Full Series Rebels 1.09 - Gathering Forces - Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

I say we take it to Dave himself, buddy!

TO TWITTER WE GO


"Pablo, pls answer"
"Pablo, pls"
"Pablo, is it red?"
"Pablo"

 

This is exactly what I expect from a mid season finale in terms of action. I continue to find Rebels really excels with the characters.

Kanan is not an average Jedi. His master and padawan relationship with Ezra continues to be dysfunctional in large part for Kanan's own inexperience. The dynamic between them is different from others presented. I hope there is exploration into Kanan's motives for deciding to train Ezra. The Jedi proper never would have taken anyone like Ezra even next to Anakin. I know Kanan is some sort of cowboy who pulled a Grievous on the Inquisitor and pulled his blaster but that still shocked me even if Kanan was desperate and it showed his deficiencies with the sword to want to use it like that. Then we got Ezra dark hair power. I wonder if we will get another take on the darkside or what it means to be a Jedi.

I also like the dysfunction and disparity growing between Team Ghost's own members. Sabine has had some slight character development and I get the feeling the inequality between her and Hera carries as much weight as the Secrecy.

I like that Rebels is providing plenty to speculate on despite being fairly linear and connected. I don't have any concrete theories on Fulcrum and get the feeling there is Red Herring on the identity. Folks who know me will be not surprised I am more caught up on Ezra's dad being voiced by DBB and yelling like Fives. Could he be a clone? Strange.

The Inquisitor is still competent. Despite it looking like he was outsmarted he doesn't suffer any badass decay. Like how he snarled at the big beast and it bailed from there. I feel the Rebel's victory may be a bit much but also suspect Tseebo is a MacGuffin. His name sure sounds like an Ima-Gun Di like pun. Its to much to hope he turns out to be a trap.

 

If the Inquisitor wasn't such a show off, he'd have killed them already. But alas, in the wise words of Luke Skywalker:

Spoiler

I just notice that Vader snaps his head like "OH NAW HE DIDIN'"

 

Nothing wrong with a bit of taunting when you're that far ahead of your opponent.

 

Way I see it is Inquisitor would have killed them if not for Ezra's combination ass pull/deus ex machina.

 

I suppose I should finally post my thoughts on this episode, it's certainly been long enough.

The first thing I can say I'm grateful for is that they didn't end it on a cliffhanger. if they had taken the winter break with last week's episode, that would've driven me nuts. As it is, we got a good conclusion and can look forward to more important things in the weeks to come. There, I said it. There are more important things than Star Wars. Blasphemy.

But anyway. I was particularly interested in seeing the Phantom drop out of hyperspace. I don't think we've ever seen a ship do that, and the effects were pretty freaky. hyperspace being what it is, I half-expected them to drop into real space like a week or a month later or something. have some space-time action going on there. But I guess not. It was cool to watch in any case.

Ezra's taming of the creatures on the asteroid was interesting to me. it actually seemed like at first he was afraid of them, but suddenly he does a 180 and says he's more afraid of knowing the truth about his parents. Actually I suspect it was a little bit of both, but finally admitting the truth of it let him tap into the power he needed to.

I was rather amused when the Inquisitor and his forces showed up and Ezra and Kanan are jsut sitting there in quiet meditation. A perfect Jedi-like moment I thought. Then we get more realistic combat with Kanan still being nothing close to the skill of the Inquisitor. I really think he hasn't even bothered with combat training since the fall of the republic, so he's really, really rusty at it. Watching Ezra call on the dark side of the force to defeat his enemies was arguably the best part of the episode. the look on his face made it plain as day. he was pissed off, and was done taking the Inquisitor's BS.

Some might want to argue that this means Ezra's becoming more powerful than he should be. I tend to think, while the power is there, it's uncontrollable power. he has no idea what to do with it, and it overwhelms him when he draws on it more than he can handle. That actually makes him weaker. Consider that he passed out after calling on that beast to attack the Inquistor. If the Inquisitor had been able to take it down, he would've made short work of both Kanan and Ezra.

Good reaction from Ezra, though, when he came around. Being cold. out of energy, perhaps, but I see it more as the influence of the Dark Side on his body, freezing it, taking the warmth from it. I suspect Kanan thought just as much.

So, Hera, knows what happened to his parents now too...we presume. But I wonder if perhaps that 'talk' Kanan insists on having with her at the end will be, among other things, to keep the information from Ezra, at least until he can decide how best to proceed with his training from here. It's clear Ezra's in a dangerous spot and if Kanan makes too many more missteps, they could easily have an out of control psycho on their hands.

From a technical aspect, there's just one thing that's bothering me.

When Kanan and Ezra are preparing to leave on the Phantom, Hera says to them from the bridge "Just be safe..." and then I swear, her lips mouth another word before she begins her next sentence. Like they cut a word out for some reason. I wonder if she was going to call him 'love' again. That's too bad if they did. I would've liked that.

Overall a good episode, very entertaining, and I look forward to next year.

 

I have to agree on Ezra. He maybe powerful but he reminded me of Savage in the way he connects with and used the force. Its like a raw and instinctive use although obviously lacking the monster's brute force.

 

I hope that they don't just drop the whole "Ezra flirting with the Dark Side" thing. That could be interesting to see more of.

 

I liked the Inquisitor's mention that his master would not be pleased that Kanan and Ezra had managed to escape again. Am I the only one who thinks that the Inquisitor's Master has to be Darth Vader? We already saw Vader giving the Inquisitor his marching orders in Spark of Rebellion. Hopefully when Ezra and Kanan get strong enough to beat the Inquisitor, it'll be time for Vader to show up.

 

I figured Vader has to be who the Inquisitor answers to. Lord and master seem like they can be interchangeable to me when addressing someone, someone serves like Vader.

 

I had considered that possibility, but I don't think that Palpatine would tolerate a large number of Force Wielders in the Empire. One powerful Inquisitor to hunt the half-trained Jedi that are beneath Lord Vader is all he would probably allow.

 

Vader directed the Inquisitor to destroy or turn the "children of the Force", and he's been trying to do so with Ezra, which suggests at least some comfort with the idea of other Imperial Force users.

 

Wheeee I haven't posted my thoughts here yet. Aight, here goes. I liked this stuff:

Spoiler

• Kanan trying to pull a trickshot on the inquisitor, drawing on him with his gun while in saber lock with him with his other hand, like Grievous did with that one Jedi he killed in TCW. Even if in this case it didn't work.
• Inquisitor trying to turn Ezra and Ezra teetering towards turning. Only for his veer towards the Dark Side to turn counterproductive for the Inquisitor as it attracted the big momma creature.
• Now we know what happens, and what it looks like, when a ship without its own hyperdrive separates from its mothership and falls back into realspace on its own. Freaky.
• Ezra getting mad at Tseebo.
• Ezra's increasing Force power, and his telepathic communication with Tseebo.
• The tracking missile.
• "My master will not be pleased."

Didn't really like:

Spoiler

• The two-dimensional space battles again. This is getting long in the tooth and it's more prevalent here than in any previous series or movies IMHO. How hard would it really be to do a nice cool-looking fully 3-dimensional space battle? The flat 2d plane "space is an ocean" stuff is staid and stale.
• 20 or so armored carbine-armed stormtroopers getting taken down by those things that failed to overwhelm two young women with handguns in a previous episode.
• The inquisitor taking so long dealing with that monster Ezra brought up. He has a 3 foot long cut-anything-with-no-effort energy sword that doubles up and spins around to create an enormous 6 foot buzz saw. He should have carved that thing up like a turkey in the first five seconds of the encounter.

All in all it was a reasonably good episode.

 

I think its more likely there are one maybe two of these extra darkside guys running around. If one dies then they are replaced.

 

Isn't this episode 7 not 9?

 

Still better then Ewoks.

 

I'm not too sure. Ezra kinda reminds me of a mixture of Anakin and Galen Marek.

 

The problem is some call the 'movie' 2 episodes, some call it 1, and some don't consider it an episode.

 

When Anakin uses the force its very deliberate and he seems to be thinking about it on some level. When Savage uses the force alot of the time it reminds me of an animal using claws and teeth to attack prey or defend itself. He's animal-like. Its just on untrained raw instinct in a way that's natural and nothing short of brutal. Ezra also seems very animal-like when he calls on the force particularly at the end of this episode.

 

The hyperspace detachment scene was great and the blurry, slowed-down speed lines appearing was similar to that. It reminded me of both 2001: A Space Odyssey and this:

 

Is it just me, or was the whole showdown with the Inquisitor completely unnecessary? Kanan barely escaped with his life in his first encounter with the Inquisitor, so setting up for another confrontation is basically suicide, which it very nearly was. Kanan says he needs to do it in order to get the Empire off Tseebo's trail, but there's no way they could track them without the homing beacon. They could have just had Chopper go out onto the exterior of the ship to detach the thing and they'd be home free.

 

They wanted to end the first half of the season with a 'bang'.

 

They addressed that in the episode.

If the Inquisitor can sense Kanan and Ezra then detaching the tracker wouldn't have stopped the Empire dead in their tracks. If they're pointing to two different locations, they'd just split up their forces. Having both go to the same location as bait at least ensured all the Imperials converged on their dummy location and allowed Tseebo to get into Rebel hands.

 

Mmm, well then why would the Inquisitor have bothered with the tracker then, unless his Force-sense isn't reliable enough to find Kanan and Ezra on its own? I mean, he was on Lothal at the beginning of the episode, and he certainly wasn't able to track these other Force-users which were on the same planet. So perhaps removing the beacon would be sufficient enough for them to lose their pursuers.

Or alternatively, if they really are that worried about the Inquisitor sensing them through the Force, they could have Chopper remove the homing beacon, bring it into the ship, and then have Kanan and Ezra lead the Inquisitor on a wild goose chase through space (as opposed to fighting a suicidal battle with him) while Hera and Tseebo fly off in the shuttle.