Last week’s episode of Star Wars Rebels, “The Iron Squadron,” was, in my mind, the first real dud of the show’s third season. This week’s episode, “The Wynkahthu Job,” doesn’t help matters much, even though it is marginally better than “The Iron Squadron.” I really feel like the “one episode, one story arc” mentality that is infused into the DNA of this show may slowly be catching up with it. Suffice it to say, I hope there are some higher stakes in the episodes to come.
In this episode, the Ghost crew works alongside pirate captain Hondo Ohnaka and the crime lord Azmorigan to secure weapons for the rebellion onboard an abandoned Imperial freighter before it is swallowed up by a gas planet’s storms. Instead of Ezra, Zeb is put in charge of the salvage mission, and soon the entire team has to work together to get the cargo onboard the Ghost, avoid a surprise threat aboard the freighter, all with the ticking clock of the ship slowly being torn apart by the planet’s atmosphere.
One of the main highlights of this episode is the return of Jim Cummings as Hondo, a character introduced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and while the character shows up a little too conveniently at times, he’s still fun. You can tell that Cummings enjoys playing this character, and for someone, like me, who appreciates veteran voice actors, it’s always nice to hear Cummings in a role.
Seeing Zeb and Ezra work together more is always fun, as they have built a sort of big brother/little brother kind of partnership; they also have some great back-and-forth as they both want to be in charge of the mission. The action, especially against a ticking clock, is fun, and manages to hold my attention for the most part.
Hera, Sabine, and Kanan are aboard the Ghost for the entirety of the episode, and therefore don’t contribute to the plot that much. Although, this was an intentional decision on Kanan’s part, given that A) he’s blind and wouldn’t be as helpful with the salvage operation, and B) he wants Ezra to learn that Hondo is not as trustworthy as he thinks he is, and the best way to do that is to let Ezra see Hondo’s greed for himself. This is a smart approach, but it also meant sidelining Kanan for an episode. The character of Azmorigan, I feel, has overstayed his welcome in the Star Wars universe; he’s mostly useless except for acquiring information, and this episode highlights that to an annoying degree, especially when he destroys an Imperial sentry droid which leads to even more sentry droids showing up. I found myself, against my better judgment, saying throughout the later parts of the episode “can Azmorigan just die already?”
Again, the main issue I have with this episode ties back to my main issue with the show: conflicts are introduced and resolved in the same episode, with no real loose ends left to tie up. I get that the show is going for a more episodic approach, but Star Wars, whether on the big or small screen, has its roots much more in serialized content; because of this shift for Rebels, as I wrote in my previous article, these episodes have a breakneck pace that may alienate some fans.
But “The Wynkahthu Job” commits a fairly serious sin: it sets a ticking clock, then keeps hitting the snooze button. I counted at least three instances in which Hera would radio to the salvage crew telling them to get back aboard the Ghost immediately before the freighter fell further toward the planet, and yet, they take their sweet time doing it. I understand why they did it; you have to build suspense, even for a kid’s show, and you have to drag out the action to fill a half-hour. But they didn’t have to do that by dragging out the ticking clock of a ship sinking into a violent storm that threatens to tear it apart.
All in all, “The Wynkahthu Job” was better than “The Iron Squadron” before it, but there is definitely a stagnation of the quality of episodes for the past couple of weeks. As we approach the midseason finale on December 10th, we can only hope for some higher stakes and perhaps some more serialized aspects of this series to improve the show’s standing amongst Star Wars fans.
The Sack Score: 7/10