Full Series Rebels 2.12 - A Princess on Lothal - Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Not as exciting as what the rest of the trailer has advertised, but an alright episode nonetheless.

And they really nailed Leia. And it was so amusing to see her berating Lyste for the Lothal garrison's incompetence all the while undermining them.

And speaking of Lyste, I got to give him credit where credit's due. He actually prepared for the "theft" properly, which makes sense considering what happened to his former superiors and the other shenanigans Lothal's experienced in the previous season. Sabine's Sketchbook wasn't kidding when it said he was one of the more competent Imperials on Lothal.

And nice to see the Databank acknowledging the Hammerhead corvettes as being based on centuries-old designs.

 

Thought it was an okay episode overall. Follows on well from the last one while serving as a way to continue the story and considering what's coming up next I can understand starting off with a slower one after the holidays. With that said it wasn't completely devoid of anything. My attitude on a filler episode is that it can be somewhat relevant to the story if something of value is brought up in it.

For example though it wasn't much we got too see how Ezra's reactions to his parents deaths still affect him. It's a case of though he's upset ultimately the battle rages on and he can't spend time mourning them at least when in the presence of others. I get the feeling this will constantly be on his mind and as the season continues this will be part of what sets him on the path of seeking more knowledge on the Force well that and whatever else Ahsoka has planned. Everyone else was kind of left to the side lines but they worked well with what they were given.

Thought the action and animation was well handled. Every fight with the Empire and getting the ships away felt like a classic Star Wars escape even if the Empire are made to look like fools one to many times which Leia points out as part of the charade. Thought the humour worked too there's a lot of one line exchanges that were amusing "They are taking prisoners" "They do that now?" "I don't think he's on our side" Though when Ezra said "Excuse me" to Leia my initial reaction is to follow up that line with "Princess" but they didn't know who she was yet so they couldn't go for that reference. Also when Zeb beat them up lol. He seems so satisfied with himself after it.

Felt Leia was integrated well. Honestly when you do break it down at this time she would make the most sense with Han maybe being second while Luke would definitely be last. I just feel like Luke should never meet a Rebel till he's brought into it in A New Hope because part of his fascination with finding 3PO and R2 when they explain where they came from is that he's never met people who knew the Rebels so closely. Anyway thought they made her believable to where you know she's young but you can see her forming into the Leia in A New Hope. Some would wonder why Bail would send her on such assignments at her age its most likely to learn so she can become a capable leader and she is but she still makes mistakes and is willing to admit them.

Thought the voice actress was fine but I didn't really get a vibe of Carrie's voice but I guess maybe the idea was not too just directly copy Carrie's voice but to try to imagine what Carrie might have sounded like at a younger age (sort of like what Stephen Stanton said he tried to do when trying to think what Peter Cushing would have sounded like as a young man when playing Tarkin in Clone Wars). Though I thought she got Leia's bossy almost snobbish attitude down well even here it seems like it's just an act to keep up the appearance of she's on the Empire's side whereas in A New Hope let's face it guys she kind of was a snob as well as being bossy.

So yeah not much to write about but not a complete waste either. Looking forward to the next one though where we'll learn more about Sabine which is cool but I'm also curious to see the state of Mandalore and what it's been like since Maul was taken away and Bo-Katan was left behind by Obi-Wan to fight off Maul's remaining forces. Though I'm guessing the Empire is in charge overall who's the main leader in charge? Certainly not Almec he'd be dead by now. Do any of Maul's men still exist or were they completely wiped out at least the ones who stayed here obviously there were more around that helped him in Son Of Dathomir. Are there any Mandalorian Rebel fighters besides Sabine and is Bo-Katan among them or is she dead too? Who knows all the more the reason why I'm looking forward to the next one.

 

For some reason it won't let me highlight part of your message but anyway regards the Steve Stanton thing I am like Whaaatt! Peter Cushing's career is huge and all he had to do was watch an old movie with him in it for the younger voice, he didn't need to imagine anything

 

Dude, for someone that said there wasn't much to write about, you wrote a fair bit.

 

Am I the only one who thought the governor was a dead man walking when he agreed to help the rebels "Just this once"?

And once the firefight started at the landing ground that conviction grew. I was sure he'd go down while releasing the last ship. Standard fictional tropery would so often have it ending that way, that it's what I fully expected.

I was pleasantly surprised.

 

You're not the only one who thought that. I was surprised he survived as well.

 

It was a nice episode and great to finally see Princess herself in rebels.
+ Leia was well done and the way she acted in the situation was right. Making mistakes tell that she is still learning but is extremely bold and confident nevertheless
+Hammerhead corvettes are nice nod towards KOTOR- it really seems they consider it canon even if it is not officially so. Maybe they canonize more elements in the future- at least Nar Shaddaa should be seen at some point- such a classic place.
+ Imperials really tried this time- and the mention of "Alderaanian ships having a bad habit of being captured by rebels" is nice way to tell that they suspect something even before Tantive IV is being captured.
+ I see no issues of Leia seeing force users- she and Luke only discuss about the Force briefly in Rotj and that is about their personal connection- Leia didn't know she herself is sensitive but she is well aware of jedi like Obi-Wan (whom she never met though). Why she thought Obi-Wan is her only hope is naturally because she could only send R2 to Tatooine (being intercepted by Empire) where Obi-Wan lives- who knows where Ezra, Kanan or Ahsoka are at the time but even if they are alive they cannot help if they won't know what has happened so she puts her faith in Obi-Wan.
- Only one thing bothered me a bit- governor dude survived- he should've died IMO- to make imps look bit more dangerous. Yeah I got it they killed Ezra's parents so that's enough sadness for one episode it seems....

I thought that too as said and it could've been better IMO if even one rebel would have died....

 

I just need to reiterate once again... I did not like the voice-actress who voiced Leia. Visually, Leia was great. But vocally, that was not Leia to me. The voice just did not fit right at all. I'm really disappointed and saddened by this missed opportunity to do Leia right. That voice was a total disconnect with me. Believe me I tried hard to hear and feel that vibe of Leia, but that voice was so off that I could not believe it was Leia. To me, it ended up feeling it was just some other character I was watching, instead of Princess Leia. It's too bad because I was looking forward to seeing Leia, but that voice-actor was so bad, I don't want to see Leia come back on the show ever again. Unless they get a better voice-actress.
I mean, it was so bad, I'm sure Carrie Fisher was disappointed too.

 

It felt like the voice-acting was trying too hard to mimic the tone that ended up sounding unnaturally monotone, almost as if the voice was being generated by a machine. Lacked emotion.

 

Agreed. That's the only problem I had with it, actually. The voice actress sounds like she's afraid to emit emotion in fear of slipping out of character. Yet, I remember how expressive Carrie Fischer was as Leia. She didn't really start to sound "monotone" until RotJ, and I think we all know the reason for her voice problems in that one. It just sounded like an older Leia in the body of a teenage Leia.

 

It was good. I get what people are saying about the voice but it works well enough. I enjoyed the dialogue especially in this episode.

 

I was bored. I watched it at my computer and found myself constantly opening up other tabs and getting distracted. This episode was just so.... boring, IMO. Which was disappointing as I didn't mind the previous episode, got back into playing SWTOR, loved TFA, got excited by the mid-season trailer (and I'll hand it to the people as LucasFilm, they do know how to make excellent trailers, but as was often the case in TCW, episodes didn't live up to the hype the trailers generated). So I have been on something of a Star Wars high, only to resume this show and have it be so filled with unimportant missions, but then having poor use of characters on top of it.

As with TCW, there were episodes that had little in the way of character development, but were still exciting by virtue of action (e.g. Landing at Point Rain). Or there were episodes that focused more on the growth of a particular character (e.g. Ahsoka's final arc, the series' final arc). Or ideally there would be a balance of the two (e.g. the Krell arc).

But this episode was none of those things. I feel like it was just basically "here's Leia, that's fun right?" plus just another mission of the week that I don't feel is going to have any lasting consequences.

I think this show desperately needs to look into carrying a single story across multiple episodes. We had a bit of that with the last few episodes of Season 1, and I feel like those were the best, coupled with Siege of Lothal.

I like Star Wars, I watch this show because it's Star Wars, I want to like it. But I feel bored more often than not when watching it. I know TCW was getting some advertisement on Netflix as being a hot show or whatever, in the wake of TFA. I would just have thought that coming off of TFA, that the crew would want to lead with a better foot forward as a jumping on point for potential new viewers than what I saw with this episode.

 

They've added more ships to their fleet, their list of allies grows, and Vader's "You weren't on any mercy mission this time." line when he captures Leia has context.

 

I don't need 22 minutes dedicated to the acquisition of 3 ships. I feel like too much time is spent on these things. I don't feel like the ally list really grew, since Bail was already and ally and Leia is just his representative. I feel like the ally list is exactly the same, they just established that Leia - who struck me as being too old, since she's technically younger than Ezra - is indeed active. And I'm not sure mercy mission really needed explaining. Admiral Ozzle failed Vader for the last time, but I don't need to see his prior failures. Nor do I need to see why Piett isn't fond of bounty hunters.

I feel like each episode should be fun and exciting, not just something mundane to explain a line in a film that I was never once even slightly curious about.

 

I was talking about the ex Governor of Lothal.

Besides, if they just got the ships on a whim, we'd be sitting here discussing plot devices and shallow writing instead of pacing and story.

 

I thought this was one of the better episodes so far. Yes, they are relying too much on familiar characters, but I liked the way Leia was portrayed. To me, the biggest issue is the lack of a notable height difference between Leia and Ezra. Leia is a petite woman, said to be 4 ft 11 in (1.5m), and Ezra is said to be 5 ft 5 in (1.65m). In the actual episode, I think Ezra was about an inch (0.03m) taller than Leia at the most.

 

Wow, I always thought she was taller than that.

 

Have no fear, there is still time left this season for him to meet his demise.

 

Rebels sure are being miserly of their good guy kill counts

 

Out delivering the relief supplies. They probably didn't even know the real objective of the mission.

Maybe the ones on Hoth were newer versions. It's not uncommon for military equipment to be upgraded during its service life.

 

I guess that's a possibility. But would they still call it an AT-AT if they actually upgraded it?

 

It depends. The C-130 has been produced for something like 60 years, but there have been variants of it from the alpha model (C-130A) to today's current production model of the juliet variant (C-130J) for just the basic air lift models. That excludes the electronic warfare (EC), gunship (AC), etc models.

Edit to add: Usually if the upgrade is significant enough they'll throw in something like Super in front of the name. For instance the C-130J's name is the Super Hercules, and the USN's King Stallion is going to replace the Super Stallion helicopter. Even though the King Stallion is basically a redesign of the Super Stallion, the differences are significant enough to make it go from a CH-53E to the King's CH-53K.

 

Some good parts, some not-so-good parts. The plot conveniences were a tad heavy-handed: an old-reluctant-rebel-fighter who just happens to know something about grav-locks. None of the Imperials bothering to question Kanan, or a rather short Stormtrooper, regarding their credentials. No Imperials witnessing Leia working with the Rebels...

On the plus side, I did like the voice actress for Leia - she seems to have the inflection and speech pattern down pat. Loved Kanan and the Ghost destroying the AT-ATs.
Laughed out loud at Zeb's comment on how he had to knock Kanan and Ezra pretty hard because they had on helmets.
Loved seeing Leia get stun blasted again. LOL! I wonder how many times Leia's been stun blasted...

A decent start to the 2nd half of the season.