Star Wars: Rebels - 'Jedi Night', 'DUME', 'Wolves and a Door' and 'A World Between Worlds'

This is going to hurt, isn't it.

Having finished The Librarians, we're now winding up to the series finale of Star Wars: Rebels, although in this case it's not due to a cancellation, but the natural conclusion of the series in time for Rogue One to pick up the story.

'Jedi Night' follows from 'Rebel Assault', with Hera in Imperial custody and facing off against Grand Admiral Thrawn before being handed off to Governor Pryce for torture. Kanan, Ezra and Sabine infiltrate the Imperial compound using gliders, the younger Rebels securing transport while Kanan - sporting a severe new do - rescues Hera and steals back her kalikori. For the first time, if not ever then certainly in a while, they declare their feelings for one another, and the audience start to get sinking feelings. It's all looking pretty slick, but they reckon without Pryce, who opts to order her AT-AT to fire into an Imperial fuel depot rather than allow them to get away. As the tanks rupture and the fuel ignites, Kanan draws on the Force to hold back the flames, and to push the others into the transport and away from the blast. Kanan, however, is consumed by the blast, leaving the rest of the team bereft.

"You're very tall."

In 'DUME', the Rebels are basically in shock. Hera retreats into herself and Ezra is eaten up by guilt and despair, while Sabine and Zeb decide to head into the city when they realise that the Imperials are throwing a parade. Ezra is contacted by the Loth-wolves, in particular a gigantic wolf that speaks, calling itself Dume, which tells him to return to the Jedi temple. Hera, meanwhile, beats back her own grief by adding to the kalikori, symbolically bringing Kanan into her family. At the city, Zeb and Sabine encounter Rukh, and after a bad start are able to knock him out and send him into the city tied to his own speeder. They also realise that the destruction of the fuel depot has shut down the TIE Defender plant; they have lost many comrades and a dear friend, but their mission succeeded (and indeed, Thrawn angrily contacts Pryce to make it clear that the death of Kanan does not make up for delaying his programme, which may lead to his funding being reallocated to 'Project Stardust'.)

Apparently early Jedi art had some sort of Eastern Orthodox influences.

In 'Wolves and a Door', the team return to the temple, with the aid of the Loth-wolves, and find the site being excavated by Imperial engineers. The doors of the temple are long gone, but a great mural of the Mortis Gods(1) - the Father, the Son and the Daughter - stands on the wall, and Ezra recognises an owl that was often present when Ahsoka was around. Sabine works out that the hand gestures and star patterns in the mural form a kind of lock, which Ezra is able to manipulate using the Force. Sabine is captured but the Imperial Minister in charge of the dig, while Ezra is able to escape through a portal made of art, because that's the sort of thing you expect in Star Wars if your awareness of fantasy culture is such that you think it's fundamentally indistinguishable from Harry Potter.

Huh.

Which leads us to 'A World Between Worlds', in which Ezra finds himself in a strange, extra-dimensional space full of paths and portals, in which he can hear the voices of Master Yoda, Obi-Wan, and also Rey and Kylo. Shit has officially got weird, and I mean weirder than when giant wolves started talking to people and running through hyperspace. While Hera and Zeb rescue Sabine from a heated academic debate with the Minister, Ezra follows an owl and finds a portal which opens onto the climactic fight between Vader and Ahsoka, allowing him to pull Ahsoka away from the fight. Ezra at once sets out to try to save Kanan, but Ahsoka helps him to see that if he does so, all of the Rebels will have died in the fuel dump.

Or Force flames.

The Emperor starts throwing Force lightning into the void after Ahsoka and Ezra, but with an effort they are able to escape; Ahsoka to the aftermath of her duel(2), promising to come and find Ezra, and Ezra to the temple, where Sabine is able to guide him in sealing the void once more. The temple itself collapses into nothing, and the Rebels, their sense of purpose reaffirmed, determine to continue their fight on Lothal.

With three more episodes to go, Rebels has hit us hard in the feels and just got so... goddamn weird. I mean, Star Wars can be a little floaty-mistic sometime, and the Force clearly transcends space-time with its instantaneous communication and prophecies, but damn this was some next level shit. I don't know how well it meshes with stuff from The Clone Wars, but it's pretty left field for a primarily movie fan. I think I like it, but I confess I'm not entirely sure. In the more mundane arena, however, Rebels continues to excel. The team emerge from a tragic loss bloodied but unbowed, while the Imperials are undone once more by their reliance on an absolute command structure and the personal failings of their leadership, in this case Pryce's viciousness and tunnel vision.

I'm going to be so sad to see this series go. I wonder what, if anything, will follow it? I may also try to catch up on The Clone Wars after all this time.

(1) Deistic religion in Star Wars; who knew?

(2) Which explains her seeming appearance after the duel back in Season 2.