Full Series Grade The Episode 2.15: "The Call" (Spoilers Allowed)

I think Vader's quote from the mid-season trailer sums up the theme of season 2....

Fifth Brother, "They are getting powerful with the Force."
Vader, "It will be their undoing."

The show needs to show Ezra and Kanan growing more powerful and winning a lot of small battles so that when they eventually go up against Vader and lose, we as the audience will appreciate the utter hopelessness of the Rebels, the Jedi, and the galaxy's situation. If they lost to the average villain of the week, then they would pose absolutely zero threat to Vader and there would be no arc to the story and hence no climax to the season finale.

 

Problem with that scene for me is a few things aside from actual proper space gear, why would Kanan take him on that job and to pull stunt if he was not 100% certain that Eza was ready, they're skydiving without a parachute essentially. You have to question Kanan's senses and sanity and even the writers sadly. Comedy is one thing, goofying off behind cameras and sending out schlock and sending out a wrong message to the young humans who watch it worrying. Ezra cannot break himself from the fall but is later shortly seen force pushing someone to their death, made 0 sense to me. Another issue was Ezra connects with the Purgills WAY before and more so than Kanan.

 

If I could give one thing to Rebels, I'm glad that they don't have a "villain of the week" like an old Saturday morning cartoon. I was afraid they'd be rolling out a new Inquisitor-in-training (or however you call the underlings below the Grand Inquisitor) every week. Talk about repetitive lol.

 

I do think the series this season suffers from a lack of main antagonist, the near lack of the Inquisitors does make this season very bland compared to Issacs Inquisitor driving the story and characters along. Plus that character was there to get Kanan to point B, and to some extent Ezra, but now these characters are dull again like the start of season one.

 

As someone above has suggested, many of these episodes are filler and/or backstory ones. No imminent threat; with the exception of Kallas and maybe a Star Destroyer or two.

 

Quite. TCW suffered a bit with Anakin fighting Dooku so many times; the "my powers have doubled since the last time we met, Count" became an utter joke. Grievous was ruined by that show as well, by pretty much losing most of the time.

 

Trench was by far the greatest villain in that show...at least to me.

 

6/10
Mining Guild was cool
Pergil and the whole space exploration vibe (like in the last episode) were amazing
Yellow TIEs were cool
HALO jump was cool
Guy getting eaten was funny
Felt rushed
Weak villain
And what the hell happened to the Techno Union?

 

If and when Anakin and/or Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, or the other Jedi and clones fought Dooku, it might be once every half dozen episodes in a 20-episode season. And of course he had to lose because he shows up in ROTS. Kallus in Rebels seems to be there more often than not. In the end though, we all know that of the antagonists shown in the series, he's the most expendable.

 

I like a lot Kanan how he is, his strengh fit his story.
Vader is way stronger than him and it should stay that way.

 

The thing about Kanan is that he's already had his story presumably covered fairly thoroughly in comic and novel form. Does that mean there's not more to talk about with him? No, but it seems like Rebels is busy giving each character their own little mini biopic episode rather than give the more established characters a grander story.

 

Just to let you all know we do have a Kanan thread. So could you please take this discussion there?

http://boards.theforce.net/threads/kanan.50018434/

 

6/10. Second best episode of season 2.5 but that's not saying much. But hey the bodies don't move anymore when they die and that one guy got eaten so yay

 

8/10 I really enjoyed this one. It shows just how fragile/difficult things are for the Ghost's crew and threw in some cool universe building with the Purrgil. I thought the character design for Yushyn (the boss who gets eaten) was a little weird. At first I thought he was a Skakoan, like Wat Tambor, just without the suit. But I don't think that really works...now that I've compared pics of the 2. I'm also not too happy with the precedent of having Kanan blocking blaster bolts while standing on a moving ship. It happened here and in "The Protector of Concord Dawn). It seems like it'd be very difficult, even for a Jedi. Plus I'm not sure if I'd like seeing this live action (if say Rey or Kylo Ren did it in one of the upcoming saga movies). I do kinda wish that Ezra said something about the Purrgil leader understanding they need to try to avoid hitting ships in hyperspace.

 

This episode really surprised me. I thought it was going to be something utterly ridiculous, but I quite enjoyed it. The way the boss got taken out was silly, but otherwise a solid episode.
9/10

 

6/10. Surprisingly enjoyable for such an uninteresting storyline. Stupid plan though.

 

5/10. Ezra has a way of connecting with animals (which we knew way back in season one but hey never mind), mining is A Very Bad Thing. Other than that... absolutely nothing happened. At all. And fresh from his one whole episode of being relevant, Zeb goes back to being utterly pointless again, what exactly does he bring to anything these days? Hera did at least get to make with the sarcasm and one-liners, Vanessa Marshall is basically the entire reason Hera is even two dimensional right now. If you aren't a Jedi then you're a background face it seems these days. Or even if you are a Jedi, or were and you're name is Ahsoka.

 

7/10.

Another in the (very) long tradition of Star Wars stories drawing from/honoring its influences and inspirations. Or am I the only one who felt the music, the visuals and the blooming fantasy elements all added up to a very Disney-ized episode? Not as in "Here we see evidence of Disney's hand in SW," but rather this episode felt, at a few different spots, very much styled as a kind of tribute to one of those old, classic Disney productions.

It was good. Maybe not out-and-out great, but quite good (certainly the end product was far better than I first thought it might turn out). So absurd and fantastic, yet rooted firmly in SW traditions. So goofy and silly, yet somehow charming and very touching.

I mean, flying, Force-imbued space whales who can travel through hyperspace? If one is willing to just sit back, enjoy the ride and let come what may, then what's not to love, right?


And then we got a look at:

- Hera finally having some flaws (which is welcome)
- Further development of Ezra's latent gifts of the Force (which is cool)
- The Mining Guild (which is great!)


Come to think of it...

8/10.

 

6/10

hyperspace squidwhales were interesting and refueling was sort of exciting.

if Ezra keeps it up i'm going to have to stop calling him Aladdin and start calling him Doolittle.

 

1/10 the writers aren't even trying anymore. I mean they are not even pretending to follow the rules for the Starwars universe anymore, As for the episode itself it's simply throwing stuff at the wall and seeing if it sticks. This week it was Free Wily in Space

 

5/10

I liked the fact the miners gave the rebel crew a bit of a fight (better shots than the storm troopers)
I actually didn't mind the space whales
And the foremans unfortunate ending was quite decent.

It feels like the show is just treading water so far this season.I'm hoping we get a fantastic finale and pay off after all the filler episodes.

 

7/10
Liked the whales, even if seeing them going into hyperspace was strange at first. Villains were good for once, and they cornered our heroes that's still better than 90% of what stormtroopers did.
The moment with Ezra connecting with the whale was just WTF with the hyperspace eyes thingie. Hera wanted to kill those animals, it's a first. And I loved sassy Kanan at the start of the episode, he had the best lines. otherwise not really many substance for rewatchability.

 

I feel like this has been the technique throughout the entire series. It doesn't feel like there's a major game plan going on BTS, like TCW had. In TCW, end game was RotS. In Rebels, end game is ANH. However,I felt like we were getting closer to RotS as TCW went on. Rebels feels like it's been stuck in the same infinite loop over and over. It's very difficult for me to believe we're only 5 years from ANH.

 

Well we've still got 2.5 more seasons of content to expect.