Happy New Year! Yeah, I’m two weeks late on my celebration, but what do you want from me? I was in my first Star Wars hibernation over the holiday season in three years. Do you know how stressful it’s been to review a Star Wars show from the summer to winter only for them to go and drop a new episode of the Skywalker Saga in the middle of December?
Anyway, Star Wars: Resistance is back on our screens to kick off the second half of its first season in grand, tentacly style! Let’s dive in.
1. The Neeku Episode™
I am, so far, what you’d call a fan of Star Wars: Resistance. While I think it still needs to ease into its place in the timeline of the Galaxy Far, Far Away, it’s presented a style and tone of Star Wars storytelling that is refreshingly light compared to the dense tragedy and drama of The Last Jedi and Solo. One of the elements that firmly plants that aloofness of drama in the ground is Neeku.
Neeku is a complex character. He is oddly literal, but never in a way one expects. His customs and mannerisms are entirely alien to the audience despite always speaking perfect Basic. This episode has Neeku bond with a small creature he names Bibo from under Castilon’s seas, probably the only time on the Colossus that Neeku has formed a bond free of social stress.
Part of me wants to be irritated by the fact that most of this episode’s drama comes down to the fact that Neeku is so stubborn in a) respecting the wishes of others to not keep a creature he has no experience with and b) releasing the creature to its progenitor when it threatens the safety of the Colossus. It seems selfish and, in some ways it is, but I feel like that’s the easy assumption that Tam makes and it’s not until she sees how upset Neeku is after Bibo initially runs aways that she realises how close he is to Bibo. Everyone on the Colossus wants for something and every social interaction is a bargain, is a transaction. Neeku just wants a friend, though, someone who doesn’t need something from him in order to be around him.
And I think that’s a very important feeling for Star Wars to explore.
2. Kaz And Synara, Sittin’ In A Tree… E-S-P-I-O-N-A-G-E
I really believe that if this plotline existed in a live action, more mature Star Wars show like The Mandalorian or the Cassian Andor show then it would be getting much more attention than it is currently receiving. This subplot between Kaz and Synara is delightful in the layers of character that it builds and subsequently peels away. Kaz, the bumbling mechanic who is secretly a Resistance spy and hyper-competent pilot, is trying to woo Synara who he thinks is just a salvager he rescued, but is in fact a pirate trying to find out who the Resistance spy is on the Colossus! It’s delicious, the levels of dramatic irony going on here.
That private boat ride on the salvage skimmer. The way Synara slowly brings the skimmer to a halt and, in her sultriest voice, tries to break down Kaz’s exterior aloofness to see if he’s really the Resistance spy while he thinks she’s just aggressively flirting with him and is trying not to let his cover slip. It’s perfect and is worth watching this episode for alone.
3. Bibo Fhtagn
I kind of went off on one about the importance of Neeku’s connection to Bibo, I know, but there’s another reason this episode spoke to me so much: Bibo’s a baby kaiju. From the shadow ‘neath the water to the tentacles rising up around the Colossus to the framing of Neeku’s interaction with the giant creature on the platform at the end – tiny when framed against its giant majesty – this is Kaiju storytelling 101 and Resistance nailed it.
It’s one of those episodes that is, in the grand scheme of thing, just a small character moment extrapolated out into 22 minutes in order to pass on a moral lesson to kids because this is, after all, a kid’s show, but it confirms there are giant Kaiju tentacle creatures living beneath the waters of Castilon and that’s maybe the best addition to Star Wars lore this show has given us so far.
Continued below4. Kaz & The Aces
I’m pretty sure I talk about this at least once an episode, but I’m still waiting on the time when Kaz becomes one of the Aces and if this episode is anything to go by, that time is coming soon. While the Aces scramble to the ships in order to defend the platform from Bibo’s progenitor, Kaz hops in the Fireball to fly alongside them. He’s competent, commanding, helps Griff out of a deadly nosedive and ends up being instrumental in allowing Neeku his moment to let Bibo go home free.
And all the while Captain Doza was watching with a close eye. I don’t think it’ll be too long until Kaz is racing alongside the Aces.
5. Kaz’s Military Knowledge
This is a tiny moment near the beginning of the episode, but I loved the acknowledgment that Kaz, who is a New Republic pilot after all, is knowledgeable about military history. Of course he knows that the Z-95 was used exclusively by Reaper Squadron during the Clone Wars, he probably poured over Galactic military history textbooks in New Republic flight school.
It’s a side to Kaz that is both new to the audience, but makes perfect sense when you think about it and continues to show character growth beyond, y’know, the bumbling idiot he’s made out to be most of the time.
