Full Series Rebels 4.01-4.02 - Heroes of Mandalore - Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

This all the way. It is especially annoying becuase they were already near the weapon, but "just so happened" to be out of range.

 

The show is Y7. TCW, for reference, was two ratings higher at TV-PG. A lot of this stuff is not *up* to them, they do everything they can to make it intense and moving within the restrictions of their rating category but they still have to obey the restrictions put on them, it's literally the law (FCC).

 

I think it's less the violence and more "weight" than people are wanted to see from this show. Rebels kills and injures plenty of characters, and this episode even features torture of two of its heroes and then the villain, but the violence never has much substance or impact.

 

This was addressed in the actual dialogue. Sabine's warning allowed them both to run and get clear of the blast range of the device after we saw them near it.

 

Yeah. It was a missed opportunity then surviving, but there WAS an explanation for it.

 

A shoddy one

 

The ratings aren't a big deal. They can get away with a lot as long as there isn't straight gore. The last episode had people being brutally disintegrated, last season Gar Saxon was blatantly shot, in the second season a dude got eaten by a space whale and the fifth brother got slashed up by Maul. Filoni talked about how he wrote in The Seventh Sister being bisected by Maul just in case it would be allowed, and that made it in, more or less. Aaaand there was that whole execution thing in the first season.

 

And despite all that, people will continue to think Rebels is as kiddy as Dora The Explorer.

 

What do you guys think of Kanan super jumps in the first arc? Boy that vertical jump was sure high, and I'm not talking about the jumperaroosky over the troopers either. The big one to get on top of the platform with the jet pack. Just wanted to point that out there. Great two episodes though!

 

Still not as high as those superjumps in the original Battlefront games. Those were the days.

 

Can you help me find Grand Admiral Thrawn?

 

Rukh only speaks Spanish. The word for blue is "azul" Can you say, "azul"?

 

Well, as much as I enjoyed this episode, I don't really have an in depth review of it.

Of course I'm glad Rebels is back. Got lots of insights into Mandalorian culture. Enjoyed Kanan's bit with Hera. The nitpicker in me thinks Sabine and her mother should've knelt before Bo-Katan along with everyone else, but that's a little thing.

I do find myself having a little trouble reconciling this Bo-Katan with the one that helped slaughter a village full of defenseless people in TCW "A Friend in Need", but times change and so do people. Her overall arc between TCW and now has taken her quite far, I think, and I'm glad to see the direction it's going. It was good to see her again, and it was good to see she managed to replace that piece of armor she lost in TCW "The Lawless". I don't know why but not knowing what happened to it still drives me nuts sometimes.

Sabine was in good form and it was good to see her in action...though I think she needs to take some time out and perfect her battle cry.

In any case I thought it was a good start to the season, and look forward to seeing where they go from here

 

Watched this again and my thoughts are still pretty much the same. I'm hoping the next SW show actually changes the status quo once in a while and takes chances.

Though I thought it was even more ridiculous that Sabine pressed a few buttons and that somehow miraculously had the machine damage stormtrooper armor over Mandolorian armor.

Also the Bo-Katan growth was something we would of seen in Siege of Mandalore, last we saw she was the leader of the resistance against Maul and his Mandolorian warriors, the next step would be her gaining the trust of additional clans and warriors which leads into her character we saw on Monday.

A Bo-Katan book set a few years after the Empire formed would be pretty cool actually.

 

Sorry, you think an in-story beat where a character warns other characters of danger....enough so that they DO in fact survive said danger is...shoddy?

I mean Wot?

That's called storytelling. It would be shoddy had they NOT had the beat in the scene where Sabine warns them and they still survived it....but by being given that beat of her warning them we, as audience, accept that said warning was enough to get them out of the blast range because ....ding ding ding....we see them alive.

I'm not sure how this is A. Complicated, or B. "shoddy" in any way.

You don't have to LIKE that they survived...that's fine. I get that.

But pretending like it's bad storytelling just because you disliked it...is a pretty entitled stance.

 

Maybe I said that wrong. I just think the story would be better if they had died

 

I do not necessarily want characters to die or live, with some exceptions (I want Ahsoka to live and I do not want badly done deaths.) I can understand, however, the frustration of having red shirts be stunned when they could be killed. Look at Cassian in RO. I know he is a bit more extreme, but these are rebels, and this is a story of war and death is necessary in war.

That said, I know these episodes had death in them, I think they were just done... weirdly.

Overall I enjoyed the episodes, and found them just as good / fun as season 2 or 3 premiers. I guess I am in the minority saying that, but I really enjoyed these episodes.

(Whoever brought up giving Bo the dark saber being anything related to race on the last page... that argument is ridiculous. It is part of her character arc, they did not think "this character is white and this one is Asian, lets give leadership to the white one for that reason.")

Getting my word in there and being done with that, it is weird Bo became leader after being generic bad guy before. Left a weird taste in my mouth, but it was weirder that she did not want to use the weapon on the Imperials. I think Kanan should have been the one to talk her down. Or Ezra. Possibly even Fen Rau. But no Bo.

Overall I really enjoyed the episodes, but there were some really weird parts in them.

 

A few additional things to address after re-watching -

Some of the dialogue was honestly straight up bad. In particular I thought Sabine's battle cry was...terrible (sorry Tiya). Another is Bo-Katan's "You named the weapon after my sister? The former ruler of Mandalore?".

I echo the thoughts that, much as I like Bo-Katan and prefer her as Mand'alor to Sabine (for now), the show does not do enough to distance this new Bo-Katan from the one who burned down villages with Pre Vizsla.

Also thought it was weird that Sabine's father is the one talking about how important their armor is to their identity...while being a completely armorless artist/pacifist type. Huh?

I liked that the first episode had Bo's two clan Kryze warriors show up and totally outclass the Stormtroopers (which they should, Mandos fought Jedi for god's sake) but then for the rest of the episode noone on either side could hit the backside of a barn with their shots. I mean, I guess stormtroopers missing is a running franchise gag (that I hate) but Mandos were previously shown as being damned good shots (I recall a Mando faceless mook shooting Obi-Wan's saber out of his hand) and neither the good ones or the "bad" ones can land a hit.

I also wish the Supercommandos had been displayed (not just told to us) that they're a major threat to the characters. We objectively know this information but it's not shown to us. For all cinematic purposes they're pretty much just Stormtroopers with fancy armor and an awesome background. I get the whole displayed ability versus informed ability versus needs of the plot and stuff but I'd still like to see Kanan or Ezra or Sabine or someone take a punch, just something to show they're in a real fight and not just strolling through the park with a lightshow.

As for some other's nitpicks - Bo-Katan's message was not about not killing/not fighting. It was about *how*. Mandalorians are about equal face-to-face combat - this weapon was, in Bo's own words, the weapon of a coward. Even Pre Vizsla held himself to a higher level of honor (accepting his duel and subsequent defeat by Maul) than what this weapon represents.

Overall though, I still greatly enjoyed this premiere and loved all that it added to the overall Mandalorian lore. That said, while I'm looking forward to what's next in the franchise for the Mandos I'm also ready to move onto different storylines for Rebels. It is the last season overall, and we've got a lot of other arcs to see and address.

 

This episode gets about a C- from me. Everything about the Duchess seemed a little too convenient. As in, everyone in the episode must act really stupid for it to function as a plot device. I mean, I really don't understand how Sabine could be so stupid as to think a weapon that targeted her own culture's armor could in any way lead to anything good. Certainly by sadistically giving it the name "Duchess" she was acknowledging how it would be used. (My attempts to justify it-Was she once a die-hard loyal imperial? Perhaps she saw its potential in cutting down on Mando civil wars?). Why would she act surprised that it would be used against Mandalorians? Brushing it away as youthful naïveté doesn't seem like a valid excuse to me as even a complete dummy would certainly see how a weapon designed to attack a certain target would be used against that target. Plus the idea that Mandalorians are so wedded to their armor that they'd act like stupid automatons and continue wearing it against something that targets it seems silly. Yeah yeah, hundreds of years of tradition yada yada. But you'd think they'd at least put tradition on pause for like a single day when going to battle against the thing that targets it. As for the setting on the Duchess that attacked Imperials only...do the walkers share the same material in them as stormtrooper armor? If it was on a stun setting, why did it burn a hole through the trooper in Kanan's room like the Arc of the Covenant through a Nazi? And really, absolutely no mention of Bo Katan's past? We're all just gonna pretend she's Ms. Loving Sister who totally hasn't dabbled in genocide?I find this especially frustrating because, as godisawesome mentioned on the previous page, mentioning her past would actually be a character building moment as it would be a bridge between Sabine and Katan in demonstrating how people make mistakes and try to come back from them. As for Saxon, I get the whole "don't kill him by slowly torturing him with lightning", but come on, at least capture the guy if you're not gonna cleanly kill him. Why allow him to live and continue to exist as an Imperial figurehead? Everything in this episode seemed to have the underlying logic of "because plot" rather than the rational actions of realistic people.​

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This episode wasn't without a few charms however. The idea of Gov. Saxon being a sellout was interesting. Thrawn was good. Kanan and Hera's moment was nice. I like the idea of Sabine's dad being Mr. Artsy as it seems to make the Mandalorian culture a little more nuanced than just warmongers (and nicely complements Satine's style of Mando culture and makes it seem less out of left field). The Duchess looked cool.​

 

Temporarily not wear armor? Of course the Mandalorians can do that thing! They were just a couple of decades ago, under Satine's regime. I'll bet that the thrift stores are filled with drab civilian clothes with heart-of-iron motifs. They can even learn, by observing other races, that you can wear civilian clothes WHILE shooting a blaster. Amazing! But Mandalorians and common sense don't often go together...

As for the Duchess sensing plastic vs. metal armor, an X-ray diffractometer here on Earth could do that easily. I've worked with one before; the principle is that they measure the space between atoms by shooting X-rays at their targets. Different space between atoms = different material. I don't have issue with that, or with Sabine having "loaded in" the profiles for different armor materials as part of the machine's design. It was more unrealistic how its energy arcs went around doors, etc. That's the part I rolled eyes at for the "plot device" thing. That and Ezra with his jetpack -- nobody sat him down in the mission debrief and said "You'll need to wear a jetpack for this mission, so here's one to try out for a couple days before we go?" ? because that would have made sense. I get that it was supposed to be funny, but every episode doesn't need to be funny. Really. It messes with the emotional continuity of the viewing experience.

I liked the different degrees of Imperial opposition we saw in this episode:
Sabine - vengeance / kill them all (moments later, talked down by Bo-Katan)
Bo-Katan - kill them all FAIRLY, in accordance to traditional rules of combat
Saxon's right-hand man - increasingly suspicious that his boss is anti-Mandalorian. It was great to see a thinking man instead of a mook.
Saxon - has a cute line "Mandalorians must evolve" to use to mask his self-interest. Nobody buys it.

Seeing Clan Kryze and Clan Wren NOT FIGHT ABOUT SABINE was a rare treat. Mandalorians behaving logically? Who knew! If nothing else, this convinces that Bo-Katan can, at this point in her life, lead. She's obviously had a long psychological journey that I hope she gets to share with Sabine.

 

This episode was way too Sabine-centric. I was starting to like the character during season 3, but not so much anymore.

It feels like there are some inconsistencies with the information we get in Trials of the Darksaber/Legacy of Mandalore and what we learned in Heroes of Mandalore. For one, Sabine said in Trials of the Darksaber that they used her weapon to destroy worlds, but in Heroes of Mandalore she acted like she destroyed the weapon before it was really put into production and had the chance to cause much damage. So did the Mandalorian clans turn on Clan Wren because of Sabine turning against the Empire, or because of the weapons she built? And has she built more weapons than the Duchess? Because she said she built “terrible weapons”, which to me implies there are more than one.

Ezra had some nice interaction with Sabine (he totally still likes her, but seriously, he needs to find a new girl to have a crush on. Ezra is too good for Sabine.). And I get that Ezra may not be in the brightest star in the sky, but he was dumbed way too down with his “I don’t know how to use a rocket pack”. Why would you give someone a rocket pack without at least giving them basic lessons about it first? Ezra’s “I don’t want to be a Mandalorian” line really cracked me up. No one is requiring you to be a Mandalorian, Ezra. Although it could have just been an indirect way of saying he doesn’t want to be a weapon.

The jetpacks, while cool, are overused. You don’t fly from a fifty-mile distance on a jetpack; you use a ship for that. Also, they were poorly animated in that chase scene. The way the warriors were tilted didn’t look like they could compensate enough to keep up with the prisoner transports. Sabine attacking the transport with the pink paint was tacky and it felt silly for an episode that was supposed to be more serious.

Ursa’s helmet is cool, by the way. As for Sabine’s father, he seems nice. I penned him as an artist as soon as he mentioned that the architecture in the capital city was nice. On the whole, Sabine’s family have really grown on me. Ursa seemed a bit prissy for my first impression, but I think she’s cool now. I like how Sabine's family was pretty nice and polite to Ezra, especially considering they don't know him all that well.

And the rebels destroy yet another Star Destroyer.

I liked Bo-Katan getting mad at Sabine for creating the weapon. I just wish she hadn’t thought Sabine was awesome (like everyone else) only a moment later. I especially hate her speech to Fenn Rau about how awesome Sabine was. Not everyone has to come and see things form the perspective of the Ghost crew by the end of the day. In fact, it seems like a good lesson to realize that there will be people who oppose you, and likely those people won’t change their opinions to match with yours. And I didn’t like that Bo-Katan brought up Satine. She never mentioned that Satine was her sister once in TCW. The only time I didn’t mind it was at the end, during her “For Satine, for my clan, for Mandalore” line, since I felt like it was her saying family first, clan second, Mandalore third, which seemed very Mandalorian. Bo-Katan actually seemed pretty in character, so I was mostly pleased with her characterization.

I’m tired of Fenn Rau worshipping Sabine like she’s some kind of goddess. I don’t mind him respecting the kid, but the way he always tells everyone how awesome Sabine is tiresome.

Kanan and Hera’s conversation was interesting. Kanan was surprisingly flirty. Guess he wants to move the relationship forward (finally). Kind of came out of nowhere, though, but I’ll take it. Kind of funny that Ezra flirts with Sabine right after Kanan flirting with Hera. And what, is Kanan the flying Jedi now? Some of those moves the Jedi were doing looked really wacky, with him leaping on the Mandalorians in the air.

Saxon letting Sabine change the weapon was the dumbest thing ever. Never trust a reluctant prisoner to operate a weapon that you don’t know how it works in a situation like that where she could easily turn the weapon against you. Why did they even need her? Surely there’s someone in the galaxy besides Sabine who can figure out machinery. I mean, all you had to do was press a few buttons. No one in their right mind would trust an unwilling prisoner with a weapon they don’t understand. Honestly, I thought that to get the weapon to attack stormtrooper armor, it sounded like they had to redesign it, so I was a bit confused that she was able to reprogram the machine so easily.

Also, The Duchess is hideous. You would think for an artist she would design something more aesthetic. And the Duchess? Why is it called that? That is the dumbest name ever.

I thought it was nice that Ezra and Sabine’s family leapt to her defense when those Mandalorians accused her of being a traitor. It kind of makes Sabine look more like a jerk, though. In Trials of the Darksaber we got the sense that her family betrayed her trust. But when she returns to Mandalore, Ursa and Tirstan aren’t bitter towards Sabine in the slightest, even though she ran away from her family and left them to face being in a bad position with the other clans alone. And her family, who supposedly “betrayed” her, is ready to support her no matter what. It makes Sabine look like a jerk who blew her family's "betrayal" out of proportion.

Also, do the rebels really believe that the Empire won’t have back-up plans for the Duchess hidden somewhere? Knowing the Empire in Rebels, they probably won’t. But it would be more realistic if they did.

I didn’t like how Sabine thought using The Duchess on the Imperial troopers was too evil but then she decides to do it anyway. And she didn’t even think about poor Ezra wearing his scout trooper armor. Nice, Sabine.

And it was cool they mentioned beskar. Nice reference to the awesome Republic Commando quartet.

And no Zeb. Poor guy has been thrown under the bus lately.

Also, this episode was a perfect chance to mentioned the Resol’nare in that scene were Ezra inquires why the Mandalorians can’t just change their armor (by the way, Bo-Katan’s glare at Ezra when he asked that was great). Since one of the six tenets of the Resol’nare is to wear armor, it would have been a better explanation as to why the Mandolorians had to wear their armor than the one they had in the show.

That’s a great point; I’m surprised I didn’t think of it, actually. Why would you design a weapon that targets only Mandalorian armor? That makes absolutely no sense. Basically, she designed a weapon that targeted the two things she was loyal to: fellow Mandalorians and Imperials. It's so baffling.

 

I think it's logical to assume the weapon can potentially target any material, not just beskar and Imperial armour. They explained that she had it target beskar due to her competitiveness and eagerness to impress at the academy. Naive, but she did stress a lot that she made terrible mistakes.

I think the amount of Sabine we had here was fair considering this was her arc to develop and reveal backstory. Which we did get a lot of. Before the mid-season of Season 3 there were still so many questions and she was the least-developed of the main cast. Now, I'd say she's come a long way in short time.

 

When it comes to X-ray using material identification methods, you really need to physically put the sample in front of the targeting device, so I don’t think this is a remotely good comparison. The reason why it’s possible to identify certain materials it’s because of the diffraction patterns they emit at certain precise x-ray angles using certain precise voltage (you often need to reconfigure this for samples of different density), not because there is a machine on Earth that can just shoot X-rays at random angles and automatically identify materials. There isn’t.

But Star Wars does have a lot of machinery that we don’t have (like Death Stars), but what makes me go “okay I can buy this” vs “this makes little sense” is the way these inventions are presented in the plot. Meaning, if there is a degree of believability (like having the Death Star laser to be “in range” before hitting the target) and consistency (like needing to calculate and input coordinates before jumping to hyperspace safely) in the making of the rules, that follows what is called “internal logic” of the narrative.

And… yeah, I cannot help but find a little too convenient that Sabine can just click a few buttons to suddenly have an a) weapon with full power and b) targeting only, and really only, stormtrooper armor regardless of angle, distance, range or even other materials standing in the way, or regardless of the fact that for such a cheap and common material, there should be other things made of plastoid there at range (like machine buttons and random accessories) that the machine conveniently doesn't target.

Oh but wait, it’s at full power but not exactly, because while the episode wants to make us believe that the reason why the machine is now able to hit targets at longer range is because “full power” (and the reason why Sabine’s family escaped was because it was not a “full power”), it also wants to make us believe that it’s not set at power enough to pulverize the targets because god forbid to portray the heroes as actively killing the targets. So...which is it? Is it at full power or not?

It was just Way Too Many conveniences thrown in at once.

And seriously, you cannot just create “exceptional rules” for a concept of a weapon when they are convenient for you but willfully ignore them when they are not. That breaks the internal logic of the narrative.

Though to be honest, I don’t have a problem with Sabine turning her machine against the Empire – in fact, I was already expecting that, because that is standard predictable plotline in Rebels, I would even say it has become the most used trope in SW storytelling due to the OT. But I wished the writers had found a smarter, more original (and more convincing) way of doing it. It didn’t feel like they put any creative or logic effort in the conclusion of this episode, and that’s a shame.

 

Sabine probably enabled its potential to go at full power, but Saxon then proceeded to use it at low power to keep torturing them. When it was out on the field, Saxon probably used it at its then-not-optimal full power, which was still enough to vaporise people.

I think you're thinking a little too hard into this, though. Mixing science and Star Wars is never good.

 

Well I didn’t think anything when I watched the episode, but it know it felt like really underwhelming and hardly convincing resolution and I’m now I’m just wondering on what it was lacking.