Hello, Readers! During conversations with the girls at The Elven Padawan, it occurred to this blogger that there might be some youtube videos about the original Star Wars‘ timeline that could be used to fill in gaps in this writer’s knowledge of the old EU. Having found several videos that helped me to get a better handle on the original SW Expanded Universe, I began posting them here at Thoughts, along with links to information about the original Star Wars Expanded Universe.
Unfortunately, however, it seems that youtube has run out of videos about individual characters in the original Star Wars universe. Thus, until I can hunt up a few more, these will likely be the last videos you will see here on this site for a while. Hopefully I will be able to find a few extra videos for you to view soon, though, and we will all be able to enjoy geeking out over these great characters.
In the interim, please remember:
“The Force will be with you, always.”
R2-series Astromech Droids (Legends) – Star Wars Minute (with R2-D2)
Well, the ninth episode of Star Wars Rebels’ fourth season is out now, which means we will be waiting until 2018 to know how the series will finally end. I’m crossing my fingers real hard for Kanan, my favorite character in the series, to last through the final episode. Whatever happens in related media, if he survives the show, I will be a happy Ewok camper. 😉
It is funny. When I first heard about Rebels, I thought I would not like it. The Star Wars prequel films are among my least favorite films, and so I avoided the animated Clone Wars series. Part of me believed Rebels would follow in that vein, but another part – the part which has always wanted more stories about Jedi who survived the Purge and/or the Jedi that emerged during the Rebellion – had some faint hope that Rebels would be worthwhile.
Turns out, the hopeful side of me was more right than I guessed. I fell in love with Rebels and wanted to see it fill in the gaps between the original trilogy films, bringing in “Legacy” characters whom Disney/Lucasfilm decided weren’t worth keeping. The announcement that season four would be the series’ last knocked that hope off the table, though, and I am going to miss this series a lot.
As a way of honoring the series and the writers/producers who gave it to us, I thought I would post video of all the lightsaber battles seen in the series. You can watch them below:
First Lightsaber Duel
More Lightsaber Battles
(I couldn’t get some of the battles in Rebels without this video, so…)
Star Wars The Clone Wars + Rebels All Lightsaber duels
Visions and Voices
Training with the Darksaber
Sabine Wren vs. Gar Saxon
If I have managed to miss any of Rebels‘ duels, please don’t give me too much flak for it. I know I’ve missed at least ONE battle in here somewhere…
So far, my favorite lightsaber duels are: 1) Kanan vs. The Grand Inquisitor aboard Tarkin’s Star Destroyer; (2) Ahsoka defeating Fifth Brother and Seventh Sister on Garel, and (3) Kanan beating Maul after he’s been blinded by the former Sith Lord.
Which lightsaber duel from the series is your favorite? Feel free to let me know in the comments, and may the Force be with you!
I missed this trailer when it came out, so this post is probably coming out a day late and a dollar short. But better late than never, right?
Okay, first things first. Turns out, that wolf we saw in the first trailer is a Loth-wolf. And it is part of a pack – a big one!
Ruhk, the Noghri bodyguard for Grand Admiral Thrawn, is now a canon character, readers. Thrawn wants him to take out Hera, and despite the Noghri race’s fantastic fighting skills, it looks like Ruhk gets his fanny handed to him in this fight. Don’t mess with Hera!!!
Kanan’s fate is not looking like it will be a good one. I’m still hoping he’ll make it to the end of Star Wars Rebels, and I would be SO HAPPY if he survived to be at the party on Endor. But I am not going to hold my breath that the writers will let him survive.
Ezra I think will live to the time of The Last Jedi, at least. If Disney/Lucasfilm really is planning a sequel/new series, keeping Ezra alive for it would make a lot of sense. Just because Ezra would live to the time of Rey, Finn, and Poe does not mean he would be a Jedi. As it is, we still do not know whether or not Luke and Rey are the only Force sensitives/Jedi in The Last Jedi. They are just the two we know about.
Finally, Mandalore is in serious trouble. The Empire seems to have developed some kind of lightning-type ray gun that can fry a person to ash without destroying the armor they are wearing. I think Sabine will live through the fight, but the odds for her family, Fenn Rau, and Bo-Katan living through it have shrunk dramatically.
But what am I babbling about? You came to see the video, not to read my ramblings about it! Here’s the second trailer for Star Wars Rebels‘ fourth and final season, readers. And, as always…
It appears that Star Wars Rebels’ writers have begun to specialize in flash-bang season endings. The two part ending of season three, Zero Hour, premiered as a one hour episode Saturday March 25, 2017.
It. Was. A. BLAST!!!
I will delve into that episode later on. This is a season review, so I cannot concentrate simply on this slam dunk of an ending, no matter how much I wish to do just that. I would also like to ask in advance that anyone who reads this, if they have a Twitter account and are following the Rebels writers or the Rebels Recon Twitter accounts, could post a link to this article there. I want to see a lot of things in future Rebels seasons, and they are mentioned at the end of this post. Problem is, I do not have a Twitter account. However, as Reagan once said, “There’s no telling how high you can go as long as you don’t care who gets the credit.”
I do not care who gets the credit. I just want the Rebels’ writers to know about these questions and requests.
Okay, so, season three kicked off with a one hour, two-part episode called Steps into Shadow. In that debut, we saw Kanan adjust to his physical blindness with the help of the enigmatic Force-sensitive known as the Bendu (voiced by Tom Baker). Meanwhile, in this same show, Ezra “stepped into the shadow” of spiritual blindness as he skated close to the Dark Side.
Many fans leapt off of the deep end and said that Bendu showed Kanan a new way of looking at the Force. I think what actually happened is that Bendu just reminded Kanan he had the Force as an ally. He lost his physical sight, but not his ability in the Force, when Maul blinded him. The latter can and has often been a suitable substitute for the former, but Kanan’s training was not complete. If he had been a full Jedi Knight when the Order fell to the Empire, he probably would not have needed Bendu’s help to learn to “see” using the Force.
I also believe, contrary to the hype on the Internet, that Bendu taught Kanan as a wielder of the Light Side of the Force would. Could Bendu use the Dark Side of the Force – oh, yes, he certainly could. We saw the proof of that in Zero Hour. But if he had tried to teach Kanan Dark Side techniques, Kanan would have recognized that and had nothing more to do with him afterward.
Quite frankly, I think that Bendu was in fact a creature of the Light Side, something he did not want to admit. His ancient, almost primeval connection to the Force meant that he could access or be aware of the Dark Side without giving into it on a day-to-day basis. After all, if he was evil, Bendu would have made a power grab for the galaxy thousands of years ago. Dark Siders are absolutely unable to sit on the sidelines of the universe, as Bendu apparently did for millennia, meditating on the Force. That is a Jedi – or Light Sider – practice, not a Sith custom, from what I know of Star Wars lore.
The most touching part of “Steps into Shadow” was Kanan’s reestablishment of his connection with Ezra. Blaming himself for Kanan’s blinding at Maul’s hands and feeling rejected because Kanan would not adapt to this handicap, Ezra gave into his anger and began listening to the Sith holocron in search of answers. It nearly got him killed. Only by reconnecting with Kanan did he have a prayer of being saved.
And this leads us to the next episode, The Holocrons of Fate. When Maul kidnaps and threatens the Ghost crew, Ezra’s immediate instinct is to rush in to help, to use the quick and easy way to save Hera, Zeb, Sabine, and Chopper. Kanan, with Bendu’s help, manages to calm him down and show him that the harder way can be and usually is the better way.
But Ezra still had to learn patience, as displayed in The Antilles Extraction. In this episode, he has to wait for Sabine to call him and his crew to get her and defecting TIE pilots Wedge Antilles and Hobbie Klivian. The show is also a good one for Sabine, as she gets to use her Mandalorian infiltration skills for the first time on camera.
The episode reveals, too, that the new Fulcrum is none other than Agent Kallus. Those with an ear for voices immediately picked out his identity when he contacted the Rebel base. His terms of speech betrayed him as well. No Imperial but Kallus ever spoke with that particular edge and bite to his words. The fact that he did his best throughout the show to help Sabine, Wedge, and Hobbie escape was also a dead giveaway.
Hera’s Heroes and The Last Battle were interesting installments. Heroes, aside from its homage to the comedy Hogan’s Heroes, showed more emotional depth for Hera and raised the stakes for her. It also managed to shine a light on her motherly affection for Ezra and his filial love for her, something no other episode previously spent much time demonstrating.
It also set up the fascinating grudge between her and Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikklesen), who lived up to Zahn’s characterization during season three’s run. Ezra grew further (with Zeb’s input) when he helped Rex and a group of Separatist battle droids realize that they had been pawns in a civil war which was nothing more than a means to overthrow the Old Republic and the Jedi Order. It is about time someone in-canon pointed that out. It was so painfully obvious to the audience in The Clone Wars TV series and prequels that some of us could not help wondering why no one – except a few characters who were knocked off – put two and two together in the storyline. But then, politics can blind almost anybody. At least Ezra finally said it!
Next we had Imperial Supercommandos. The episode showcased Mandalorian culture and answered several lingering questions about what became of Mandalore and its sectors when the Empire took power, as well as giving us a very necessary and interesting back story on Sabine. Adding Fenn Rau to the Rebellion’s cause was the icing on the cake.
Iron Squadron was a good episode for Ezra, showing how much he has changed since the first season. Much like Sato’s nephew Mart, he was cocky and reckless at the beginning, though in Mart’s case these traits are due to his desire for revenge against the Empire that killed his father. The quiet hint that it was Thrawn who killed the Rebel cell commanded by Sato’s brother, Mart’s father, added another dimension to Sato and set up the potential for a confrontation between the two in the future – one which proved to be more final than this viewer expected.
The Wynkahthu Job lightened the mood with a hilarious pirate excursion led by that old scalawag, Hondo Ohnaka. Adding Azmorigan to the crew, whom Hera wanted to blow out the airlock on sight, was a stroke of genius. Then we had An Inside Man, which showed Thrawn’s brutal methods of discovering Rebels in the TIE factories on Lothal. The show was most memorable, though, for its confirmation that Kallus was the new Fulcrum. Kanan and Ezra’s distrust and dislike, fueled by their years of combating him and the continuing loss of their rebel compatriots down below, added light to an otherwise grim episode. Ezra’s promise that Kanan could throw Kallus through the next glass map was only outdone by the duo’s piloting of an AT-DP to escape the factory. It just goes to show, the Empire has no imagination. Their pilots very rarely display the ingenuity that the Rebels do in combat.
After this we had the creepy but essential Visions and Voices. This episode was spooky, very spooky, but also well animated and plotted out. Ezra’s connection to Maul is weakened but not severed in this episode, as we had hoped. However, he does learn here that there is no way he can ever trust the former Sith apprentice as an ally against the Empire.
The two part Ghosts of Geonosis, with Forest Whitaker returning to voice Saw Gerrera after playing him onscreen in Rogue One, had its perks. It started out like a typical horror film, and watching Saw and Rex share Clone Wars memories about the Jedi was a great deal of fun. Sabine and Zeb’s scavenging the shield generator was another excellent, near-horror film caliber escapade. The ending for the show felt a little watered down, though. Something about Saw simply handing over the Geonosian egg felt too easy, as did his forgiveness of the Geonosian drone “Click-Clack.” Even so, it was not a bad ending. His hinting about the Death Star was good, too.
Warhead was a cute episode, but Trials of the Darksaber blew it and several other shows out of the water when it came to emotional impact. Sabine’s training in the use of the Darksaber and Kanan’s forcing her to face the pain of her past hit this viewer in all the right emotional places. But what also got to me was Kanan’s caution, his wariness about letting her use the saber. Though a capable warrior he would trust with a lot, Kanan knows there is a deep, coiled pain and anger buried behind Sabine’s façade of unconcern. Her reluctance to use the saber only makes this worse, and he does not want her to get hurt out of anger.
And this nearly happens. Sabine has never physically mixed it up with any of the crew. Her knocking down Ezra is natural enough; he is used to handling a lightsaber and he had never beaten her at anything before. Because he could outdo her in lightsaber practice, he started to swagger a bit. It makes sense that Sabine would want to knock him down and remind him which of them was older, had more training, and more battle experience.
But going after Kanan, taking her frustrations out on him – this we have not seen before. Even Rau was surprised that she would go after Kanan with such ferocity. The episode strained their friendship near the breaking point, but the two of them got past it when Kanan finally decided to push and not coddle Sabine. She pushed back, and in doing so, she faced her pain and anger, finding solace on the other side.
Legacy of Mandalore did not feel like it delivered on the emotion promised at the end of Trials of the Darksaber. Of course, Darksaber was so emotionally loaded that it would make sense for almost any follow-up show to dial back the intensity a bit. You do not want to leave your audience an emotional wreck, after all, or they will be wiped when you show them something else important. Legacy fleshed out the picture of Mandalore under Imperial domination, too, adding more to Sabine’s back story by introducing her mother and brother (is he older or younger than her?). Having Ursa Wren shoot Gar Saxon to save her daughter was a good touch, as it winked to her name sake. You do not go after a mother bear’s cubs if you want to live. Saxon, it appears, had a death wish.
Of course, all of this ignited another civil war on Mandalore, and we have yet to meet Sabine’s father. I, for one, want a whole lot more of Mandalore in the next season and any following seasons. Speaking of, Ketsu Onyo has been absent for all of Season 3. Where did she go? Has she joined Clan Wren in their war against the factions allied to the Empire? Or is she bounty hunting again?
That will have to wait for the questions/speculation half of this post. After this show we had Through Imperial Eyes, which showed Kallus spying on the Empire. Hearing that Fulcrum might soon be discovered as a spy, the Rebels decide to get him out. Therefore Ezra, Chopper, and AP-5 infiltrate the Star Destroyer which Kallus is aboard to do the deed. Kallus demonstrates that he is as smart, in some ways, as Thrawn in this show. But he is not smart enough to realize that Thrawn has had him figured since An Inside Man, and he accidentally reveals himself to Thrawn completely in this episode.
After this we have Secret Cargo, a bang-up episode in its own right, followed by the lighthearted Double Agent Droid and the amazing Twin Suns. For a full review of that episode, just type “Star Wars Rebels Review: Twin Suns” into the search engine on my blog.
Finally, we have the explosive Zero Hour episodes. Wow, wow, wow, wow! Thrawn springs his trap on Kallus and locates our heroes’ Rebel base on Atollon, which has Commander Sato’s and General Dodonna’s starship fleets overhead in preparation for an assault on Lothal’s TIE Defender factories. The episodes are high intensity, and there is a lot to cover in them. In the interest of time, I will just hit the highlights.
Kanan goes to Bendu for help, provoking the ancient creature into a fury by pointing out that his neutrality, his standing in the middle between the Light and Dark Sides of the Force, is in essence cowardice. He is willing to sit by and let others die above his world for no other reason than to preserve his position as a practitioner of the “middle way” between the Light and the Dark.
This is good point in the story because Kanan is right; there is no middle ground in the war between good and evil. Good will eventually win, but that does not mean evil should not be resisted, spiritually on all occasions, physically when the battle moves to the material realm. To stand aside, to try and sit on the fence, at those times, is foolishness. For one thing, a fence is usually higher than the surrounding landscape. That means that sitting on it makes you a great target.
For another thing, sitting on the fence is like sitting in a corner during a play. If your part in the play, originally, was as one of the characters who did something, but you chose to sit in a corner onstage and pout for some reason, then the play will go on without you and the audience will laugh at you.
Kanan forces Bendu to get out of the corner and join the play by his accusation of cowardice. Bendu does not like it, and his zapping the Ghost – not to mention at least one A-Wing – as the Rebels escape Atollon shows this. But for the most part his ire is turned toward Thrawn and the Empire. Whether or not he will ever return to mentor Kanan and Ezra from the other side of the Force remains to be seen. I’m kind of hoping he does not get to do that. I would not trust him not to steer them into trouble they might not be able to walk away from as payback for what happened in Zero Hour.
Another great thing about Bendu’s part in Zero Hour is that it makes Force-generated storms canon again. Anyone who encountered the Witches of Dathomir in the now “Legacy” stories knows that the Nightsisters on that planet could and would drum up such storms using the Dark Side of the Force. In his anger, it seems Bendu went the same route.
His prophesying Thrawn’s defeat before the Grand Admiral shoots him in the head was great, too, as was his body’s disappearance into the Force. I have only heard of Jedi or Light Side Force wielders having this occur when they had gained a strong connection to the Force. I suppose Dark Side users or Sith could have it happen, but it seems unlikely. They use the Force instead of letting it guide them; I have never heard of a Sith or Dark Sider becoming one with the Force in body and spirit. It gives me hope that Bendu melded with the Light Side and won’t be a problem later on.
But I am not laying all my chips on that bet.
Ezra, Sabine, Tristan, Rau, Chopper, and Clan Wren Mandalorians riding to the rescue of the Rebels on Atollon were also very cool. Just in case I did not make it clear before, I WANT MORE MANDALORE IN UPCOMING EPISODES!!! YEAH-HOO!!!
Sato’s kamikaze run into Admiral Konstantine’s Interdictor cruiser nearly started this viewer crying. It was a touching moment, but I sure hope someone is able to collar Mart before he runs off after Thrawn to get revenge.
It was nice to hear Hera call Kanan “love” again, too. She seems to have gotten out of the habit lately, and we have not had as many Kanan/Ezra interaction episodes as we once did. Kanan’s worry about having nothing left to teach Ezra is disconcerting; I am hoping he will be around for a long time yet, even when Ezra becomes a Knight himself. They both have a lot more to learn about the Force, and a lot more to do as Rebels. I would like to see them both make it there in one piece.
At last, we come to Kallus. Though his appearances this season have been sparse, Zero Hour made up for it all. From his epic fight with Thrawn in Ezra’s old home in the Lothal comm. tower, to their interaction aboard the Chimera, Kallus shows he has “turned Rebel” completely. The most interesting part of this transformation is when he starts to laugh as Thrawn prepares to head down to the surface to destroy our heroes. Kallus’ warning that the Rebels are smarter than Thrawn thinks is based on experience; as he admitted, he tried to catch them several times and almost had them at his mercy. But they still escaped him. They still beat him. And eventually, they won him over without even trying to do so.
In many ways, I think that Kallus is what Thrawn could have been if he had joined the New Republic – or, in this case, the Rebellion. Kallus is very smart, shown by how he dodged discovery for so long and by how quickly and thoroughly he reprogrammed the assassin droids Thrawn uses for combat practice. He has an intellect that almost matches Thrawn’s, but he also has something else I pointed out long ago, something which Thrawn does not have: he has a sense of honor. You cannot have a sense of honor without some heart, readers, and Kallus’ survival trip on the Geonosian moon with Zeb brought both to the fore. Kallus started asking questions – and he did not like the answers that he found. So he did something about it. He joined the Rebels.
Incidentally, if the writers want to keep Kallus’ hair the way it was while he was aboard the Chimera, I would not say no. It gave him a roguish look quite fitting for a Rebel. He ought to keep it that way. 😉
Now to those questions and requests I mentioned above. As stated, I want more Mandalore in the upcoming season, but I suspect that the writers will deliver this whether I ask for it or not. I want to know what Sabine’s father is like, I want to know where Ketsu is, and I want to know if Mandalore is Thrawn’s next target. It would make sense if it was. Mandalorian dissidents helped the Rebels beat his master scheme to bring them down. This would make Mandalore Thrawn’s next objective, so he can defeat them and they will never be able to help the Rebels again. Mandalorians have been the best warriors in the galaxy for millennia, excepting the Jedi. You would need a super genius such as Thrawn to overcome them, simply because they are so determined, strong, and refuse to bow to anyone outside their own clan-oriented political structure.
I also want to see how Kallus adjusts to the Ghost crew and how he fixes in his mind the logistics of being part of a Rebellion. He had unlimited resources while with the Empire, but the Rebels routinely have to steal fuel just to keep their ships going. He will not be able to simply snap his fingers and get what he needs for a mission or a plan as a Rebel, and that might irk him. It would also be nice if he could get a girlfriend. Maybe she could be a Mandalorian (and no, I am NOT suggesting Sabine be that girl!). His character arc in season four is bound to be interesting.
I want to see some more Kanan/Ezra, Hera/Ezra, Sabine/Ezra centered episodes, with a few Zeb centric shows as well. There have been hints all this season that Sabine and Ezra are closing in on a romantic relationship. I would like to see the ball rolling on that before the series ends, whenever that will be.
This brings up my next request: I want a season five for Star Wars Rebels. I would also like a season six, seven, eight, and maybe even a nine. To infinity, and beyond! We have three year intervals between each of the original trilogy movies and, no thanks to Lucasfilm’s decision to scrap the “Legacy” novels, we now have no idea what happened between those films. The adventures the Ghost crew will have throughout the Rebellion after the Alliance is firmly established would be a great way to explore these years between Episodes IV, V, and VI.
This segues nicely into my next request: can we have Kyle Katarn, Dash Rendar, Syal Antilles (Wedge’s actress sister), Mara Jade, Corran Horn, Admiral Gilad Pellaeon, Tycho Celchu, Winter, Talon Karrde, Kam Solusar, Baron Soontir Fel, Ysanne Isard, Admiral Daala, Kyp Durron, Borsk Fey’lya, 4-LOM, IG-88, Jerec, Booster and Mirax Terrik, the Dark Woman, and several other “Legacy” characters returned to the franchise through Rebels? Thrawn has been successfully reintegrated into the timeline through this series, so why not at least some of these characters?
They were great and good characters, after all. Lots of people like them. And I mean lots. Winter, Celchu, Pellaeon, Syal, and Rendar would probably be some of the easiest characters to reintroduce to the franchise here. With Konstantine dead, Thrawn is going to need a new Admiral under his command, after all. There is now plenty of room for Pellaeon to become part of the franchise.
And none of these characters would have to be explored onscreen in Rebels. All they would need is a reintroduction, however brief it might be. Then the novel and comic book writers could expand on these characters for the new Star Wars timeline. Timothy Zahn would love to rewrite Mara Jade, Talon Karrde, Borsk Fey’lya, Admiral Gilad Pellaeon, and several of the other characters he created into the new timeline, I am sure. If Rebels were to fill in the blanks between the original three movies, there would be plenty of room for these characters to pop in and out of different episodes and missions.
This would also leave open the door for appearances by such canon characters as Aurra Sing, Quinlan Vos (who survived the Purge for a while in the old timeline), Admiral Ackbar, Bossk, Dengar, Jabba the Hutt and other original characters. If Boba Fett entered the series – whew, what an antagonist he would be! Han and Chewie could even drop into an episode or two. We have had Threepio, Artoo, Saw Gerrera, Maul, Darth Vader, Tarkin, Lando Calrissian, Ahsoka, Princess Leia, Mon Mothma, and now Obi-Wan Kenobi show up, for Pete’s sake! Why not these characters?! They are all great, popular personages, and we would like to have at least some of them back!!!!
I would still like to know more about the Dume family, too. If Kanan never knew his parents, then he might have an entire extended family he does not know about. That is a plot twist that could be worth exploring. It would be nice if Zeb could get a girlfriend or find more Lasat to join the Rebels as well. He did not get much time in the limelight this season. Hera is growing into quite a leading figure in the Rebellion, and seeing her relationship with Ezra and the rest of the crew expand would be great.
Finally, since the “Legacy” novels loved to bring in surviving Jedi or new Force wielders, this means Kanan and Ezra could stick around for most of the Rebellion. They would not have to meet Luke during the Rebellion (they have already met Leia, for Heaven’s sake!), but they could still be there when he jumpstarts a new Jedi Order. It happened with Vima da Boda. Who says it cannot happen with Kanan and Ezra?
This brings up something else which was great about the “Legacy” stories, and which I would like to see in the new storyline: what about the other Force-sensitive youngsters who may be floating around the galaxy? Jedi Sentinels could spend years on certain planets carrying out deep cover missions, which means a few might have escaped the Purge. What would happen if one of them joined the Rebellion? How would Ezra and Kanan handle, say, Kyle Katarn, Corran Horn, or poor Kam Solusar? He would be an interesting character to reintroduce, as would Kyp Durron.
And what would happen if a Mandalorian fighting alongside Clan Wren and the Rebels discovered she or he was Force-sensitive? Does the Rebellion get recruits and surreptitious help from Naboo, like they do from Alderaan? Would our Rebel crew ever need to go to Kashyyyk for something and meet Wulfwarroo and Kitwarr again? It would be nice to see some more Wookiees – better animated than in Spark of Rebellion – in the series. There must have been at least some besides Chewie who wanted to bring down the Empire, and joined the Rebellion as a result! Heck, maybe Maz Kanata and her cantina castle could be featured in an episode or two!!
The possibilities for such ideas in this series are endless. Since it is set in the five years before A New Hope, I would be surprised if the series did not have a five season run. I would be most pleased if the show ran through the years including and between A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and the Battle of Jakku. The Ghost crew would not need to be in the Battle of Yavin or the Battles of Hoth and Bespin, although they might be brought into the Battles of Endor and Jakku. As Dave Filoni himself points out in a recent IGN interview, Star Wars is a big galaxy. There is room for plenty of stories involving characters – Jedi, Force-sensitive, scoundrel, Rebel, and Imperial – that can be explored without interfering with the original films. The books and comics of the “Legacy” years did this and got off Scott-free. Why can’t Rebels?
Will it happen? That is up to Filoni and Lucasfilm’s Story Group. I only know that I really, REALLY wish it would happen. I would dearly love to see the intact Ghost crew celebrating above Endor. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think Hera would be able to keep her spunk if she lost Kanan and Ezra. They are two of the people she fights for and loves most. She loses them, and there may not be much of a “General Syndulla” to get excited about in Rogue One.
That is my opinion, anyway. I really hope that our Rebels’ Jedi survive the Rebellion, that we can see Ezra and Sabine in whatever series fills in the blanks between the new films, and that we can return some of the best “Legacy” characters to the new Star Wars timeline. It is a big wish list, but it is what I want for this franchise right now.
But if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. We shall have to see what happens, readers! May the Force be with you! (Lightsaber ignites in the background.)
I have always been fascinated by stories of Jedi Knights or Masters who survived the Great Purge in the Star Wars universe. Light-side Force-users who were recruited to the Rebellion around the time of the original trilogy and who rose to prominence in the new Jedi Order afterward also intrigue me.
I do not know why I find them so interesting. But when I read the character profiles of Corran Horn, Kyle Katarn, and Kam Solusar, I was fascinated. I wanted to get to know these guys, to see more of their adventures with Luke and his new Jedi Order. Reading Jude Watson’s Last of the Jedi series also introduced me to an intriguing straggler from the Jedi Purge: Ferus Olin.
Of these four, though, I know only Ferus Olin really well. Corran Horn has starred in a couple of Timothy Zahn novels which have fallen into my hands, so I have ‘seen’ enough for me to decide I enjoy him. But Katarn and Solusar I have not yet been able to track down. I intend to read the books they have a part in sooner or later. Later just looks to be a more likely time than sooner! 😉
Anyway, this fascination with Jedi closer to the original trilogy in part explains my affection for the lone Jedi Knight in Disney’s Star Wars Rebels. Kanan Jarrus – formerly known as Jedi apprentice Caleb Dume – survived the Jedi Purge. That immediately turned my head. Another Jedi survivor of the Clone Wars fighting in the fledgling Rebellion, I thought. This is interesting. Where did he come from? How did he survive? Who was his master? What is he like? …. Etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum.
Rebels and the stories in the paraphernalia attached to it have done an admirable job of answering some of those questions, but I am still eager to learn more. Hopefully the writers will not keep us waiting too long on that score!
But let us begin with what we know. Despite being raised by the old Jedi Order, it is clear Kanan does not keep with all of their customs. His relationship with Hera blatantly breaks with the Jedi ban on romance. And, counter to the stereotypical Jedi of old, he is also cocky, a smart alec, and rather cynical.
As I said before in other posts, this is what makes him interesting. In part, Kanan’s cynicism is due to the fact that he has seen so many hopes and dreams destroyed, as well as many fears realized. He has also suffered a great deal, first when his master was killed and the Jedi Order he knew and loved was obliterated, then in surviving in an unfriendly galaxy under Imperial rule for fifteen years. And this from the time he was fourteen!
That tends to take the rose glasses off of someone’s eyes in a hurry, does it not?
As for his cocky attitude and tendency to throw wisecracks around, that is also partly due to past bad experience. In addition it is, initially, a shield that keeps people away. It makes the snoopy Imperials write him off as a brash, riff-raff space ranger. Meanwhile it keeps the nice, kinder people in the galaxy from getting too close and becoming friends – friends he could later lose as he lost his master.
This shield does and does not change at the beginning of the Rebels TV series. Though his crew knows he is a Jedi, Kanan keeps his heritage hidden to protect them, rarely using his Force abilities even when there is no apparent danger of his being discovered. It is dangerous enough that they are going up against the big, bad Empire – if the Imperials found out Kanan was a Jedi, then the hunt for the Ghost crew would be redoubled.
This, as we know, changes when he meets Ezra Bridger. I have often wondered just what it would take to make a Jedi in hiding accept a Force-sensitive youth as an apprentice. From my perspective, the Rebels series answers this question well. Through the events of the first season, Kanan is brought to the realization that he is not hiding simply to protect his friends. He is hiding because he is afraid, and this means he is denying the Force’s guidance of the galaxy and his life. Avoiding being murdered is one thing; refusing his Jedi heritage, as he had been doing, is something else entirely.
At the beginning of the first season he runs into Ezra, a boy who can touch the Force. Although he does not want to admit it, Kanan is instantly drawn to Ezra by the age-old compulsion of the Jedi to train an apprentice. He fights the instinct for a while, not because he dislikes Ezra but because he is afraid of revealing what he is himself.
However, leaving Ezra untrained puts the youth in more danger. Eventually, his sensitivity to the Force would be recognized and the Empire would catch him. Then they would either turn him to the Dark Side or kill him.
Kanan cannot sit by and allow that to happen. To do such a thing is criminal, and despite his spiritual injuries, Kanan remains too good at heart and too morally-minded to abandon the boy. Over seasons one and two, their master/apprentice rapport strengthens into a fraternal relationship. By now, it is not quite a brotherly bond, from this writer’s point of view. Kanan has grown beyond that and is now experiencing being a true Jedi master governing an apprentice. In many ways, he has become Ezra’s surrogate father.
Up until Twilight of the Apprentice, Ezra responds to him in a duly relatable, filial manner. But in the second season finale, he is “feeling his oats,” as it were. This convinces him that Kanan is trying to keep him from growing up, when in actuality the older Jedi is trying to prevent Ezra from walking off a cliff the boy does not even realize he is heading toward.
Sabine has a similar understanding with Kanan, albeit less firmly established, since she is not Force-sensitive. Part of the strength of Kanan’s connection with Ezra is that they are bound together through the Force as teacher and student. Ahsoka and Anakin had a similar friendship in The Clone Wars TV series.
In the case of Rebels’ star Mandalorian, Sabine lacks that particular link with Kanan. Their friendship is all too similar to the one some real fathers and daughters share. After a point, they can only understand so much about each other, before giving up and simply trusting that the other one has a plan. This means their relationship can get a little stormy, as we saw in The Protector of Concord Dawn. Still, Sabine is loyal to Kanan, else she could not have controlled her warrior instincts in that same episode to satisfy and please her father figure. As she said, she has “been raised right.”
It is hard to quantify Kanan and Zeb’s friendship. The simplest way to explain it is to relate it to Cap and Thor’s rapport. Zeb follows Kanan out of respect for the cowboy Jedi, while Kanan chooses a mission and delegates how it is to be accomplished; with emphasis on the way the Lasat is to play his part. Even when the two disagree, as they did in Droids in Distress, they tend to do it quietly. Zeb rarely loses his temper with Kanan the way he will with Ezra or Chopper. He will grumble, fuss, and snarl, but he will give his all to the plan just the same.
Chopper’s friendship with Kanan, at times, seems to be non-existent. Kanan appears to find the cranky astromech unit an annoyance best gotten rid of, while Chopper takes any and all opportunities to snipe at him in binary – or with his tazer appendage. Still, the two seem to have some sort of esteem for each other. Though Chopper annoys him, Kanan relies on the droid as much as the rest of the crew does. And the fact that C1-10p was good enough to quietly see a blinded Kanan to Ezra’s side in the Sith temple on Malachor hints the independent bucket of bolts places some value on Kanan.
As I said above, it is noteworthy to me that Kanan and Hera are “together.” Put aside for a minute the fact that they are totally different species, Kanan definitely knows the Jedi were never supposed to marry or get romantically attached to someone. Perhaps part of the reason he broke with this tradition is, well, there is no Jedi Order to enforce the rule any more.
Besides which, he and Hera are not starry-eyed kids, as Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala were. If things go wrong and either of them is hurt or killed in the fight against the Empire, those are the fortunes of war. No matter how much pain that is going to cause them, they have still accepted the possibility that it will happen. From what I remember, Anakin did not intend to do that – which sort of led to the Empire being established in the first place, right?
This is something I have admitted before, but I shall say it again: I enjoy Kanan’s wisecracking abilities a lot. And this is not just because I always like it when the good guy scores a couple (or several dozen) verbal hits on the bad guy. Kanan’s quips are usually funny remarks or spot-on points which echo what the audience is thinking. Not only are they amusing, but this witty banter is also a good distraction or a way of prodding the villain to admit something. A well-phrased, well-placed verbal jab can upend a baddy’s plot in a snap. Just ask Spider-Man. Or Hawkeye. Or Tony Stark. Or Mara Jade Skywalker. Or Han Solo.
A good number of other Jedi from the prequels were characters which I never really saw. I did not watch the Clone Wars TV series, but it struck me that most of the Jedi in it had very little which distinguished their personalities from those of their peers’. Ahsoka had a sense of humor and fun, of course, which made her stand out to me when I looked up the series later on.
And yes, I know Anakin had a sense of humor. It was rather hard to miss! But his quips were often tainted by the Dark Side’s influence, and they therefore left me feeling uncomfortable more often than not. Obi-Wan’s wit in the films was rare and dry – not really worth an audience response of loud laughter or grins and giggles. The Jedi of the old Order all seemed too serious and expressionless, for the most part, to this writer.
Kanan is definitely not like that. Even when he is being serious he can be amusing, such as when he tells Darth Maul that he and Ezra “come as a set.” We see the situation in Twilight of the Apprentice just as clearly as Kanan does. Ezra is in danger of being corrupted to the Dark Side by Maul. The guy is treacherous, no doubt about it. But Kanan’s snappy “we’re a set” comment eases the tension and makes the audience smile or grin.
Because with that retort, we understand Kanan is not going to roll over to the former Sith Lord without a fight. If Maul wants Ezra, he will have to go through Kanan to get him. Even though becoming a Jedi or becoming one with the Dark Side is ultimately Ezra’s choice, Kanan is not going to give up on his apprentice. In a situation like this, that is a comfort.
Most of what I like about Kanan, however, is how he got to be in Rebels at all. After the downfall of the Jedi Order and the Old Republic, Kanan had to work hard to get by while hiding what he is. Everything looked grim and sad to him during this time – and even after he joined Hera on the Ghost, he was not prone to an overly hopeful outlook on the future of the galaxy. They were five individuals against the Empire. Those are pretty rotten odds!
And he was also constantly reminded of who and what he lost. Kanan admitted at the end of the first season that he literally wakes up every morning remembering his master’s last order: Run. Jedi are not supposed to run and hide. That was not what Master Depa Billaba was training him to do. But she told him to do it.
And he did run. More to the point, Kanan did not stop running, despite joining the Rebellion as part of Hera’s crew.
Forget the prestige and power he may have wielded as an adult Jedi in the Old Republic. Kanan lost not only his friends and that future during the Purge; he lost his purpose. There can be no Jedi serving the Light side of the Force under a Sith controlled Galactic Empire. A Jedi works to protect all life in the galaxy, and if the Empire kills a Jedi as soon as he shows his face, the Jedi can hardly do his job, now can he?
So Kanan was reduced to hiding. He is, at the beginning of Rebels, the scraps of the person he once was. He has to hide in the galaxy’s underworld fringe lest he be caught and murdered. Hiding and running are not the way of the Jedi…. but neither is getting oneself killed for no reason. In between this rock and hard place, the only thing Kanan thinks he has left to do is to find a way to survive as something he is not.
Then Kanan senses that the tide has begun to change as the Rebellion against the Empire grows and gains more strength. Suddenly, the future of the galaxy does not seem so dark and bleak anymore. The Dark Side looks like it can be defeated. Finally, the hope to become a servant of the Light side of the Force again returns.
Kanan’s first inkling of this comes when he figures out that Ezra is Force-sensitive. All at once, he sees hope again, even though it takes a while for him to admit it. This kid can touch the Force. And, like Kanan, his devil-may-care attitude is just a shield he uses to protect himself. They are more similar than they first realize.
This is what helps Kanan make his decision to step out of the shadows and ignite his lightsaber again. Yeah, it is going to make life for him and his friends tough in the days ahead. But all of a sudden, the future really is worth fighting for, no matter how harsh the battle becomes. The future actually is something to look forward to, for once. The Force has not changed. Kanan can still fight. He can still be a Jedi. Not the one he would have been under the Old Republic, but a Jedi all the same.
Kanan realizes in Spark of Rebellion that the Jedi do not have to die out, that they can be brought back. That he can still fight for the Light. He does not have to hide anymore – from himself or from the Empire. And Ezra does not have to hide or steal to survive, either. They can both be more than what the Dark Side-controlled Empire thinks they are.
And that is something worth fighting to achieve, no matter the cost.
This is a good part of why I like Kanan so much. He is not fighting to prove a point. He is fighting for his freedom, the freedom of his friends, and his apprentice’s freedom. Not their freedom from economic tyranny, but their freedom to choose who and what they want to be. The Empire is trying to control those choices through its power over the galactic economy and the planets the galaxy’s inhabitants call home.
The whole point of being a Rebel is to tell the Empire to butt out of the minds and hearts of the people of the galaxy, and to continue telling the Leviathan to keep its grubby fingers to itself rather than retaliate in anger. Governments do not have free will; people have free will. And when the Empire takes that away, it commits a very serious crime against the inhabitants of the galaxy. Kanan decided he was not going to stand for this when Rebels started. He was going to fight the Empire the best way he could – as a Jedi.
I am really hoping Kanan survives to be part of the celebration in the end of Return of the Jedi. If the writers of Star Wars Rebels do not reveal his fate within the series, though, it may be some time before I know what happens to him. Still, I am rather hopeful that he and Ezra will live to hear from Luke when he begins to rebuild the Jedi Order.
In the non-canon novels, Ferus Olin did not make it. But others did. If Kam Solusar, Corran Horn, and Kyle Katarn could be Force-users during the height of the Rebellion who later became new Jedi Knights, then I see no reason why Ezra could not follow suit. A handful of stragglers from the Jedi Purge also lived to see the rise of the new Order in the novels. So I think Kanan could still make it to the shindig at Endor.
But that, of course, is up to Lucasfilm/Disney, not me. I would hate to believe they wasted all this time and money just to kill Kanan and Ezra off at the end of Rebels. Wouldn’t you, readers?
Thoughts on the Edge of Forever 