Star Wars Rebels

Miguex said:

Royal am I nuts or did the ending of that episode not put us precisely inside the opening moments of ANH? That call to Luke from Beru cannot be a throwaway.

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I'm assuming they just used the same audio recording for a hit of nostalgia. Her yelling for Luke is something that probably happens often. It's still 2 years before the Battle of Yavin.

Timeline of canon media

BBY stands for Before the Battle of Yavin, and ABY stands for After the Battle of Yavin. (The Battle of Yavin ended with the destruction of the first Death Star, or if you prefer, the end of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope).

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Yeah it sounded like the same audio to me to but as Abe said, we're still before the time of ANH (it was 2 years at the start of the season so maybe a year to 18 months now??)

edit: I read in an interview with Filoni that they used an alternate take from ANH for Beru's voice.

Miguex said:

3rd time through. An almost perfect episode.

Spoiler

Goodbye Maul. A fitting ending.

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After watching it a second time I'm thinking a little better of it. I guess it's not so much that the episode itself was lacking but it underscores some of the problems I have with the series overall.

My favorite part actually had nothing to do with Maul or Kenobi. It was Ezra and Chopper (which I'm sure puts me very much in the minority). That moment when they were wandering across the desert when Chopper begins to loose power and Ezra falls into despair, realizing the situation he's put them in. His actions have put someone he cares about in danger (and a droid no less, which has been a recurring theme within Star Wars; the good guys care about their droids as if they were people). But it shouldn't require big-leaguers like Maul or Ben Kenobi to set that situation up in a way that viewers care about deep into the show's third season.

Rebels has come to rely too much on legacy characters to build interest. Which is fine if it is paired with building and developing it's original characters in the process so that it eventually doesn't need those legacy figures (which this episode did, a little, so I give it credit there). But for the most part it hasn't. When they do engage in it they have shown they can do it well, Sabine this season for example. But there should be more of it and they should be more consistent in how they handle the characters from episode to episode. Ezra is such an amorphous blob of a character at this point because they so often use him to fill whatever role they need in a given episode. In the last droid episode for example, if you didn't know beforehand could you even guess that Ezra is a force sensitive padawan learner? That's the product of lazy writing. Even shows nominally targeted to a youth audience can't be commended when they suffer from that.

I was going back over the previous episodes from this season, doing a shorthand separation of the wheat from the chaff, and I remembered that Maul had threatened the rebels earlier this season by informing them that there was a beacon that would disclose the location of Chopper Base to the Empire in the event of his death. I wonder if that is still in play and will end up being how Thrawn finds them, with Maul having recently died. Or if they just assume the audience no longer remembers that and gives Thrawn some love by showing him figuring it out on his own.

Considering that Chopper had charged back up before Ezra woke up Ben finding out about Ezra and why he was there from the droid is a pretty logical conclusion.

As for Ben considering Luke to be the Chosen One I think that's just the way he sees it at that point in his life. It's probably something he convinced himself of to reconcile what ultimately became of Anakin and how he motivated himself to carry on with his lonely watch over Luke. But that doesn't make it a fact. It comes down to something that I know tends to drive the canon junkies nuts. These fictional characters, even the ones who are established as being wise, aren't omniscient. They can be mistaken, delusional, and misled. Sometimes they even lie.

Yeah I've mentioned before in one of the Star Wars discussions that one of the spectrums that fans fall along is lore building vs. story telling. The ones who fall closer to the lore building end highly value learning about the world that the stories take place in and once they learn something they want it to "stay learned" so to speak. If something comes along later that invalidates or undermines their established understanding of the galaxy far, far away then they tend to protest because they've invested themselves more into the franchise as a fact finding exercise.

So because Anakin killed the Emperor at the end of ROTJ does that mean he still fulfilled the prophecy?

Fadaar said:

So because Anakin killed the Emperor at the end of ROTJ does that mean he still fulfilled the prophecy?

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I think that was Lucas' intent was when he made the prequels. I've always hated the whole prophecy, the Chosen One mythology, and his idea of what constituted "balance in the force" though. If that ends up slowly evolving into something else over time it's not gonna ruffle my feathers any. I don't think they'll ever do that though. Lucas still draws a lot of water inside of the halls of Lucasfilm, even though he's not formally involved.

I've mostly ignored the prophecy junk, and chalked it up to Jedi clinging to their dogma. Who gave the prophecy? Have they given others? Have they been correct before? If the force wants something done, it'll make it happen.

Drakain said:

I've mostly ignored the prophecy junk, and chalked it up to Jedi clinging to their dogma. Who gave the prophecy? Have they given others? Have they been correct before? If the force wants something done, it'll make it happen.

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Like 99% of the prequels I'm pretty sure it was bullshit writing that wasn't given enough forethought.

FYI the finale is airing early (or late, depending on how you typically watch it); 11:00 AM Saturday morning and encored throughout the day. The early on demand/app streams aren't available per usual with the finales.

But that's not to say it's not already out there ...

Yeah, I am glad Thrawn lives for another season, he didn't really live up to his legend from the EU. Also glad they didn't fuck up the canon by having the rebels win, since Rogue One is the first rebel victory.

Also the writing is sloppy when the 1st Inderdictor captain randomly decides to fuck thrawn, had he just listened none of this would have happened.