“Through the Force, things you will see. Other places. The future…the past. Old friends long gone.”

Shortly after these episodes aired, there was a lot of online chatter on how THESE STAR WARS REBELS CHANGE EVERYTHING or STAR WARS INTRODUCED SOME THING NEW AND IT WILL NEVER BE THE SAME and possibly maybe even SHOW BASED ON POPULAR SPACE WIZARDS MOVIES JUST DID ANOTHER WEIRD THING.   Did these two episodes get kinda bug out freak out crazy?  Sure.  Is it a radical new thing departure from what we’ve seen in Star Wars before? Especially when just a couple months ago we had a bearded Luke Skywalker meditating and floating over a rock while his projection talked smack to his greasy haired nephew? Not at all.  In my opinion, Star Wars is at its best when it is wacky weird.  Give me Star Wars when it steps outside the Boba Fett is a Badass comfort zone and delves deep into that mystical energy field.  So often the stories filled with heroes, villains, religious and mythic allegories are when it shines the brightest.  Like an angry Lucas once said, “it’s not about spaceships.”  I feel like Rebels show runner and obvious wolf superfan Dave Filoni might agree with that.   He wrote this stuff and watching these two episodes is like being at his house on a Saturday night after he’s had a whole bottle of champagne and he’s talking Star Wars.  It’s a little loopy, a little off the rails but it’s a rockin’ visual representation of what Star Wars has been dancing around for decades.

The whole thing starts out as the Rebels crew decides to find out what’s up with the mysterious jedi temple that the giant maybe Kanan Wolf wanted them to see.  As if that wasn’t already weird enough, they then ride the giant wolves across half of Lothal in some sort of ground hyperspace portal.  Once they get there they see that the Empire has gone all Raiders of the Lost Ark on the temple as they dig around it in a quest to use its power for evil reasons.

Here we are introduced to a creepy old Sith devotee named Minister Hyden who is voiced by the great Malcolm McDowell.  This little guy with a cool hat is obsessed with discovering the secrets of the temple so his master, Emperor Palpatine can better rule the galaxy.  As a sadistic and oddly sympathetic tool of a Sith Lord, Hyden is a more interesting bad guy in his 15 minutes of screen time then Thrawn has been for multiple seasons.

Once there and with a lot of help from Sabine, Ezra figures out how to get in the temple and then the show really kicks into high gear.  As he walks around the star filled space bridges, we hear dialog that spans everything from Force Awakens to A New Hope.  It’s a nice eerie touch as Ezra quickly realizes this Force place is an area beyond time and space made up of portals where you can enter and view other of major moments of history.

Ezra goes to a portal where he sees Ashoka’s battle with Lord Vader and at the last second, he explains what happened to Tano during the fight as he quickly pulls her out of there.  Ezra then does Ezra by acting clueless and he whining a lot about how he can stop people from dying.  It’s a little distracting as Ezra seemingly still doesn’t have a clue on not only how to be a Jedi but also how to function as a person. Finally, the former Padawan learner becomes the teacher as Ashoka reminds Ezra that he has to chill out and that he can not change the past and he must learn to let go of his former master.

This is where people seemed to freak out thinking time travel is now a thing in Star Wars.  It’s not.  It’s not suddenly Back to the Future or something and no Rey isn’t going back in time in Episode 9.  What Ezra enters is a physical version of an area of the Force.  He sees events from HIS past.  He’s not seeing Anakin and Obi-Wan fight on Mustafar or the death of Qui-Gon Jinn, it’s only what he knows.

This kind of mystical thing is an extension of what Rey experienced when she touched the Skywalker saber and traveled “through time”, when Luke saw himself in Vader’s mask in the cave or even Rey’s reflection cave in Last Jedi.  What is all that?  It doesn’t have a name or a clear cut answer because it shouldn’t.  The Force should remain weird and mystical and by introducing a not really new element to it all, just underlines that we, like even the masters in the films and shows, can’t categorize the Force and nobody will ever be able to fully understand it.  That frustrates some who want the Force to be as simple as Superman’s powers but i am sorry, that’s just not how the Force works.  People like Dave Filoni are the esteemed professors at Lucas college and this episode is like the introductory course in Keeping Star Wars Weird.  This Star Wars Rebels and Star Wars animation doing what it does best and these episodes come highly recommended.

WARNING : IT WOULD BE REALLY WEIRD IF YOU READ THIS BEFORE WATCHING THESE EPISODES OF STAR WARS REBELS … BUT DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED THEM YET.   SPOILERS LAY AHEAD…..

Let’s just put it right out in the open.  These two episodes of Star Wars Rebels are some of the best stuff the show has ever done.  No, no young Master Codebreaker is not in it.  And no, it doesn’t feature a two hour tribute to Admiral Raddus’ face. It does however somehow manage to take almost all the awkward stuff that has plagued season four so far and perform a Jedi mind trick on us and made it all suddenly kinda awesome.  I’m still not sure who the bootleg Anakin kid is that’s hanging out on Lothal is or why I should care about Clancy Brown’s space Santa character but dammit who cares right now.   This is some mighty fine Star Wars action and I wanna talk about it.

The action starts as everyone is getting ready to go rescue Hera.  Kanan tells Ezra he should lead this mission and Sabine and Zeb put together some hang gliders so they can sneak into the Imperial base.  Kanan decides to go full Legend of Billie Jean at this moment and use a knife to cut his hair.  After debuting his new punk samurai new wave look, they head out to Governor Irina “Pryce” Spalko’s torture pad where she’s trying to get Hera to tell her where that Rebel hidden base is. After rescuing her, Spalko Pryce has the bright idea of stopping them by blowing up the fuel that’s pretty much bankrolling Thawn’s crazy TIE Fighter project.  The whole thing goes boom and Kanan has one final act of true Jedi selflessness as he saves his friends from the fiery explosion but not himself.

Kanan’s death is definitely the major moment of these two episodes and it is done absolutely perfectly.  We all knew the dude was probably doomed from day one but his actions during this whole episode justify him basically meditating through the rest of the season. Just like us, the guy knew this moment was coming and he would finally prove, mostly to himself that he was a Jedi Knight.   It’s an instant classic moment for Star Wars animation with breathtaking visuals and a score by Kevin Kiner that is a reminder that he’s a strong candidate to eventually score some Star Wars cinema.

That moment ripples through the next episode as everyone does their best to move on in whatever way they can.  Sabine and Zeb go off to try and stick one to the Empire, Hera and Chopper mourn and Ezra gets lost (again) and talks to a giant wolf who may or may not be the spirit of Kanan.  Eventually the huge wolf tells Ezra that he’s gotta go back to the Jedi Temple on Lothal and with that promise of some wacky Force stuff to come, we are left hanging until next week.

Is the reason this episode is able to soar when so many before have floundered simply because it actually handles actual consequences and real growth for the characters?  Something this show has gravely struggled with in the past?  As DJ would say, “maybe..?”  However, even before Kanan’s massive final moment, we are given a simple sense of fun and some easy breezy Star Wars magic that has eluded the show so many times before.  Even the effortless scene of the rebels flying around on homemade gliders made this sometimes grumpy Rebels viewer smile.

This is Star Wars Rebels firing at maximum firepower, finally making giant talking wolves interesting, giving hope for actually Ezra doing something and hopefully, HOPEFULLY slapping my wrist for ever doubting Dave Filoni. Bravo Rebels and I can’t wait to see where the next few episodes go.

First the bad news :  we are still on Lothal and it is still the most boring planet in all of Star Wars.  Not much actually happens in these episodes and Crawler Commanders almost violently put me to sleep about 45 times.  If you’re still reading and you are curious about the good news, Kindred isn’t that bad.  It hints at some interesting stuff that could be coming and there’s just something dang intriguing about those giant Force Wolves.  So in our last back to back, let’s hurry up and get this show over with, two episodes at a time style, we get a very mixed Rebels bag.  There’s decent stuff in especially the first one but man oh man, this show is riding a speeder bike straight to it’s quickly approaching end.

Things get started with Hera and Kanan spending some time together having deep thoughts on what we’re all wondering, just why they are still on Lothal.  Kanan wonders if there’s a deeper purpose that keeps bringing them back there and I honestly hope that’s the case.  Cut to that dastardly villain who can’t get anything done, Thrawn as he unleashes his gorilla mixed with a pencil eraser assassin thing named Ruhk on the Rebels.  Ruhk jumps out of his ship smelling for Zeb, rides a speeder bike, fights Ezra and then he’s pretty much out of the episode.  Maybe and hopefully he’ll turn up again in another episode but for now he was a total waste of time.

Ezra and crew hide out in the cave mountains and the Force Wolves show up and naturally they ask for Kanan.  Next thing you know Ezra’s eyes get crazy and faster then you can say Carlos Castaneda in the desert, they’re on the other side of the planet.  Just like last season’s Bendu, I like the idea of creatures that thrive of the living and cosmic Force but aren’t necessarily Force users.  I’m hoping and sensing that these wolves will actually lead to something at may help bring a satisfying conclusion to some of our main characters.  Or maybe they will talk more and remind Kanan and Ezra that the greatest power in the universe is the strength of family.  We’ll find out!

After that, there’s some stuff about a giant mining crawler, some Trandoshans with electric whips and Ezra grinning when a Seth Green voiced lizard man accidentally falls to his death.   It’s weird and it definitely is not one of Rebels’ best episodes.

The good thing going on with Kindred there’s moments that feel like this thing is going somewhere.  It has a nice forward momentum to it that sometimes Rebels episodes severely lack. Watching it though I can’t help feeling like this first half of season four has been phoning it in.  I think back to episodes like Maul’s flirting with the Ezra and the dark side in Twilight of the Apprentice, the Bendu’s lesson for Ezra and Kanan to learn that they needed each other last season and it makes we wonder what’s going on this season.  We’ve got a handful of episodes left and we are getting Bossk dudes with electric whips.  Don’t get me wrong, I love a good Bossk with an electric whip and the promise of X-Wings next week but that leads to my weekly gripe that’s still valid, what about the characters?  And not the characters from Star Wars movies or Clone Wars, what about the Rebels characters?  It’s time for this show to address the Bor Gullet in the room and start to lay the foundation that give these Rebels their final act.  Save the Bossks with whips for the next show.   Or my dreams.