Review: Star Wars Rebels “Jedi Night”; “Dume”

Star Wars Rebels returns with a shocking beginning to the end.

Overview (Spoilers Below):

When we last saw our Rebel pals, their assault on the Empire had failed and Hera was in the clutches of Admiral Thrawn. Jedi Night picks up shortly afterward. Gliding in disguised as Lothbats, the crew enacts their plan to rescue Hera. (In short, Kanan gets to play the hero while Sabine and Ezra commandeer a ride out.) Everything goes according to plan at first, with Kanan easily retrieving Hera from her torture chamber. Unfortunately, his feelings for her distract him from the mission, and he loses his lightsaber. This wrinkle causes them to take off on the gliders and head for the fuel depot, which results in the demise of Kanan Jarrus.

Dume finds the crew splintered over the death of their leader. They deal with their grief in different ways, but Hera finds the most closure, accepting the tragedy and finding the strength to continue fighting. Though they may not be able to save the entire planet of Lothal, their next mission is to liberate the Jedi temple and find the knowledge hidden within.

Our Take:

For me, Rebels has always been a show that lives in the extremes: one episode can be very good, and the next week’s a bore to sit through. Luckily, Jedi Night is a near-perfect start to our final few episodes. It delivers on almost every front, with moments that show off how far our heroes have come (Kanan trusts Ezra enough to let the kid come up with the plan to save Hera), while also emphasizing how far they have yet to go to achieve freedom from the Empire (the rescue takes place in the evening, and the Imperial compound is shrouded in darkness that overwhelms the small rays of color that shine through).

My one complaint is that the middle felt a bit weaker than the beginning and end. Despite Hera’s predicament, I never got the sense that she was in any real danger. I think this stems from how easy it was for the Rebels to reach her. A brief flyover and next thing ya know Kanan is coming up through the floor. (To be fair, his takedown of the two Stormtroopers was a very badass moment.) The episode manages to regain momentum with the unexpected complication of Kanan’s lightsaber loss followed by the loss of Kanan himself. Yes, Filoni and crew did it. They killed off the main character on a Disney-branded channel.

Unfortunately, Dume wasn’t quite so successful. With the group split apart over the death of Kanan, the episode has to juggle multiple storylines with varying results. Hera deals with her grief in the healthiest way, reminiscing about her lost love and vowing to remember his sacrifice. (Chopper is unexpectedly understanding. I lost it when he held Hera’s hand in his little mechanical pinchers.)

Ezra tries to run, but ends up getting lost and is plagued by nightmares of talking Lothwolves. (Was it a dream? Is that wolf actually Kanan? The episode doesn’t provide clear answers, which is fine.) I would’ve expected Ezra’s segments to be some of the most emotional, but they fall flat. He never really expresses what he’s feeling, besides saying he’s “lost” without Kanan, and Taylor Gray’s line readings are disappointingly monotone.

Sabine and Zeb mourn their leader’s loss by planning to add some ‘fireworks’ to the Empire’s parade. In the end, all they do is knock out a Stormtrooper and spraypaint Admiral Thrawn’s assassin in a sequence that jumps from startling intensity to silly pranking way too fast. The tone in their scenes felt all over the place. (And was Zeb really going to punch the creature to death? What exactly triggered the end of Sabine’s bloodlust and caused her to stop him?)

Dume also has a couple moments that made me scratch my head. For one thing, how did Governor Pryce expect a parade to cover up the destruction of the factories? Did she really think that Thrawn would be unaware that production had ceased? Another minor quibble – why is Zeb the one to teach Sabine about Imperial staff vacation policies when she was the one who trained with the Empire for years? Little things like this took me out of the episode.

Kanan is gone now. I didn’t expect his demise until the final episode of the show, so I’m looking forward to seeing more of the crew dealing with their inner turmoil. There are still a lot of unanswered questions, but it looks like the Jedi temple may be the key to discovering the answers that the Rebel crew – and we viewers – seek.

Score
7.5/10