Star Wars Resistance Fuel For The Fire Television 

Five Thoughts On Star Wars: Resistance‘s “Fuel For The Fire”

By | October 22nd, 2018
Posted in Television | % Comments

After three episodes, you’d expect Star Wars: Resistance would be ready to kick things into high gear, right? Well, you’d be wrong! Instead, Resistance is taking things slow this week with an episode that continues Kaz’s learning curve on the Colossus while diving a little into Yeager’s backstory. It’s a weird choice, now let’s find out if it works!

1. Back To The Races, Back To Work

Something I’m liking about Resistance so far is that it’s a very low stakes, episodic series on a very short timescale. It’s a far cry from the every-episode-is-a-short-film, anthology feel of The Clone Wars and the high stakes of Rebels. It is very much a kid’s show, but in a way that feels refreshing for Star Wars.

This episode opens with Kaz continuing to fix the racer he destroyed in the first episode, meaning it’ll probably be a hot second before he ends up racing again. Mishaps occur, obviously, because Kaz’s head is too much in racing and spying to focus on what’s he doing. It’s a kicker for an episode that is more focused on teaching Kaz a lesson (again) than adding to the series’s overall story and while I don’t know how I feel exactly about an f-word episode (rhymes with thriller) this early in the series, it was a fun romp.

2. Yeager, Voice Of Reason

Yeager’s a hard ass and I like that. Both Clone Wars and Rebels had student/master relationships that very much held to the traditional Jedi structure and I think part of that is why I felt Ezra and Kanan’s relationship felt stale in the first couple of seasons. Kaz and Yeager, however, are at odds with one another from the jump. Kaz doesn’t want to be babysat and Yeager doesn’t want anything to do with the kid, but there’s a mutual, if begrudging respect there.

And this episode goes a long way in fleshing out Yeager, establishing his background in the Alliance Navy and the family that is conspicuously absent. I think it helps bring the two closer by the end of the episode, even if neither will admit it. Plus, it’s not like Kaz can admit to breaking into Yeager’s quarters.

3. Hanging With The Cool Kids

This is what I affectionately call the “Bad Influence Episode.” It happens in every show aimed at kids and it is always an episode about a impressionable protagonist who feels trapped by responsibility and is taken in by either a bad influence mentor or a bad influence peer group and shown the Wild Side™. What happens after is usually that they commit some kind of crime despite the protagonist’s protest, it all goes to hell and the protagonist has to simultaneously fix the problem they caused and apologise for shirking their responsibility. That’s this episode to a tee and I think they do it pretty well here and the plus side of them getting this episode archetype out of the way early is, hopefully, that it’ll lead to a more mature Kaz sooner rather than later.

4. Learning The Hard Way

Resistance has spent three episodes introducing first Kaz’s spying mission then his cover as a mechanic then the temptation of becoming a racer. This episode is about how Kaz wants to be doing anything other than his cover job and I can appreciate the character they’re building here. He wants to be the hotshot pilot winning races, he wants to be the dashing spy who delivers war-ending information to the Resistance. Instead, he has to work a day job he hates under a boss who doesn’t like him with colleagues who don’t care about him.

This episode goes a long way in making Kaz appreciate how his day job not only contributes to his spy mission as a way of keeping his nose clean, but how the rest of the mechanics rely on him to put the work in. It’s an important lesson and a nice self-contained episode, though I do hope we’ll get to see Kaz racing sooner rather than later.

5. Maybe Not Learning Too Much…

Something about the ending of the episode mirroring the opening, but instead of Kaz sneaking out to watch the race he was allowed to work outside, was perfect, especially his inattentiveness allowing the platform to drift overboard. For all Kaz learned this episode, he’s still just a kid with his head in the clouds and a long way to go.


//TAGS | Star Wars: Resistance

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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