I realized after this episode why I think it’s bad. It’s that I find it so incredibly heavy-handed and cliched.
We get a three second shot of the Sabine’s helmet during her fight with Shin(?)…
“Oh gee, I wonder if Sabine needs to fight like a Mandalorian not a Jedi.”
Immediately, Sabine uses her Mando gear to gain an advantage.
“Sabine, don’t do this.”
“I won’t.”
…later in the episode…she does do this.
“Hey you two…don’t split up.”
“We won’t.”
…5 minutes later they split up.
Again and again…
It’s one thing for these cliches to happen…but not for them to happen every episode.
Probably Zeb would be with them, but is too expensive to animate looking good enough for much screen time. The animation wasn’t great in his short appearance on Mando.
Oh I say that every time I feel his absence, but I don’t have to like it. Why can’t he be like… on Lesat 2.0 with his wife and babies and he sends a call to Hera “Wish I could be there but the kids have furballs” or something? We could hear him very inexpensively.
I like the story so far but I am not liking Ahsoka herself. She does not seem at all like the character from clone wars or rebels or even the mandalorian. Also how did they do a better job de-aging Luke than Anakin?
If how you look as a force ghost is dependent on how you looked when you died, force ghost Anakin shouldn’t have any limbs.
Having him age as a ghost also doesn’t make any sense. Why would a ghost develop wrinkles after a couple decades as a ghost? Is his spiritual collagen breaking down?
Why the hell is he paunchy and balding? He never looked anything like that at any point in his corporeal existence. Why would he choose to manifest as some random middle aged guy?
I couldn’t get into Clone Wars and the fight of the week format it did. I have only seen a select few episodes and clips. I thought Rebels was much better due to have main characters and a story.
However, I didn’t remember the ending of Rebels at all, including Kanan and Hera getting together. I think they jumped a bit in time? Wasn’t Rebels set a few years before Battle of Yavin and then they jumped to after Return of the Jedi? I’m not sure why it didn’t stick with me because I did like it.
Hera is a general in the tradition of Han Solo. “Hey, you were competent here, now be a general.” It makes no sense whatsoever. They have no understanding of the military, or a passing one at best due to their backgrounds. It makes me wonder if Lucas didn’t understand the military? Not that I’m an expert, by any means, and am open to corrections. I don’t see a non combatant being put into a general’s spot. In that sense, then, she’s as good a general as some we have seen. Personally, I think she has too much autonomy. General’s don’t do missions but then Han did.
I agree this was a nice touch!
I do agree that Ahsoka herself seems off. As someone said, she’s playing at being a Jedi Master, which is only speak in short, weird, philosophical statements that don’t hold up. I also HATE how they show training working here. It’s not a master demonstrating it then talking people through it and helping them find their own way. It’s “let’s give someone a lightsaber, a weapon that they can kill themselves with before they know it, and have them deflect lasers as their first lesson.” I get that Ahsoka was trying to teach Sabine to use her other senses but I think she stopped talking too soon and didn’t explain enough.
I don’t get at all why Sabine is being taught the ways of the Jedi. She’s not one. Period. The best I can think is happening is it’s the way for the Jedi to keep the traditions alive. Maybe the idea is that Sabine can teach a Jedi, especially given what we see of training, if she finds someone.
Having said all of that, I’m enjoying it despite how much I nit pick it. I have enjoyed the light saber scenes. I liked Sabine catching Shin off guard with her wrist weapons.
As I didn’t remember Kanan and Hera getting together, I don’t remember any attraction between Ezra and Sabine for her to make the decision she did. At best, I remember Ezra having a crush on Sabine because they were close in age. (I thought he was about 17 at start of Rebels and she was 21/22, with the others being late 30s or early 40s.) I also thought Sabine firmly rebuked Ezra, at least romantically, and they became friends. From that, she seems to be Ahsoka’s friend as well but apparently not as close.
That’s a great analogy, thanks! And I agree, promoting Han (and Lando!) to general rank because they were going to lead 2 small but important missions made little sense. But you can get away with that when you’re a rag-tag rebellion, not when you claim to be the new legitimate government - you really have to start acting like a government too. To quote P.J. O’Rourke writing about the Sandinistas, “It’s one thing to burn down the shit house and another thing entirely to install plumbing.”
That’s pretty accurate in terms of the Rebels series. Ezra and Sabine eventually became very close friends/comrades who completely trusted one another, without it being romantic. That said, there are a lot of Ezra/Sabine shippers out there, but I didn’t think Dave Filoni himself was one of them. Indeed, I had thought that he explicitly said that he wanted them to be an example of a male-female pair who were extremely close friends without there being any romantic feelings between them, precisely because we need more of that in our fiction.
As for Kanan and Hera (spoilers for season 4 of Rebels upcoming):
They had always had a somewhat flirty relationship. Hera called Kanan “love” quite frequently, dating back to the very first episode. I personally always read them as interacting like an old married couple. It became a bit more explicit about midway through season 4. Hera was about to go on a dangerous mission by herself, and she and Kanan had their first on-screen kiss right before she left. She was captured by Thrawn in the course of that mission. Kanan, Ezra, and Sabine rescued her. As they were about to make their escape, Hera told Kanan that she loved him. They kissed again, and then the Empire attacked. Kanan sacrificed himself to allow the others to escape. Maximum drama!
In the final episode, Ezra summoned the space whales to trap both Thrawn and himself in hyperspace. That was supposed to take place just before A New Hope happened. Then they flashed forward a few years, to right after Return of the Jedi, and the Battle of Yavin. Sabine narrates what happened to everyone, a sort of “where are they now” kind of thing. This reveals that Hera now has a son, Jacen, presumably with Kanan (which, given the timing, would mean they had to have been sleeping together even before the “I love you” exchange). The crew basically goes their separate ways, and the final image is that mural of the Rebels cast that we saw in Episode 1, which Sabine painted.
