It’s our final episode of Star Wars: Rebels of 2016 and, boy, is it a doozy! Cleaning things up before that massive wave that is Rogue One hits us, this episode sees the return of Maul as well as a beloved location from The Clone Wars and explores the dynamic between Ezra, Kanan and Maul.
Well, what are we waiting for, then? Let’s dive into our Five Thoughts on Star Wars: Rebels‘ “Visions And Voices”!
1. Drama Without Communication
As much as I enjoyed the majority of this episode, it opened with a sequence that frustrated me. I know this is, ostensibly, a kid’s show and that drama tends to be extended well past its resolution point so that it’s easier to understand, but the sequence of Ezra seeing Maul on Chopper Base kind of bugged me. Largely because no one thought to actually communicate like a normal person would.
Generally, I would expect someone who keeps seeing someone who is one of the most dangerous people in the whole galaxy to, hey, say something about it instead of gurning into the camera and pointing at shadows. I get what the scene was trying to accomplish in the setup, I just think it was weakly executed and lead to me just being frustrated at people who aren’t real.
I guess I’m like Ezra in that way.
2. Compromise With The Dark Side, Ezra’s Trust Issues
We’ve talked this season about how the show keeps pushing Ezra to learn the same lesson about trust issues over and over, something he tends to not let stick from episode to episode. I think, looking back on it, this was leading up to this episode. When Ezra met the Ghost crew, he was kid surviving on his own and when he met these Rebels they were just as much of troublemakers and criminals as he was. I think that’s why he connects with characters like Hondo Ohnaka. He doesn’t see the moral difference between a rebel and pirate.
Despite everything, Ezra sees no difference working with Maul to destroy the Sith than learning from Ahsoka or Kanan. I mean, mostly because he doesn’t know Maul’s past like we do, but I wonder if that will be Ezra’s downfall. He’s too ready to trust someone because he doesn’t clock to the small, intricate differences that sets them apart from what he knows. Sure, he was pretty apprehensive about joining Maul here and Kanan obviously kept him safe, but I wonder how Ezra is going to react to this experience in the next half of the season.
3. Maul Comes Home
We haven’t seen Dathomir since the Clone Wars where it was mostly eradicated by Count Dooku, so I thought it was interesting to have Maul return home only to find it a planet of ghosts. Maul’s had everything taken from him. His home, his family, his name, his legs, his position as apprentice the galaxy’s most powerful being, and now his memory. There’s so little left of him that it barely fills the walls of a cave on Dathomir.
I think seeing the unhinging rage hinted at in this set, from the shrine to the Darksaber to the collection of defaced Mandalorian artwork, was the point I really started to pity Maul. He’s a husk of who he was supposed to be chasing at ghosts and shadows wanting little more than to exact his revenge on the one being who has haunted him for decades. It’s sad, in a way. He might be the most pathetic character in Star Wars now, just wasting away and hellbent on a revenge that we know he’s probably not going to get.
4. The Magic Of The Force
The other reason I’m glad Rebels returned to Dathomir in this episode is to bring back the magic of the Nightsisters. I love this conceit and it speaks all the way back to when the Force was called an “ancient religion” in A New Hope and Vader’s practice of it to be his “sorcerer’s ways”. I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of Force use and experimentation seeming like magic to those not attuned to the Force and the Nightsisters take that to a whole new level.
Continued belowTapping into a unique aspect of the Force, the Nightsisters communed with it not through meditation and research like the Jedi, but through rituals and spells like a coven of witches. The way this episode explored their Force ghosts and way of possession through the green tendrils of smoke was a way of visualising the Force that felt very unique to the Nightsisters. I doubt this is the last we’ll hear from Dathomir or the Nightsisters, but even if it this was a nice little epilogue to their story.
5. Master vs. Apprentice
If this episode had a theme, it was masters against apprentices. Ezra is a learner caught between two masters. One who is aloof, scattered and not quite his former self who Ezra is quickly outgrowing. The other is spiteful, driven by rage and revenge and sees Ezra as clay to be moulded into the dark side. It’s an interesting, if pretty dark, conundrum and sees Ezra actively pulled towards either end of the spectrum, forever out of balance.
That all came to a head as Maul flees Dathomir, leaving Ezra to actually fight against as a possessed Kanan in order to save him from the Nightsisters. This was an interesting scene because it showed that Ezra was easily the better of both masters, braver than Maul and stronger than Kanan, but his youth keeps him chained to these flawed and failing teachers. We already saw Ezra’s arrogance in the beginning of the season when Kanan isolated himself and pushed Ezra away, so what happens when Ezra realises he’s outgrown Kanan’s teachings?
