STAR WARS REBELS
“Through Imperial Eyes”
By Jason Gibner
Oh Kallus, I really think this time you and your awesome mutton chop sideburns are in trouble. I’ll admit, at first I didn’t like you at all. Back in that first season of Rebels you seemed like the real Imperial stooge of the week and you ran around like a Scooby Doo villain. Seriously you were one step away from blurting out “My mission would have succeeded if it weren’t for those meddling Rebels!!”
Then something changed in you when you had that surprisingly game changing season two episode “The Honorable Ones”. All of a sudden we saw that maybe you weren’t the guy just drinking the Empire’s Kool Aid and just maybe you were a character with some actual dimension beyond that grey uniform and trendsetting facial hair.
With the latest episode of Rebels “Through Imperial Eyes”, Kallus’ story is either just beginning or coming to it’s ghastly conclusion. Here we see what constitutes a day in his roughsville drab and secretly rebellious Imperial life. Through season three we’ve seen that Kallus is now serving the Rebels as being the newest Fulcrum aka Super Secret Spy. Which is fantastic except Kallus’ boss is that whispering blue skinned, art gallery creeper weirdo Grand Admiral Thrawn. The evil Smurf in white is no dummy and he’s figured out Kallus’ game a long time ago. So as Ezra comes on board an Imperial ship to warn Kallus that even the Alliance has figured out that he has been caught, Thrawn allows the whole charade to go down as it’ll just help his dastardly master plan of slowly wiping out the Rebels.
This episode takes that fairly simple plot and turns it into what could be the most tense, thriller style episode of Rebels so far. The whole thing plays like a never ending chase through Thrawn’s Star Destroyer as he is almost constantly behind every door Kallus and Ezra try to hide behind. It’s a dark and spooky 22 minutes of Star Wars action that’ll have you biting your nails just WAITING for the moment where our heroes get caught.
There’s an awkward subplot with Chopper and AP-5 in there and some really wasted stuff with Kanan and Rex aboard yet another stolen Imperial Shuttle but thankfully it never manages to slow down the episode’s rapid fire pace. We do however get a welcome addition to the roster of bad guys with the return of former Clone Wars hero of the Republic and A New Hope background guy with a mustache, Colonel Yularen. It’s rough seeming this former friend of the Jedi and the Clones now acting as basically the CIA director for the Empire but we all new that’s how it had to happen eventually.
Through Imperial Eyes just adds to what so far has been an outstanding second half to Rebels season three. Top shelf stuff like this episode and the previous Sabine arc shows that we have a lot to look forward to in coming weeks as with the Thrawn stuff coming to a possible conclusion , Maul’s showdown with Old Ben Kenobi and the further birth of the actual Alliance coming to a head. Rebels has it’s foot on the hyperdrive gas these days and hopefully isn’t letting up.
FINAL GRADE : B+