Review: Star Wars Rebels “Visions and Voices”

I had a vision.

Spoilers Below

While Hera is talking about an upcoming mission she would like Ezra to lead, the young Jedi seems distracted. It turns out that he is having visions of Darth Maul, apparently a side effect of his their holocron mind-meld. Hera goes on her mission while Kanan puts a tracking device in Ezra’s communicator so Sabine can track him. Then Kana takes Ezra to Bendu for advice, which was fairly useless. Bendu reminds them that bringing the two holocrons together is dangerous but he also says that it isn’t good when Ezra tells him they were destroyed. That is when Maul appears.

Kanan and Ezra prepare to fight Maul but he tells them that he is not there to fight. He wants to complete what he started with his apprentice. Unfortunately, Maul was able to get the location of the Rebel base out of Ezra’s head last time. (Though they don’t really explain why Maul hasn’t used that information already. It has been awhile.) Reluctantly, Ezra agrees to go with Maul. Sabine and Kanan follow them.

The Sith takes Ezra to his home planet, Dathomir. On his planet, there were these witches called Nightsisters but they were all killed by the Empire. Maul wants to use their magic to get the rest of the information out of Ezra’s head. The two of them drink a potion and do another mind-meld thing. And both of them get the information they wanted. But they also released the spirits of the Nightsisters, who want compensation for the use of their powers. Kanan and Sabine arrive, just in time to be possessed by the sisters.

Maul tries to convince Ezra to leave his friends, which Ezra refuses, of course. Before he leaves, Maul tells Ezra that the sisters can’t leave the cave because they can’t venture far from their altar. This gives Ezra an idea. He force-pushes Sabine outside of the cave until the Nightsister possessing her leaves her body. Then he fights Kanan until he convinces that spirit to leave the Jedi’s body. Once both sisters are spirits again, Ezra destroys the altar, killing both of them. Afterward, Ezra tells Kanan that Obi-Wan Kenobi is still alive and he is the key to killing the Sith. They just have to figure out which planet with two suns he is on. As they leave, Sabine grabs a dark lightsaber that Ezra noticed when he arrived with Maul.

It has been a long time since we’ve seen Darth Maul. So long that this episode was a little jarring. If Ezra had been having tiny visions of Maul this whole time, it would be one thing. But seven episodes have gone by with no side effects from Ezra’s dealing with Maul. While I’m glad to have that little plot loophole closed and to get the storyline going again, there wasn’t a lot of action going on here. Now that we have Maul back on the scene and Thrawn has rekindled his interest in the Rebels, maybe we’ll see some epic battles in the future.