Sack, Animated

After a seven-month hiatus, Star Wars Rebels is back for its fourth and final season today, starting with the two-part episode “Heroes of Mandalore,” which sees Sabine Wren lead a small force of Mandalorians to rescue her father and reclaim Mandalore from Imperial control. Back during Season Three, I commented on how my biggest issue with Star Wars Rebels was the lengths of the story arcs, with everything being tied up in a neat little bow by an episode’s end. While this was only the season premiere, the structure of these first two episodes are promising for the rest of the show’s run. As I will be discussing plot points of this season premiere, a spoiler alert is now in effect. Read on at your own risk.

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The season finale of Star Wars Rebels has arrived in the form of the hour-long special, “Zero Hour.” Three of the things that I wanted to happen this season took place during this episode: the rebellion suffered major losses (further paving the way for its transition into becoming the Rebel Alliance), Grand Admiral Thrawn set his master plan f0r the rebels in motion, and Agent Kallus was forced to abandon the Empire and officially become a member of the rebellion. This was a satisfying finale for the rather choppy third season of Star Wars Rebels. Moreover, it guarantees that big changes are coming to the rebellion in season four as we will start to see the true beginnings of the Rebel Alliance.

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*Warning! This review contains spoilers from the episode “Twin Suns” from season three of Star Wars Rebels. You have been warned.*
Star Wars fans and hype go hand-in-hand. We like to pick apart every single moment of every single trailer and dissect every single piece of information to extract as much meaning as humanly possible. We also like to picture the most epic of scenarios in which our heroes may find themselves, only to be left either slightly let down or bitterly disappointed. I was incredibly excited for today’s episode of Star Wars Rebels, “Twin Suns,” mainly for the headliner event that was the final battle between Maul and Obi-Wan “Old Ben” Kenobi. And how many blows did these two combatants trade? Three. And how long did their battle last? About three seconds. And what was the end result? Maul going down with one hit. And dying. Not exactly the end that we expected for a character who got chopped in half and lived nearly three decades after that. It is, of course, partially my fault that I feel this way, since I was the one who became so overly hyped for this episode. And it’s still a good episode, and much better than last week’s episode; but the episode simply felt like an attempt to tie up the loose end that exists now that Ezra is aware of Obi-Wan’s location and the fact that he is still alive, a fact that is supposed to remain hidden until A New Hope. In that, the episode does succeed, and gives us a look at “Old Ben” Kenobi as he appeared to us 40 years ago when he was portrayed by sir Alec Guinness. But is this the episode that was to be the high point of the rocky third season of Rebels? In some ways, yes; in other ways, no.

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Just as some of my least favorite episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars were episodes that focused primarily on droids (with one or two exceptions), one of my least favorite episodes of Star Wars Rebels, hot on the heels of a very enjoyable episode last week, is now one that also primarily focuses on droids. The episode I’m talking about is this week’s episode, “Double Agent Droid,” in which Chopper is compromised and reprogrammed remotely by Imperial forces in an attempt to locate Phoenix Squadron’s hidden base. Only AP-5, an Imperial droid who defected to the rebellion last season and is often at odds with Chopper, suspects that something is wrong. Will the Ghost crew discover the truth about Chopper in time to safeguard the location of their base? Is this episode just filler to make us wait one more week to see Maul face off against Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine? The answer to both questions is yes.

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Agent Kallus, the Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) Agent who has become the latest incarnation of the rebel informant known as Fulcrum, might be in a bit of trouble after this week’s episode of Star Wars Rebels, “Through Imperial Eyes.” Why? Because Grand Admiral Thrawn finally deduced Fulcrum’s true identity, though only he and Star Wars: The Clone Wars veteran Wullf Yularen are aware of this discovery. Thrawn’s ability to recognize Kallus’s attempts to throw suspicion off of himself demonstrates how formidable an opponent Thrawn is from an intellectual standpoint, but we also get a few moments of Thrawn fighting in this episode, showing that Thrawn’s brain is matched only by his brawn (Did I mean for that to rhyme? No, but I’m glad it did …). Of course, the episode leading up to this revelation is a rather enjoyable one, particularly since it involved a lot of sneaking around and near-misses that kept me wondering what was going to happen next.

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Well, just as it has been awhile since we’ve seen an episode of Star Wars Rebels, it has also been awhile since I’ve reviewed one. To briefly summarize, I think season three has been getting better since the midseason finale, with the episode “Trials of the Darksaber” being particularly enjoyable for how it moves Sabine Wren’s character forward. In this most-recent episode, “Legacy of Mandalore,” Sabine, now armed with the ancient Darksaber and the basics of how to wield it, travels to her family’s home to make amends and gain their loyalty. But is it as simple as showing people that she has an ancient symbol of Mandalorian power and knows how to wield it? Of course not; the episode wouldn’t be as enjoyable if that were the case. People who enjoy learning about Mandalore and its warriors will enjoy this episode solely because most of the characters in this episode wear the iconic Mandalorian armor. But more than that, “Legacy of Mandalore” continues Sabine’s character progression while also introducing us to her family and the difficulties of navigating Mandalorian culture, and sets the stage for further adventures and stories in that particular neck of the woods.

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