It kind of makes sense. She knows that powerful Force user can sense things like the intention to attack. So she can’t just walk up and hit Vader. She was probably hoping that Vader’s obsession with finally having Obi Wan would distract him just long enough for her to strike.
Where she failed is in forgetting that this isn’t as big a deal for Vader as it is for her. At this point in the story, Vader pretty much has it all - virtually the entire Jedi order is destroyed, the Sith are ascendant, the Empire rules almost without opposition, and the Rebellion is just a few scattered people who are mostly living in fear of the Empire finding them. At this point, finding Kenobi is mostly just about being able to laugh in his face at the Jedis’ failures, so Vader isn’t as obsessed and distracted as Third Sister had hoped for.
I saw a documentary on the prequels a few years ago and in it it was revealed that almost all the few bits of “good dialogue” that they had was stuff that was either written by someone else or ad libbed by the actors. They had no chance.
Sam Jackson, Ian MaDiarmid. Liam Neeson were experienced actors who were able to deal with the lousy dialogue.
I guess it would be wise to define “distracted,” relevant to this story. Obi Wan defeated Anakin and his monstrous ego and maimed him, surviving, but inhuman, physiologically and psychologically. Vader’s desire to capture and kill Obi Wan was not a tickling fancy. They showed in the 5th episode how annoyed and angered Anakin was after losing a mere friendly training duel with Obi Wan. I believe it was a big deal for Vader. But that is an overall distraction. Reva trying to kill Vader was an immediate action. You can be distracted by an upcoming mortgage payment that you can’t pay, but not distracted enough that you can’t attend to a grease fire on your stove. Reva was correct to assume Vader would be distracted by the Obi Wan problem, but dumb to think he was so distracted that she could approach him and end his life. That betrays the intelligence of her character developed in the previous episodes. You could argue she was dumbed by rage, but that doesn’t make sense with how patient and calculating she was to that point. And, yep, Stormtroopers still can’t hit shit, even feet away.
You’d think Vader of all people would know not to leave your enemies alive.
Also, not unique to this series but Stormtrooper tactics remain awful. They assault an entrance like kindergarteners running outside for recess: just crowd around the door. Anyone with a thermal detonator could have taken out the lot of them in one shot. Then again, the rebels defensive tactics aren’t all that much better.
I mean, there’s a difference between “what she tried didn’t work” and “what she tried could not possibly have even come close to working”. Maybe that was the best shot she’d ever had, and she took her shot, and it didn’t work. Doesn’t make her dumb.
I mean, there’s a difference between “I assume all my subordinates are ambitious and will eventually attempt to overthrow me” and “I know for a fact that one of my subordinates is someone with a reason to personally hate me, which also could give her an incentive to undercut all the work she’s doing, which I genuinely consider to be important”.
I’ll give you Bespin, the Millennium Falcon should not have been allowed to tool around in Cloud City’s airspace unmolested for as long as it did. To their credit, everyone is extremely nervous and anxious to get away and Leia has to plead for them to double back for Luke, and it’s also true that Lando started an evacuation panic which surely provided a significant amount of cover for the heroes.
On Tatooine, they are pursued but get away thanks to it being a single Star Destroyer attempting to blockade an entire planet, and the Empire not knowing that what they’re looking for is on board the Falcon.
Hoth, they absolutely do not simply fly away. Anti-aircraft fire from Echo Base’s ion cannon covers the escape for most of the rebels, and the Falcon has to conduct extremely dangerous manuvers in an asteroid field and hide inside a Star Destroyer’s sensor envelope to escape (which still doesn’t fool Boba Fett).
Meanwhile, this show has depicted more daring escapes than the entire original trilogy, with none of them involving any kind of pursuit after the hero gets on a space ship and starts flying away. Not only that, but every time they fly away the Empire knows exactly where they are, watches them leave, and still makes no effort to pursue them.
I contend that there’s a distinction but not a great practical difference. If anything, it makes the “dangerous” subordinate easier to monitor and manipulate. That’s how you guarantee their vendetta never escalates out of hand.
If you’re as famously arrogant as Vader, you are certain you can manage the risk, and an apparently loose cannon can sometimes accomplish things your hidebound completely cowed minions cannot.
And that is the premise that underpins this entire thread of the story. Your objections are based on disbelieving this premise. The writers find your lack of faith disturbing.
It’s because it’s long settled lore that people cannot be tracked through hyperspace. Sure you can make a guess where they jumped and if you placed an emitter on them you can follow them to where they exit. But you cannot chase them.
The “escapes” have been in order.
In a drone ship where there is no armed force watching them once they leave.
On Inquistorious, where it required actual shooting from supporting fighters (one of whom is lost) and we discover the Empire placed a tracker on them.
The decoy ship and by the way, at episodes end we are told that the hyperdrive isn’t working.
This is what’s annoying me about the new TV series. They seem to be leaning into the “Stormtroopers are awful” memes, but that isn’t actually well-supported in the movies.
Looking at the movies with complete knowledge of what’s happening, Stormtrooper battles fall into three general categories:
Ones where they’re really trying to win against normal military forces
Ones where they’re really trying to win, but against Jedi, or Jedi-adjacent forces
Ones where they’ve been ordered to lose, for some Evil Scheme Reason
If you look at the movies, almost all the battles that fall under category 1, the kind of kick ass. But in the TV shows, they kind of suck.
I would say, the way you guarantee their vendetta never escalates out of hand is to… you know… kill them.
The other thing that’s notable here is that third sister was not in fact a member of Vader’s entourage, where he could keep her under his eye (or force sense) at all times. Rather, she was an inquisitor, off roaming the galaxy doing very important things for him that he presumably genuinely wanted to see done. And, for the same reason that he knew she had a vendetta against him, she might well have also had an incentive to sabotage the work.
I just feel like “yes, I’m aware that that person, who is one of the individually most powerful people in the galaxy (due to being one of the remaining force users) and has nearly unchecked authority due to their rank in my secret police; is concealing their identity and likely hates me personally and everything I stand for and will probably try to kill me. So will I (a) kill them first, which is entirely within my rights, or (b) NOT kill them and trust that (i) they won’t actually sabotage the work they’re doing in any way and (ii) when they do try to kill me, it won’t be something like blowing up my spaceship or poisoning me or blowing me up, but rather attacking me hand-to-hand in a way that I will be able to defeat” is pretty far off into the land of things that only dumb villains in stories do, not anything that fits into any kind of recognizable human motivation or decision-making.
Remember that time when Stalin uncovered that one of his KGB commanders was absolutely dedicated to assassinating Stalin. So he… left that commander in place to keep an eye on him? Yeah, me neither.
Which, to me at least, makes the story less interesting and compelling.
Her plan such as it was, was to do so well as to become Grand Inquisitor, a position that she felt would give her the chance murder Vader. Sabotage would not further her goal. Being efficient at hunting down Jedi and the Force sensitive served her goal and allowing her to do that was desirable to Vader.
Maybe he didn’t know she was a problem all along until she stabbed the Grand Inquisitor with a lightsaber, but left him alive to tell Vader who did it.
For a 1000 generations the Jedi Knights were the Guardians of peace and justice in the old Republic…till the 501st came and damnit they didn’t last a 1000 seconds against trained opponents and good old blaster fire.
Well since they didn’t exist then.
In universe, I haven’t watched all of Star Wars Rebels, but I believe they were disbanded sometime before the OT started.
How convenient, before the two most powerful Jedi are killed, Yoda and Obi-Wan. Maybe they were disbanded because they kept trying to kill Vader? Are the Inquisitors Sith? If not why?
Canonically, it appears that, while they are Dark Side Force Users, and were trained and corrupted by Sidious/Palpatine, they aren’t technically Sith. My guess would be that they aren’t Sith because, in the Prequels, the “rule of two” had been established for the Sith – after the Jedi had nearly wiped out all of them, there were no more than two actual Sith at any given time: a master and an apprentice.
This article also indicates that they did, indeed, vanish around the same time as the original movie, apparently because Palpatine had formed the Inquisitors to hunt Jedi, and with Kenobi’s death on the Death Star, there was no longer any need for them, because Palpatine believe that they had tracked down all of the Jedi (well, except for that Yoda dude).
