Star Wars: Rebels - 'The Last Battle'

These guys.

"Roger-roger."
"Who's Roger?"

After giving loads of screen time to Hera last week, we're giving some focus to the Jedi boys, although really most of 'The Last Battle' is about someone else entirely.

Captain Rex takes the boys to retrieve a weapons cache from a Clone War battleground left untouched since the conflict ended with Order 66 and the deactivation of the separatist droid army, while the girls take the Ghost to raid a fuel dump. Unfortunately it turns out that the battleground is not as abandoned as it was thought, with a battalion of battle droids still on site and active. Led by the super tactical droid General Kalani, this group remain active thanks to Kalani's presumption that the shut-down command was a Republic trick, echoing Rex's refusal of Order 66. Determined to achieve resolution, Kalani challenges Rex to fight one final battle of the Clone Wars; clones and Jedi against droids, with Zeb's life as an incentive.

"Super tactical droid, thank you."

Rex leads the Jedi in an assault on Kalani's command centre, fighting past regulars and destroyers, all of which have seen decidedly better days (as, arguably, has Rex.) Rex becomes angry at Ezra's inability to stick to his plan of battle, but Kanan assures his padawan that this is not about him, but about Rex's need to win this one his own way in order to get some closure. Thanks to malfunctioning droids they make it to the command centre, but Kalani refuses to acknowledge the win.

As Ezra realises, they should have lost, but the droids were basically falling apart already. Nothing is really resolved.

Hero pose!

Fortunately, the Empire shows up and starts picking off droids, allowing Ezra to make a hail Mary play, convincing Rex and Kalani to accept that the Republic and the Separatists both lost the Clone War to the Empire. The two sides then join forces, bowling proton bombs at the feet of advancing AT-ATs while the Jedi bounce droid blaster bolts at the bombs to set them off. This last is pretty silly, but they needed something to do. Our heroes escape on a shuttle which they earmark for the replacement Phantom, while Kalani makes it out on another, declining to join the Rebellion because it has only a 1% chance of success. I guess no-one ever told him not to tell people the odds.

'The Last Battle' is a decent episode, but suffers from two things that are not actually flaws at all. First, it leans on the Clone Wars series, which I haven't seen. Second, it follows 'Hera's Heroes', and it's never an enviable position to follow an excellent episode. It is good to see Ezra flexing his light side muscles a bit with those mad diplomacy skillz.