Star Wars Rebels - 'Visions and Voices' and 'Ghosts of Geonosis'

"Okay... This got weird."

Having wrestled with my Sky Box and its sudden, partisan refusal to track the progress of shows on non-Sky channels, I have at last managed to get caught up, I think, with Star Wars Rebels.

First up was 'Visions and Voices'. When Ezra begins to see and hear Maul around Chopper base, Kanan takes him to visit the Bendu, only for Maul to show up in the desert. He explains that when they almost merged the holocrons, their minds were linked; the only way to end this is for him and his apprentice (he's still pushing that one,) to link properly and discover the secrets they both sought: The whereabouts of Maul's enemy and the key to destroying the Sith. To this end, and with Kanan and Sabine as backup, Ezra accompanies Maul to a little backwater world called Dathomir(1).

It's not easy being green.

Using the ancient magics of the Nightsisters, Maul links their minds and they learn that the answer to both questions is the same: Obi-Wan Kenobi is on a planet with two suns. Also there's a price to be paid and now the ghosts of the Nightsisters massacred by the Separatists during the Clone Wars want their pound of flesh. They are able to possess Sabine and Kanan, but even in their bodies can not leave their burial cave. Ezra declines Maul's suggestion that they just leave the others and Maul strops off. Ezra is able to Force push Sabine out of the cave, despite a few nasty moments when she comes at him with one of the relics from the cave; a black-bladed lightsabre(2).

Ezra then goes back for Kanan, persuades the Nightsister spirit to trade Kanan's body for his own, but destroys the Nightsisters' altar and so banishes the spirits. As they leave, Sabine picks up the black lightsabre.

They have actually given him Forest Whitaker's sleepy eye (and his voice.)

In 'Ghosts of Geonosis', the midseason two-parter, the crew are sent on a secret mission to bridge the Clone Wars/Rogue One gap by locating Alliance radical Saw Gerrera, who took a team to Geonosis to investigate the disappearance of the Geonosian species (c.f. last season's 'The Honourable Ones') after the Empire completed a massive construction project in orbit.

Kanan, Rex and Ezra locate Saw, who is pursuing a Geonosian deep into a warren of tunnels, and clash with squads of much-repaired battle droids. On the surface, Sabine and Zeb go to retrieve a shield generator in a sandstorm, and find it surrounded by currently dormant destroyers. Saw believes that the Geonosian - dubbed 'Klik-Klak' once captured, since they can not peak to one another - can be made to deactivate all the droids, persuading the ground team to press on. They discover that Klik-Klak is the last survivor of a genocidal gas attack launched by the Empire and decide to take him and several cannisters of the gas as proof to the Senate. Klik-Klak is also the keeper of what may be the last Geonosian egg, a queen egg and so presumably the sole hope of the species.

"Who's a cute little Geonosian!?"

That's when an Imperial cruiser pops up(3) and the captain decides to try and get a feather in her cap by taking out the Ghost. Hera, Zeb and Sabine scrag a pair of TIE Bombers, and Sabine gets to be all manner of badass fighting Imperial rocket troopers using her shiny new Mandalorian jetpack. There's a tense standoff when Saw wants to take Klik-Klak off for waterboarding, but ultimately even he accepts that the Geonosian belongs on his own planet and they leave him with the egg in the deep caves while the cruiser bombards the surface.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this episode, along with Ezra's realisation that the Alliance is not an ideologically unified group, is that the purpose of the mission is to provide evidence of genocide to the Senate, a timely reminder that we're in the period when the Senate had a presence and a voice, and the Rebellion a heavy political component. Unfortunately the cannisters were lost in the fight, so there is no proof.

Oh, and I for one am terrified to know what Saw Gerrera is supposed to be doing in the next couple of years to end up like he is in Rogue One.

(1) Home to the non-Sith dark side Force users/sorceresses known as the Nightsisters, and also rancors. This episode, for all its fine qualities, has no rancors.
(2) The Darksabre, because this episode, nay, this season, is neck deep in Clone Wars references.
(3) Actually, this is not entirely true; I'm more sort of theming events rather than relating them chronologically.