Racers, start your engines. Get ready…. Go! It’s finally another racer-focused episode of Star Wars: Resistance and, to my surprise, it’s an episode that doesn’t focus on Kaz! Who does it focus on? We’ll talk about that and much more down below in our Five Thoughts on the episode! Obviously, spoilers follow.
1. Racing Comes Around
After a few weeks of espionage heavy episodes, I was glad to see an episode that was not only focused on platform racing, but also shifted focus to Yeager instead of Kaz. It’s a chance to take a break from some very First Order/pirate focused episodes and do something a little different while developing the emotional and personal stakes of the series. And it does so by introducing someone very important to Yaeger…
2. Family Ties
So Jarek Yeager’s younger brother is Marcus Speedstar, famous racer. There is no love lost between these two from the off and, I’ll admit, I was surprised when I realised this would be a Yaeger-focused episode. When I saw the title, I was expecting Kaz to have found himself in a race once more, but no it’s actually about getting Yeager back in the cockpit of a racer, even if it is to show up his brother and win back some lost pride.
I’m glad the show took some time to develop Yeager a little bit more on his terms (if you remember, the last time we found out about Yeager’s backstory it was when Kaz snuck into his quarters) because it helped build the emotion and personal stakes of the series. The show has played fast and loose with serious storylines so far, but this was the most grounded and emotionally driven episode so far and it’s easily one of the best.
3. Speedstar’s Debt
I’m not going to say I’m disappointed that Bala-Tik, The Only Glaswegian In Space, didn’t show up in this episode alongside the Guavian Death Gang, but I was hoping he’d get a look in. I did appreciate the show bringing in this piece of film mythology and tying it to Marcus’s story to show just how far he’s fallen in the years since Jarek’s disappearance.
It was an interesting dichotomy to introduce Marcus and have Jarek continue to view his brother as nothing but a fame junkie only to reveal that he’s in some serious debt with people who call themselves a Death Gang. It brought a real sense of depth to their miscommunication with each other, both hating one another for the person they used to be and not being able to see how much they’ve each changed since.
4. Yaeger’s History
We knew about Yaeger’s wife and kid going into this episode, that he used to be a Rebellion pilot and subsequently joined the New Republic Navy as a fighter pilot. What we didn’t know was that Marcus was alongside him that entire time. It fills in a few gaps and explains why Jarek moved from being a Republic pilot to a racer and finally confirms how Yaeger’s family died: in a crash that was caused by Marcus using hyperfuel to cheat in a race.
It rounds out Jarek’s history and fills in most of the gaps in our knowledge of him that explains why we found him as an emotional recluse living on one of the most remote stations in the entire galaxy. Hopefully going forward, we’ll see Jarek come out of his shell a bit more and maybe we’ll even see Marcus reappear in the future.
5. A Different Side To Resistance
I was, honestly, expecting racing to be a much bigger part of Resistance based on the marketing, but I’m pretty glad they’ve shown some restraint and kept the races few and far between. We’ve only really seen two or three races since the show’s premiere and have rarely been able to see within the inner circle of the platform aces and it’s kept an air of mystique to the affair. It makes the racing feel important rather than monotonous.
And, to make it even better, the show keeps tying races to emotionally charged moments. Here, the race was built on whether Jarek would pull one over on his brother and gain back some pride or whether Marcus could convince his brother that he was racing for more than fame. That tension coming down to the last few seconds of the race was palpable and Jarek’s decision capped off an emotional episode with a heartfelt ending.
