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Rebels Review – Warhead

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STAR WARS REBELS
“Warhead”
By Jason Gibner

Over the course of this season of Star Wars Rebels, a dirty word has come up over and over that continues to haunt over almost every episode that doesn’t seem to feature Darth Maul or connect to Rogue One somehow.  The kids on the World Wide Web are using some crazy beatnik jive calling these episodes “filler”.

fill·er
ˈfilər/
noun
an item serving only to fill space or time, especially in a newspaper, broadcast, or recording.


Now, in all fairness, I’ve used this lazy word myself in describing some of the season’s “why is this episode even happening” moments. Looking at you once again, space kids with space waffles.  Nowadays, if an episode isn’t telling an epic story featuring lightsabers and characters from a movie, it’s instantly labeled as “filler” and quickly dismissed.  This episode does not deserve that treatment.
Warhead is an intriguing episode that begins with an ode to Empire Strikes Back’s opening with a Star Destroyer sending out probes to find a Rebel base.  Only instead of a probe droid, we get a fairly innocent looking protocol droid wandering around Chopper Base.  Turns out the droid is actually a giant killer enforcement droid and it’s up to the oddball trio of Zeb, Chopper and AP-5 to save the day.


Is this the most mind blowing 22 minutes of Star Wars Rebels you’ve ever seen?  Mostly likely that’s a no but the one thing this episode does have going for it is that it’s a good time.  Thanks to a snappy script from Rogue One writer Gary Whitta, the episode gets right to the fun and balances the Aliens/Predator action of hunting a killer droid with the mismatched team of Rebel heroes.


In an interview Dave Filoni said that the episode was originally to feature Zeb and Captain Rex as the Rebels left on the base, but putting Zeb against the underused AP-5 is a stroke of genius.  AP-5’s delight in wondering what the point of Zeb is almost sounds like fans on a Saturday night on Twitter after a new episode of Rebels just finished.  It’s smarty pants, snappy stuff like that that echoes back to the original trilogy style of dialogue that we all love so much.


In conclusion your honor, this episode is not “filler”.  It offers some fun droid and Zeb action and while Thrawn still really isn’t doing anything yet, the threat with him figuring out Kallus being Rebel’s inside man is becoming way more real.   The Thrawn thing is shaping up to be slow buildup to what eventually will be his total freakout on the Rebel crew.   And that’s gonna be something.

Final grade :  B


Side note :  In this episode’s Rebels Recon on Starwars.com, Filoni said if he knew when this episode was to air, he would have had the warhead droid be a K-2SO style droid.  The chances of us exploding if that would have happened would been high….very high.

Rebels Review – Ghosts of Geonosis

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STAR WARS REBELS
“Ghosts of Geonosis”
By Jason Gibner

Let me guess: you suddenly heard a Mardi Gras style marching band going down your street on Saturday night and you were confused why this outburst of joy was happening.  Let me help by letting you know that the unbridled happiness you heard was from Star Wars fans unable to contain their excitement that FINALLY, we’ve entered the age of the Rebels / Rogue One crossover.  No more are we twiddling our thumbs while the Rebels hang out with teenage space waffle eating pirates!  That’s right, happy days are here again and who can believe it but we’ve got Forest Whitaker back as a slighter younger Saw “Lies! Deceptions!” Gerrera!  Like a freaking magic trick, they somehow got an actor from everyone’s new favorite Star Wars movie (until next year when it’s out of nowhere cool to make up elitist nitpick reasons about how much you didn’t like it) on the show.  Like peanut butter and chocolate, pizza and beer or Captain and Tennille, this new friendship between Rebels and Rogue just feels so right.


The episode starts with our Ghost crew heroes sent to the beautiful planet of Geonosis to find out why Saw’s crew hadn’t been to the Alliance and what they found on their mission to the planet.  Once they get there it’s clear that Geonosis is a planet of spooky secrets and a sweet little Geonosian buddy named Klick Klack just adds to the fun.  It’s a dark and moody episode filled with references to awesome Clone Wars history and little nods to the slightly more off the rocker Saw we see in Rogue One.  Sadly, we do not see the handsome Bor Gullet in this episode.  There’s always next week, I guess to go insane with Bad Boy Bor.


The episode wraps up feeling like just maaaaaybe it could have been just an excuse to bring Saw and some Rogue One action.  Our heroes don’t really learn a lot about the mysteries of Geonosis, the secret Death Star project that was there or Saw or anything in general.  Saw gets a nice little arc as he’s reminded of his humanity and his late, great sister but that’s kinda it.  Maybe it was in this episode he remembered that he left that sixteen year old Erso girl in a cave with a loaded blaster and a box of pop tarts.   Maybe he started to feel bad about that and got the Bor Gullet for her for a present?  I’d like to think the did.

Final grade : B+
Tons of fun having Whitaker back as Saw so quickly after Rogue One but I just wish the episodes had just a little more to them.

Also:  Was that Imperial Rae Sloane?!? Probably not, but man, that would be cool bringing her in even for just one episode.