Star Wars: Rebels

Once Ben and I had finished the final season of The Clone Wars, it happened naturally that we started to binge-watch Star Wars: Rebels, the four season series that Disney produced after TCW ended. The show hadn't really interested us when it premiered, as it was clearly aimed at a lower age group than TCW. But we're really glad we watched it.

Rebels tells the story of a small Rebel cell on the Empire-occupied planet of Lothal about five years before A New Hope. That means the Rebel Alliance is still in its infancy and the Empire is nearly at its height. The cell consists of four rebels, the pilot, Hera, the muscle, Zeb, a Mandalorian, Sabine, and a former Jedi Padawan, Kanan, who survived Order 66, plus a severely annoying droid, Chopper. In the pilot, they pick up a new recruit, a young, Force-sensitive Ezra Bridger.

Like TCW, Rebels has some early hit or miss episodes, tending towards childish, and sometimes the plots suffer from bouts of stupid plotting, where things wouldn't happen if one of the characters wasn't acting stupid. (And the ridiculously thin lightsabers were bizarre.) But as the show went on, it got more ambitious, more interesting, and the stakes increased. Characters actually develop as the series goes on, the villains get more interesting and complex, and the connections to A New Hope, and especially Rogue One, become deeper. Plus, Hera is just a great character.

To the show's credit, like TCW, the creators made an interesting artistic choice with Rebels. Many of the ship and character designs are based on the original Ralph McQuarrie Star Wars concept art of the 1970s. Zeb, for instance, is actually based on the original concepts for Chewbacca.

I was really surprised at how much I loved Rebels and I thought the conclusion of the series was great. I was also happy to see that the show gets some love in the video game, Battlefront II, the great TV show, The Mandalorian, and the movies Rogue One and The Rise of Skywalker with some cool easter eggs.

If you like any of those, give Rebels a try.