Star Wars Rebels The Last Battle News 

Five Thoughts On Star Wars: Rebels‘ “The Last Battle”

By | October 24th, 2016
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1. The Return Of Rex

This is the episode I’ve hoped for since the series brought Rex back last season. You don’t tell me there’s the last existing Clone Troopers not to have an episode where they find the last existing cell of Separatist droids in order to recreate the Clone Wars on a smaller scale. I’ve needed this episode I almost lost hope that I’d see it as Rex drifted more and more into the background of the show.

What I loved about this episode, though, was how emotionally in depth it went to Rex’s reaction to this scenario. Rex, Gregor and Wolffe’s life of solitude where the Ghost crew found them must have clearly been a reaction to their mental state at the end of the war. They were beings literally built for war. They’re essentially living weapons tossed aside trying to eek out some level of personhood. Here, Rex is thrust back into that mindset and while his muscle memory clearly allows him to fulfil that role to a tee, his mindset is all over the place. He dissociates and hallucinates and becomes erratic, he’s essentially experiencing a trauma flashback played out in reality.

I know this is a kid’s show and is limited to a 20 minute run time, but my only wish for this episode was to have the room to delve into the mindset and emotionality of Rex in this situation even further. As it stands, it’s still a fascinating development for the character.

2. The Last Droids Standing

As I mentioned, I love the concept of this episode. As I’ll get into in a bad, I was kind of bothered by the characters’ ability to intuit that the Clone Wars was a galaxy-wide manipulation, but I was fascinated by the idea of a droid so smart that they were able to stop and think “Hey, wait a minute, we should have won this war.” Being stranded on a planet for so long to have simulated how the war should have ended is so weirdly chilling that Kalani has become one of the most quietly creepy Star Wars characters.

To have programming so obsessed about calculating every outcome and being stranded without a way to action it until the last Clone Trooper stumbles on your doorstep seems like a way this episode could have easily fallen into horror story territory.

3. An Imperial Ambush

At first, I expected the Imperial ambush of the Ghost at the fuel depot to simply be a matter of showing the Ghost as being tied up in a situation that meant that Kanan, Rex and Ezra wouldn’t be able to receive help, but it actually does a number of things for the episode. Obviously, it does show that Kanan, Rex and Ezra aren’t going to receive help despite Chopper’s distress signal, but it also shows that Governor Pryce is learning from working with Thrawn. Even though Thrawn has only been around for a couple of episodes, his tactical knowhow is already seeping into how the Empire plans its strikes against the rebels.

What this also does is allow the episode to switch gears to have Rex and Kalani team up against the Empire. Again, I find it strange that characters were able to intuit the information they were able to in this episode, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the symbolic gestures of a clone and a droid having to face off against the Empire.

4. Old Vs. New

One of my favourite things about Rebels is how it’s continued to bridge the gap between Revenge Of The Sith and A New Hope. With every season, those 19 years between the two movies feel less like a gap in which the entire landscape of the galaxy changed overnight and more like a gradual change in which what became obsolete fell out of favour. Seeing Battle Droids show up again and face off against the Empire, to watch Battle Droids interact with Stormtroopers, is what reminds you that this really is one galaxy. Just because the Clone Wars ended doesn’t mean the droids vanished forever. They still left their mark on the galaxy and they might be as much of a relic as Rex, but seeing them take on the Empire was pretty cool.

Continued below

5. Parting Of The Ways, Or… Ezra Ended The Clone Wars?

As much as I enjoyed the rest of this episode, one thing really bugged me. The idea that Ezra was able to figure out that the entirety of the Clone Wars and the conflict between the Republic and the Separatists was manufactured in some way is something that… bugs me. I think it’s because it’s something that we know as the audience because we’re privy to information that’s essentially a secret to many characters that when a character can just work it out by themselves, it feels… cheap?

I’m reminded of a passage in the James Luceno novel, “Tarkin”, in which Moff Tarkin is able to suss out that Darth Vader is Anakin Skywalker. The way it’s described makes sense as Tarkin recognises attributes of Anakin’s that haven’t been suppressed because they fought together in the Clone Wars, but it feels like cheating to have a character just intuit that when his identity should be a mystery to other characters.

That fact that the Clone Wars had no definitive conclusion because Palpatine’s gambit finally thrust him into power and he was able to publicly excommunicate the Jedi and fill the power vacuum with his new Empire is bittersweet. There’s no closure there. That’s the point. As much as I loved that bittersweet non-conclusion play out from the perspective of a soldier who never got to complete his mission, having this prodigy child who is as old as the end of the Clone Wars to the day figure out Palpatine’s whole masterplan from the barest information was too much for me.

I know the show wants Ezra to be on the same level of importance to the galaxy as Luke, Anakin or Rey, but c’mon. Not everything needs solved like this.


//TAGS | Star Wars: Rebels

Alice W. Castle

Sworn to protect a world that hates and fears her, Alice W. Castle is a trans femme writing about comics. All things considered, it’s going surprisingly well. Ask her about the unproduced Superman films of 1990 - 2006. She can be found on various corners of the internet, but most frequently on Twitter: @alicewcastle

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