We’re in the endgame now, people. As Star Wars: Resistance barrels towards its first season finale, we continue to look at how the First Order increases its stranglehold on the Colossus platform. This time, people are going missing…
1. The Rise of Neo-Fascism… For Kids!
The rise of the First Order over the past handful of episodes has been insidious, but not exactly subtle. Sure, they’re control over the Colossus has increased over time and the characters point out that it’s worse now than ever, but there’s something about how quickly they’ve jumped to disappearing undesirables that sticks with me.
It’s something that I’ll come back to later because, boy, I’ve got a lot to say about Tam again, but it’s hard to gauge whether or not Resistance wants us, the audience, to believe that any character genuinely believes that the First Order aren’t moustache twirling bad guys. I know the show’s for kids, but it’s hard to have a character who thinks they are a voice of reason seem credible when they are so blatantly wrong.
2. Dissent Of The Masses
This episode is all about how the First Order is cracking down on vocal dissent of the First Order and kidnapping and imprisoning those who would speak out against them. Foremost amongst those are Hype Fazon and Aunt Z, two side characters who aren’t important enough that they’ll be missed when they depart the show at the end of the episode, but recognisable enough that you can understand why Kaz and Torra care about finding them.
It’s a pretty good set up for an episode and works for the most part, but it does showcase how quickly in the last quarter of the season that the series is setting up the First Order occupation as the big obstacle the heroes and how, in places, haphazardly they’re going about making the Space Nazis look like bad guys.
I feel like the goal with the show was to establish a baseline for the Colossus and pressure Doza into accepting First Order security only for it to slowly and insidiously grow beyond his control into a full blown occupation, but the pacing of the show and the very arch, for-kids writing hasn’t allowed that narrative to flow quite as well as it could have.
3. So, About These Races…
The Aces and their races is something I keep coming back to when I think about Star Wars: Resistance because it’s a piece of the show’s puzzle that never feels like it fits right. It was all over the show’s marketing and Lucasfilm was sure to introduce audiences to each of the Aces in turn (including Freya, Griff and Bo Keevil, whose names I had to Google because they’re such non-entities in the show), but they’ve played such a small part in the actual series.
Kaz’s sometimes goal to become an Ace was mentioned for the first time since the series premiere in this episode as was Tam’s similar goal only for it to be dashed by Doza cancelling all future races. Cool, so the driving motivation (sometimes) of two characters (kinda) was brought up just to remind us it exists (sorta) only because it’s dramatic when it’s reveal it can’t be attained (not really).
This is my struggle with this show. It’s good when it’s focused on the “Resistance” part of the title, but the races and the Aces have not meaningfully factored into that on any level. They’re set dressing for the Colossus and it’s a shame to see such an interesting concept be so downplayed.
4. Entering The Endgame
So, here we are: three episodes away from the end of Resistance‘s season one finale, and how do things stand? How far have we come? Kaz is still a goofball, albeit one with a smidgen more responsibility than he started and is actively taking the fight to the First Order when he can. The rest of Kaz’s crew – Yeager, Tam, and Neeku – are pretty much the exact same characters as they were introduced except we kind of know a little bit more about Yaeger’s backstory. Two of the five Aces are complete non-entities and the only one with anything resembling development has been Torra.
Continued belowWhere am I going with this? Well, it’s been seventeen episode out of twenty and, let’s be real, how much of the series’s story has actually developed. The majority of the midseries storytelling revolved around Kaz and Synara, but she’s out of the picture for now. That leaves us with a bunch of fairly static characters, a threat that isn’t as complex as the series seems to think it is and a conflict that we, largely, know the resolution to. I’m going to be pleasantly surprised if this show pulls it out of the bag for the remaining three episodes, but I think we’re chalking this one up to another rocky first season for a Star Wars animated show.
Here’s hoping The Mandalorian is more stable.
5. Still, With The Tam Thing
No, I don’t want to be talking about this for, I think, the third episode in a row? But it’s back! Tam continues to be the Sole Voice Of Reason against the moustache twirling, people disappearing, literal faceless space fascists of the First Order. At this point, I’m just going to be repeating myself because I continue to be disappoint in the exact same way in every episode. Either the episode posits Tam as in defence of the bad guys who clearly don’t need defending (because, again, this isn’t a moral quandary that has two sides: the audience explicitly knows how vacantly evil the First Order is because we know that the are days away from firing a laser through hyperspace that will kill billions of people) or the episode posits Tam as a busybody who’s just trying to ruin the fun of the storytelling so every character around her lies to her face “for her own protection.”
It’s the Iris West syndrome. The only black woman of relevance to the story has to be the nag that undercuts the zany adventures being had by the other characters and so the other characters infantilise her in order to get away with that shit. At least she isn’t Kaz’s sister that he wants to bone.
