Star Wars: Rebels

The droid, the pilot, the artist, the muscle, the rogue and the straight man.
Seriously, he's like the only one on the poster not smiling.

Following the unexpected success of the Clone Wars animated series, expectations were high for the new Star Wars Rebels cartoon. Unfortunately, some of those expectations were proven misguided even before release.

Early publicity described the show as being set in the years before A New Hope, when the Empire was tightening its grasp on the galaxy. It would feature a band of rebels whose acts of resistance would become part of the larger Rebel Alliance. I think a lot of people - myself included, although I never really thought of it this way at the time - were hoping for Firefly in the Star Wars universe; a scrappy underdog story or regular jobbing rebels. There was quite a bit of brouhaha therefore when further character details leaked that two of the leads were an ex-Jedi and a force sensitive kid. A chance to see the ordinary rebel in the street had become another Jedi saviour story.

The series is set primarily on Lothal, a sort of planet-scale American midwest on the Outer Rim, currently in the process of being turned into an industrial hellhole, where the young can basically accept their lot, settle down, marry a girl named Oola and get a job at the TIE fighter factory, or rail against their lot and how they're going to make something of their life, then settle down, marry a girl named Oola and get a job at the TIE fighter factory. Ezra Bridger is an orphan and ne-er do well from Lothal, who falls in with the crew of the freighter Ghost: Pilot Hera Sindulla, mandatory quirky astromech Chopper, big guy Zeb Orrelios, dangerous free spirit and gratuitous Mandalorian punk Sabine Wren and overly serious Kanan Jarrus.

I admit, I sort of stumbled at 'Bridger' and 'Wren' as Star Wars surnames, but okay; we can't all be Starkillers, after all. Does the Star Wars universe even have wrens? I guess it has bridges at least.

Anyway, it quickly becomes apparent that Kanan is a former Jedi padawan who survived the cull by running and hiding. Ezra turns out to be force sensitive and so Kanan tries to train him, having to overcome his own self-doubt in order to do so. Ezra gets a lot of screen time, but this is mostly Kanan's show, at least in Season 1, to the point that he is invariably referred to as the leader of the group, despite the fact that Hera owns and flies the ship, gives most of the actual orders, and is the sole contact with the wider alliance (in fact, no-one else even knows that the alliance exists.)

It's not a bad series, with likeable protagonists and deeply hissable villains. Stand-out turns go to Zeb, a grumpy veteran from an almost extinct species with a heart of gold, and his nemesis Agent Kallus, the Imperial officer charged with tracking down the rebels and also responsible for the annihilation of the Lasat race with weapons of dubious legality. None of the others get a nemesis except for Kanan, who as a former Jedi finds himself pursued by the Inquisitor, a scary bastard with a double-ended spinning lightsabre (yes, really.)

The overall thrust of Season 1 is that hope will always beat fear in the end, although Kanan sums it up as 'the Force is stronger than fear', which... felt off to me. The arc plot is decent, although the individual episodes were variable, seemingly strongest with the presence of a guest star (Anthony Daniels and Billy Dee Williams reprise their classic roles) to hang the Star Warsness on. Other than that, they tend to fit a pretty standard dilemma of the week format, and with a few glaring exceptions to keep to the lighter and fluffier end of the Wars spectrum.

Best moment of the series goes to some of the verbal sparring in the Lando episode. Seeking to sow discord among the crew, Lando shows interest in Sabine's paintings, sparking jealousy from Ezra.

Sabine: Perhaps you'd like to see some of my more impressionistic work?
Lando: I am something of an impressionistic connoisseur. That means...
Ezra: I know what it means!
<Lando and Sabine depart>
Ezra: All right, what does 'impressionistic connoisseur' mean?
Zeb: Less than he thinks it does.

There is also some nice character work in the various relationships between the leads. Hera and Sabine have a sort of mentor-protege thing to mirror Kanan and Ezra's. Kanan and Hera have a thing thing, but pair up nicely as the hot shot and the cooler head (one more reason why pitching Kanan as the leader makes little sense.) Sabine and Zeb have a good working relationship as the two highly acrobatic fighters who often work detached from the others, while Zeb and Ezra are sometimes antagonistic, but bond over their dislike of the frankly sociopathic Chopper.

Overall, Rebels is not a dead loss, but has more good parts than good episodes. It has been renewed for a second season, however, so we shall see how it progresses.