A/V STAR WARS REBELS (show's over, spoilers allowed)

The Grand Inquisitor was a totally different kind of villain. I think they've done a good job of reining Thrawn in without undermining him.

 

Zahn approves of Thrawn's depiction in rebels though.

 

Spoiler

A very big MEH. Didn't feel like a finale at all imo. Other than helicopter sabers Twilight of the Apprentice was an excellent way to end a season. This didn't have much of an impact. Just Rebels running off to another planet as always. 6/10 for the action alone

I like the show but the episodes after Sabine's arc have been pretty underwhelming. I hope they do something new with S4 instead of the same old with Thrawn having a grand plan dragging every episode.

 

Good. And?

sent from my Moto X-Wing

 

In the Heir to the Empire 20th Anniversary edition, aside from the art thing, it wasn't Thrawn's intelligence, or even his strategic/tactical skill, that kept being focused on in the commentary, but his competence and ability to inspire loyalty (skill was the first thing mentioned, but far from the last)

Chapter 1:
19: The Star Wars movies revolved around villains who led by coercion and fear. That may work for short range operation (Vader's crew certainly put their hearts into their work), but it's not as good long-range or long-term. So I decided to do something different to try to create a commander who could lead by loyalty.
What qualities should such a commander have? The first, obviously, is strategic and tactical skill. His troops must believe that any operation they're going into has a good chance of success, with as few casualties on their side as possible.
There will be more examples of Thrawn's tactical skill throughout the book, but here's the first: he defeats an entire New Republic task force without, apparently, ever even bothering to leave his meditation room.
There are a few other qualities that I came up with when mulling over Thrawn's character. I'll comment more on those as we go along.

Chapter 8:
2: The second quality of a good commander: the ability to hear, evaluate, and adopt good ideas even if - perhaps especially if - they come from those who are technically his inferiors.

Chapter 9:
1: The third quality of a good commander: the ability to see what is most valuable in his troops. Competence and the ability to learn are more important than the trappings of pomp and pageantry.
Though Pellaeon clearly still misses that pomp, at least a little.

4: The fourth quality of a good commander: he plans ahead as much as possible.

Chapter 30:
3: The fifth quality of a good commander: he keeps his priorities straight.

Chapter 31:
5: The sixth quality of a good leader: he doesn't waste his troops, but does what he can to get them to safety once their mission is complete or has been rendered impossible by the circumstances of the battle.

6: The final quality of a good commander: a willingness to retreat when the circumstances of battle make the objective no longer attainable.
Note that at the same time, he's maintaining the "glass half-full" attitude vital to keeping up his troops' morale.

7: So here at last we have all the pieces that went into the creation of Grand Admiral Thrawn.
He's competent and capable, enough so that his troops can be assured that they have the best possible chance of winning whatever battle they're sent into.
He cares about his troops, and they know he won't sacrifice them for nothing.
And he's driven by logic and reason, not anger or ego or wounded pride.
Throw in the semi-mystical art thing (through which he can anticipate his enemies' moves), and make him an alien (because the Emperor disliked aliens, and would never give such a rank to one unless he was really, really good), and, when you've done all that, Grand Admiral Thrawn simply falls out of the equation.

 

So, when will the Season 3 Blu-Ray come out?

 

Iron_lord
That's all well and good, and given the particulars of his depiction in Rebels, I don't think any of that is contradicted.

 

One of the problems I had with Zahn's depiction of Thrawn was the fact he kept trying to make Thrawn seem awesome by tearing Vader down and saying he was a "different" kind of Imperial.

That wouldn't fly in Rebels.

Both Tarkin and Vader are already shown to be immeasurably good at their jobs. Also, the majority of Imperials are loyal with Kallus the outlier.

 

IMO EU Thrawn was overrated. I rather like the snake we get in this show because he feels less glorified, and I hope Zahn continues with the character in this fashion in his new book.

Sent from the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs

 

Also

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It's pretty clear the Bendu is a big fearful dark side Gollum.

 

Spoiler

I for one kept fearing for basically the entire main cast. They had me believing, and actually a bit tense at several moments, that Kanan, Rex or Zeb could bite it this episode. Kanan had his moment of Zen, he acknowledged he had nothing more in the realm of Force training to give Ezra, and now he was basically just the father figure. Rex and Zeb were truly getting along and enjoying each other as brothers/comrades in arms. Their relationships were at such different places than they had been, that it made me even more scared. And Angry!Bendu was sort of terrifying.

And then Bendu's prediction caused actual fear to come across Thrawn's face. What was that about? What is Thrawn's biggest fear? It wasn't facing the Raging God itself. That didn't bring actual fear, just defiance. The Bendu spoke something that pierced Thrawn's soul, and I think it's more than just the general idea of future failure and defeat. And I think we as viewers are meant to be afraid. We should also fear that type of thing that makes Thrawn afraid.

.

 

Spoiler

I think what Thrawn feared - and what was genuinely scary about this - was the Bendu's assertion that Thrawn's ultimate defeat was already in motion. For someone like Thrawn, I couldn't imagine being told I was missing something. It's going to eat away at him.

 

Yay, named Rebel ships!

Spoiler

Dodonna's frigate is the Vanguard. The carrier is named Phoenix Nest!

--Adm. Nick

 

I think the show captures Thrawn's personality, quirks and other things about him as a character very well. The actions he takes and his competency are right along the lines of his better portrayals, including Zahn's.

But here's the thing: this is a show for children. And people forget that a lot. People forgot about that for TCW as well. And nowhere is that more evident than in the plotting. You aren't going to get Zahn's backward-bending, torturous plots and plans and schemes within schemes in a show for children, especially not in 22-minute chunks. They tried something like that; they spread Thrawn throughout the season, made it clear that he had a plan in place and was waiting and biding his time so he could gather information. But because it took so long, and because so much happened in the meantime, it wound up being poorly paced throughout so it felt like he was sitting around doing nothing. They showed him doing things like studying art and talking about studying the rebels, but they never actually talked about what he accomplished by doing that, what insights he unlocked.

I don't know. I don't like the approach they made with Vader, where he's only in the beginning and ending episodes of season 2 and doesn't even show up otherwise, because that cheapens the rest of the season, everything else feels small-scale and pointless. But spreading Thrawn throughout the season made him look ineffectual. The writing from a plot perspective was basically the same with him as it was for Vader: he did stuff at the beginning and at the end of the season, but in-between he did very little. But because he actually showed up between those two points, it made him feel more ineffectual. He was good in the Ryloth episode, but beyond that, his other appearances were very generic, with Lars Mikkelson whispering threats about getting ever closer to launching his plan over ominous organ music.

This being the show that it is, with the audience that it's meant for, Thrawn is a very high-brow sort of character to try and use. He's very intellectual and intelligent, doesn't often take direct action in combat, and benefits as much from his mystery as from his actual abilities. He's not superhuman like Vader, he's just a great military leader and his portrayal in the show reflects that. But because they couldn't/didn't show as much of his plotting or thought process as you can get across in a novel, that's all he has.

Spoiler

I'm glad they didn't repeat their mistake they made with the Grand Inquisitor and left Thrawn alive. Popularity aside, there's plenty of room for Thrawn to do more as we move forward. If the rebellion goes underground from now until Scarif, which Mon Mothma's dialogue to Ezra hinted that to me that they might, Thrawn might get reassigned out to another sector, possibly to the Empire's expansion into the Unknown Regions, which frees him to make appearances down the line a la TTT.

 

We all knew that Thrawn wasn't going to have an absolute victory, I don't know why anyone was expecting more than what we got in that regard. The single mistake he made throughout the entire operation was putting Konstantine in charge of an Interdictor, which is kind of understandable given that Konstantine is the admiral Thrawn's working with, and Thrawn brought two just in case anyway.

 

Cynical_Ben

I agree with some of your post but I also have some other thoughts. For one, I hope Darth Vader never actually appears again on the show. I think he was a wonderful guest star but I think the stunt casting from the movies and TCW has been a serious problem for Rebels. Ahsoka and Rex took a lot of time away from Kanan as well as Ezra (not to mention Zeb) but it also affected other plots too.

The Grand Inquisitor lost time which could have been spent on him and his villainy with the detour into Grand Moff Tarkin as the "big bad." There's also the fact Darth Maul became a kind of black hole which killed the two Inquisitors to make him look better when I was all about them and their relationship to the heroes. Darth Maul was too powerful of a character for Ezra and Kanan to defeat so we were effectively stuck with a character we couldn't use or develop, Say what you will about Cobra Commander or Skeletor but at least we could know our heroes would beat them as well as develop a personal animosity with the protagonists. The kind of animosity we had with Darth Vader and the Heroes of Yavin in the in-between comics of Star Wars and ESB.

For me, I'd like the Rebels series to have a foe which is their level and they can hit and would hit back. A Inquisitor like Tremayne or the Grand Inquisitor who is roughly our heroes level so they can beat him or get driven away. Thrawn is kind of on the middle ground even as I can summarize my problems with him far more succinctly than your (excellently written) bit. Thrawn's biggest problem is the heroes runs rings around him and it's "all according to plan" which is an excuse that ran thin pretty early. I love Thrawn but I'd rather he have a big epic plan which ends in disaster than small scale ones which he kinda wins. I'd also like some more devotion to the Inquisition because they were the part of Rebels I liked most.

Have some confidence in your own characters, writers.

I also think we need a Count Vidian character really because the show would benefit from some villains our heroes can just tear into.

 

Why not just Count Vidian, honestly.

EDIT: Oh, right, he's dead.

 

Albeit, recent events mean we could actually have Rae Sloane show up as a character's replacement. That might give the villains TOO MUCH plot armor, though.

I would love for actual Tremayne to show up as an Inquisitor, though.

 

Anyone know when the UK gets the finale? Today was a rerun and the Sky EPG says next Sat is as well.

 

As would I. It seems odd that all the Inquisitors we've met have been non-human.

 

Spoiler

Personally, I find it a bit annoying when a military defeat is undone by the intervention of a god like being, even the Ocean Spirit in the first avatar finale.

Though, Thrawn did a lot better than Zhao did when faced with such a foe. He fought a storm and won, even without a Jeager. ;p

 

Spoiler

I mean, come on. Thrawn looked into the face of a threatening Storm God, stood his ground, and REPEATEDLY SHOT IT IN THE FACE. That's hardcore.

 

For one brief, exciting moment, I thought it was her in the Geonosis episodes.

 

I don't even think anything in 25 years of worshipful Thrawn fanfic went there.

 

Spoiler

I'm a little late but one other thing re: the orbital bombardment--not only did Thrawn at least kind of want to take the leaders alive, he wasn't seeing what we saw. He ordered the bombardment to "test their mettle", and while we know the shield was barely holding together it's very possible the Chimaera's sensors didn't tell him that. So rather than waste time pounding away he just stopped it and went in. It was a lucky break on the Rebels' part as much as anything.

Anyway, what I've been thinking about most, relatedly, is that Thrawn and the Empire must see this as an even bigger victory than it really was. If Mothma had sent more ships it would have played into his hands, yes, but it seems like he really thought the ships he wiped out in the first half were the entire fleet. They never got to search the gunships, hammerheads, etc. on the ground so they may even have been assuming Mothma herself was there and barely escaped. And since the leaders did escape, and there's no one of consequence to interrogate, the Empire could be going into season four thinking the Rebellion is basically over.

Which would mean a couple things--as others have said, it points to the much more underground leanings of the RO council, but that being the case, one wonders what kind of action can still unfold between now and then if they have to remain comparatively invisible. It also means that maybe the Empire will see this as Mission Accomplished and assign Thrawn elsewhere while leaving Pryce to mop up (though Bendu foreseeing his defeat does suggest he's sticking around).

Last point: I admit that I was kind of pulling for them to flee to Dantooine rather than Yavin, but considering the one appearance it has made (and the fact that Leia gives it up as a decoy) makes me really start to think Dantooine was just an outpost/rallying point and never a serious base. For all those ships to show up there, many of which were presumably new to the cause, they'd have had to be pretty liberal with the coordinates. I'm assuming at this point it was just a meeting place and then everyone was reassigned elsewhere.

 

Also, once GrandAdmiralJello get caught up, we're going to have to get his input on

Spoiler

dat chestplate