The Bingeworthy™ Breakdown is an occasional look at new TV shows. Over 500 scripted seasons of TV are expected to air in 2018, and to help you sort the wheat from the chaff, we’re going to give you the lowdown to help you work out whether it’s worth tuning in every week for them or waiting to binge later. Today we look at “Star Wars Rebels.”
Note: There will be some spoilers, but it will be much lower into the piece and I will properly mark the spot. You can read this entire piece without being spoiled bar that section and I’ll flag it so you can read around it. Thanks for continuing.
“It was a simple story about a boy who was lost and a girl who was broken. They fought alongside a survivor, a war veteran, and a fallen knight. I led them into battle against an evil so terrible it tried to black out the stars. We fought for each other. We fought for those who could not. But we never imagined it would end like this.” – Hera Syndulla, leader in the Rebel Alliance
“Star Wars Rebels” is coming to a close. What’s that, “Star Wars Rebels”? On The Playlist? Hear me out, please. I have a four-year-old daughter and she’s always watched the “Star Wars” trailers with me. Starting with ‘The Force Awakens’ when she was really young, and then more recently “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” and “Solo: A Star Wars Story” — we’ve watched all of them, many times over. She’s about as fascinated with “Star Wars” as a kid can be who’s never seen the films. I’m waiting until she hits five in a few short months and then we’ll start with ‘A New Hope.’ This is all to say that, in a way to bond with her, I decided we should watch “Star Wars Rebels” together and unlike most kids shows, I’ve really responded to it. It’s a fairly mature series, just as PG-rated as ‘A New Hope’ if not emotionally darker. It’s also won a ton of Animation Awards including a Writers Guild of America Award and a Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Award.
And now that we’re in the final season, things are coming to an end, which means the stakes are urgent, desperate, and higher than they’ve ever been which makes for heightened and engrossing drama. Many might laugh that I’m writing this, but it’s a legitimately good show and the way it feeds into the “Star Wars” universe without leaning on it too hard — the cameos are generally subtle, quick and organic — is compelling. So, for beginners and beginners only — because anyone who’s watched the show already knows this is old news — here’s my Bingeworthy Breakdown of “Star Wars Rebels” which you should watch if you like the larger canon. Again, if you know this show already, this piece isn’t for you. Instead, I’m trying to convince or even convert the skeptics like I once was.
I can’t believe you’re doing this. A kids show on Disney XD? How far you’ve fallen, nerd.
I know, right? Yet, the entire impetus for this piece, and watching in the first place, was a heads up recommendation for those that like “Star Wars” but have avoided the show for whatever reason. I’d been told for years ‘Rebels’ was good and I politely responded with something like, “I believe you, but I’m not going to watch a kids cartoon.” It also feels a little goofy from the outside and I wasn’t a huge fan of the look of the animation itself — and I’m still not — but much to my surprise, I was quickly sucked in. It’s a very good companion piece to ‘Rogue One,’ and the story of the Rebels that continues through ‘A New Hope.’ It’s also a bit mystical in the same ways ‘The Last Jedi’ is and there’s a spiritual kinship between the two stories.
Ok, what’s it about and where is it set?
It takes place fourteen years after ‘Revenge Of The Sith‘ and lives in that space leading up to the story of ‘Rogue One.’ It occurs during a dark era when the Empire is securing their grip on the galaxy. The Imperial forces are wiping out the remaining Jedis and the nascent stages of the Rebel Alliance are starting to take shape. It’s about a motley crew of disparate dissidents who all eventually unite on a freighter starship called the Ghost and lead covert and clandestine attacks against the Empire. They’re not even part of the regular rebellion until later. The Ghost crew is a rogue group and they eventually grow in numbers and collect more stragglers around the way. As it progresses, the events of the show start to butt up very closely to the narrative of ‘Rogue One,’ and while showrunner Dave Filoni has assured audiences that the ‘Rebels’ won’t cross over with the end of that spinoff, we know that thanks to eagle-eyed “Star Wars” fans, the ‘Rebels’ Ghost ship is present during the battle on Scarif. But due to the very nature of the narrative, much like ‘Rogue One,’ we know that a significant chunk of the ‘Rebels’ can’t survive because their very existence won’t fit into the continuity of ‘A New Hope’ (to a degree anyhow). I.e., like Kathleen Kennedy once said, you never see the “Rogue One” characters in the other movies so it would be weird if they survived.
Much of the action takes place in and around the planet Lothal, and while they cross the universe and battle on many planets, in the final season, everything ends where it began on that outer rim planet.
Aren’t there Jedi in this story and how is that possible? They were all wiped out after ‘Revenge Of The Sith’ with Obi-Wan Kenobi as the last remaining guardian. Explain.
Yes, this is the kind of hump you have to get over when watching ‘Rebels’ and it was certainly mine at first. There are Jedi left… sort of. The Zatochi-like Kanan Jarrus (voiced by Freddie Prinze Jr. of all people, but you’d never know it to hear it), who becomes the group’s leader, is a Jedi who survived, but never completed his training. He’s not quite a Jedi and he’s always struggled with this, perceiving it as a personal flaw (though after four seasons, he’s much more confident by the end and more intuitive with his feelings; and he is officially made a Jedi Knight eventually). He’s also blinded midway through the series by Darth Maul (who, yes, returns, we won’t get into that now). Kanan comes across Ezra Bridger (Taylor Gray), a young Force-sensitive boy who lost in parents in the war, and trains him to become a Jedi. However, Ezra is reckless impetuous and self-pitying, and thus he’s without the wisdom and intuition that’s associated with using the Force properly.
Again, by the time of ‘A New Hope,’ there are no Jedi left, is this a retcon?
Well, they were scattered across the universe, and the Jedi purge, which feels like it took place over one day in ‘Revenge Of The Sith,’ actually took several years to hunt them down. With only two Jedi left —that we know of, though the expanded universe likely has more — it means we essentially know their fate which makes this final season really captivating as yourself ask how will they meet their doom. We will never see any of these ‘Rebels’ again in the movies, therefore, like ‘Rogue One,’ we know this band of friends don’t all survive and in the antepenultimate episode that aired last night, there is a sacrifice for the greater good and the tragic death of a major character.
So who else is on the show?
Well, what’s kind of cool is the diversity of characters. In the original “Star Wars” all the heroes are essentially white people. In ‘Rebels’ there are many more “alien” fighters. The revolutionary Hera Syndulla (Vanessa Marshall) is a Rylothian, one of the key leaders of the Rebels outside of Kanan. She’s the same race as the slave dancer seen “Return Of The Jedi,” and Bib Fortuna (Jabba The Hutt’s right-hand man). Garazeb “Zeb” Orrelios (Steven Blum) is a massive, humanoid creature — he almost looks like a cross between an elf and a bear— and one of the lone survivors from the planet Lasat and as such is gruff and temperamental. C1-10P “Chopper” is a cantankerous droid with male programming and Sabine Wren (Tiya Sircar) is a Mandalorian warrior and from the same race as Boba Fett, so she wears a very similar armor. There’s also Alexsandr Kallus (David Oyelowo), a former Imperial office turned Rebel spy and Captain Rex (Dee Bradley Baker), a Clone War trooper who served under Anakin Skywalker, but neither are really central members of the ‘Rebels’ team; at least not by the final season where they’re barely seen.
That’s as nerdy and overly detailed as I’ll get here, though extremist revolutionary Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) from ‘Rogue One’ is also featured on the show. He was originally voiced by another actor and looked radically different, but was retconned to look like Whitaker after ‘Rogue One’ and the actor has continued to voice him following the movie which is neat for fans and overall continuity. There are also appearances by Grand Moff Tarkin, Darth Vader and even Obi-Wan Kenobi, if ever so briefly.