they don’t know if the person they’re looking for is even alive)? And why is Kanan so uninterested? Alternately, why don’t we get a parallel to the s1 story where Ezra felt like Kanan wanted to pawn him off on another master, only here Kanan’s feeling like Ezra’s looking for a more useful master.
As usual, the show picks the least interesting aspects to build the story on. I should be used to it, but it still disappoints me.
~~~~
I debated going on a ramble about our rp game and our Jedi characters not exactly being out saving the galaxy. But my point in the review was that Obi-wan believes that of Luke, and all of our Jedi characters didn’t have someone who expected them to be saviors. I could say a lot more on the subject, but I don’t need to rehash it for me and I doubt anyone else cares.
Rebels 3x20-21 – Zero Hour
Alright, so this is one I basically liked less and less as it went along. I was still feeling pretty positive towards it by the end of part 1, but it had already taken a few dips, and then part 2 just dragged on and on.
Some of that is perhaps to be expected. In a lot of two-parters, the first part is in some ways easier. Buildup is always a bit easier than payoff. And when this show attempts to pull off any payoff it does so with one hand tied behind their backs because there wasn’t going to be either great victory or great defeat, or even that big a shakeup to the status quo.
And the fact that I don’t classify what we get here as much change to the status quo, is definitely me saying something about the supposed big moments of the episodes. The Admiral had been around for basically two seasons on and off, and I felt nothing for him making a big noble sacrifice because he’s not actually a character.
I still feel more for Callus than I do most of the other characters (which remains something of a condemnation of how little impact the show’s leads actually have on me), and even his story feels…shortchanged. Yes, Thrawn did ultimately get important intel out of that arc, and yes it led to a decent Imperial victory in the end, but there’s so much more potential it could have had. (Also, why aren’t the Rebels smarter than having him call directly to their secret base?) But I wanted Thrawn to be playing 4-D chess; yes, he’s winning 2-D (kind of), but he’s capable of more. Except then they’d have to write the protagonists as smarter to play on his level and that would be less appealing to the kids, so they nerf Thrawn instead of writing a smarter story.
I also wanted Callus to outright fail because of his choice to stay with the Empire longer. Thrawn plays the thing more skillfully and lets Callus pass along a bit more information that Callus thinks he’s getting away with, only for Thrawn to slip some false info and play everyone. Now, that might run the risk of seeming a bit Emperor at Endor if not handled well, and this show probably wouldn’t handle it well. But Callus doesn’t even fail because he got cocky or careless, he fails because the Rebels are dumb and don’t bounce their signal around (when…Callus can’t have been communicating directly with the base until a few episodes ago since he didn’t know where it was, so they must have been bouncing signal around before that, right?).
I suppose I do have to give Ezra a small amount of props for the beginning of the story, because he knows that he has nothing to do with how well things are going. Everyone else has been doing so much more than his dumb ass has ever accomplished running after manipulation after manipulation. But I have to take the props away from the show since this brief moment of self-awareness just becomes another opportunity to build Ezra up when he doesn’t deserve it. I’m not even saying I want Kanan to go ‘yeah, you’re pretty useless’ because that wouldn’t really fit their relationship, but Ezra is useless so I don’t like being told that he isn’t.
Pretty much all through the episode I wanted there to be a cost to this at-best-pyric victory (I wasn’t sure the show would stick to canon that the Rebels hadn’t really won much in the way of victory before ANH). And there never was. Blow up Chopper and have them have to rebuild him, have them lose the Ghost, have one of the leads captured so next season has to start with a rescue arc, just something that actually feels like they lost something. Sato is as much as gets, and I already said I didn’t feel much for that.
As I’ve said before, I’m actually more invested in how the show uses Thrawn than I care about any of the show’s main characters. And something the show could have done is have him be unfinished or untested as much as he would be by the time of HttE (which I’ll remind you again is more canon to me than anything in the sequel movies or Disney era). Don’t have him be a Grand Admiral, have him be a regular Admiral who sometimes misses details, but gets better with every confrontation he has with the heroes. That would have been something of an interesting arc, but they would have had to commit to it and stick to it. And probably let him win in the end, which I am pretty sure the show won’t do.
Thrawn won this battle by any actual measurement, as the Rebels took a lot of losses and just narrowly escaped because a deus ex machina. But the end of the episode doesn’t feel like they’ve lost and are going to be at an even greater disadvantage in the next fight. If it seemed like everyone else was down on what happened but Kanan was being an optimist, there could be some power in that, but the overall tone is a hopeful one instead an uncertain one.
I suspect that’s made a little worse because the real defeat of the Empire isn’t going to involve these guys, and Thrawn is (as far as I’m concerned) going to go on and be a thorn in the Rebels and New Republic’s side for the better part of a decade; at which point these people still won’t be the reason he’s stopped. I want them to be hopeless (or for the show’s tone to be one of marginal triumph at most) because I think they are. They’re holding back the tide and moving a few pieces into play, until the actual wars are in other people’s hands.
But also the pacing of this story, especially of part 2, was not good. In a lot of part 1 I was thinking how, maybe the show does just need to be longer so that they could throw some character word and atmosphere into regular stories they tell. But if that’s true, they apparently should only be about actually 30 minutes instead of 30 minutes including commercials or 60 with/45 without double episodes. Although, again, they could use the time they have better and earn the full double length time. As is, part 2 got pretty dull by the end.
