Blu-Ray Review – Star Wars Rebels Season 1

Star Wars is back, but I don’t need to tell you that, do I?

If you’re a completionist (and what Star Wars fan isn’t?), but didn’t want to negotiate Disney XD’s byzantine scheduling, then you aren’t just going to want to pick up season one of Star Wars Rebels, its required reading.

Star Wars Rebels follows the adventures of the Ghost, five years before the start of A New Hope. Our hero is Ezra Bridger (Taylor Gray), a young padawan who can quickly be summed up as a cross Luke Skywalker and Aladdin. His master, Kanan (Freddie Prinze Jr.), is a Jedi who survived Revenge of the Sith’s Order 66. Joining them is Hera (Vanessa Marshall), the Twi’lek pilot of the Ghost, Sabine (Tiya Sicar), a Storm Trooper academy dropout turned destructive propogandist, Zeb (Steve Blum), who’s origins in Star Wars lore are so obscure you’d think he was made up for the show, and Chopper, a disgruntled astromech who’s droid speech would probably be too risqué to subtitle. Chopper is as close to Bender as we’re probably going to get in a Star Wars kids’ show.

The biggest departure from our last Star Wars animated series is our focus. Clone Wars, after it hit its stride, was basically an anthology series, fleshing out the backgrounds of characters and references in the films, typically into four-episode arcs. In Clone Wars, each new story could follow any number of characters. Rebels takes a different approach. Instead of seeing everyone’s story in a vast galaxy, we get the stories of a few characters who are otherwise lost among said galaxy. The majority of the episodes don’t even leave Lothal, our setting du jour. Our villains are the Empire, but only the rank and file officers stationed on Lothal. The crew of the Ghost is pursued by Kallus, a strapping young Imperial Agent tasked with hunting down our Rebel scum, The Inquisitor, a not quite a Sith apprentice, but pretty close, and Minister Maketh Tua, who’s just trying to do her job. From time to time, we catch glimpses of the film’s other villains, notably Tarkin and Darth Vader himself. And of course, this being the final gap between the prequel films and the sequel films, we see the subtle changes that transition the last of the Galactic Republic to the Empire. And that’s what sets Rebels apart from a lot of other works in the new Star Wars canon. We have seen the formation of the Empire, and its downfall, but not a whole lot of what life was like in the time between films.

The series has a few stumbling blocks at the beginning (I’m looking at you, energy slingshot), but it does pretty much everything else right. Fans who want a continuation of Clone Wars will see the traces leading backward. Purist who want to put everything else prequel-based behind them will be glad to see characters from the Original Trilogy beginning to take the stage. Parents who want something for their kids will probably run into the same problems that Clone Wars had; the Empire is a fascist tyranny that runs on genocide and terror. It was hard to root for anyone or any side. The villains in Rebels are dark, but they leave just enough room to hit pitch black. Unlike Clone Wars, which struggled with likable protagonists for much of its run, the crew of the Ghost is much more pleasant. Our Jedi aren’t the perfect Obi-Wan and Anakin. Ezra can be an angry kid at times, and Kanan has a whopping case of survivor guilt. By the end of the season, you aren’t just waiting for the winds of continuity to kill off these guys. Instead I find myself wondering what they’ll be doing when the events of the films do catch up to them, and unlike Anakin, worry that some or all of them are doomed. Even Zeb, by far my least favorite character, grows on me by the end.

Season one of Rebels contains the thirteen episode run, the series premiere “Spark of Rebellion,” and four shorts that aired online and on Disney XD before the show’s release. On the Blu-Ray, special features include “Rebels Infiltrates Star Wars Celebration,” a short piece on Rebel’s presence at the aforementioned convention this past year. Other features include “Star Wars Rebels Season 2 – A Look Ahead,” series creator David Filoni talks about the development of Rebels as well as dropping hints and concept art for the upcoming second season. “Rebel Recon,” about a dozen five-minute commentaries on the development of the season’s storylines designs, and characters, each focusing on a single episode. And lastly, whether you need a refresher or just love hearing the sound of Kanan’s voice, there’s “Star Wars Rebels – The Ultimate Guide,” a recap of the series and the main characters that runs about as long as an episode itself.

Star Wars Rebels is a must own, amongst the sea of Star Wars merch you’ll no doubt be bombarded with in the months to come. Its a solid series that has learned from the films and shows that came before it.