Home Alone
(This review contains
spoilers!)
After a pair of two-part episodes, it’s
time for the Rebels to return to home base: Lothal. It’s nice to go back to
Lothal every once in a while to return to the show’s roots, and these episodes
were no different as we saw a few returning faces as well as several teases for
things to come.
Both episodes were exceptionally well
done, even by Rebels standards. While
the first episode was far darker than the second, each had great moments with
the characters while still setting up plotlines for the future.
The first episode, The Occupation, was the better of the
two, as the Rebels return to a Lothal completely under the Empire’s control.
The background art and lighting in this episode was exceptional, as they were
able to show off the burned atmosphere of a once peaceful planet exceptionally.
The darker themes translated into the
story, as Ezra and friends struggled to find their way through the streets of
Imperial Lothal without attracting trouble. They manage to escape with the help
of that kid Ezra broke out of the Imperial Academy in Season 1, travelling
through the sewers to escape.
They get away of course, leading
directly into the second episode. I do find it weird that we’re still doing
double features every week instead of one episode at a time, especially since
this season’s been confirmed to be shorter than others. We only have roughly 10
episodes left after this week, and hopefully they’ll start padding them out
once the New Year begins so we don’t run out quickly.
The second episode, Flight of the Defender, had a much more
lighthearted tone to it, while bringing some mystical Force elements back into
play. Ezra and Sabine are charged with getting some data on a prototype TIE
Fighter that is rumoured to be the fastest thing the Empire has in their fleet.
There were a lot of fun moments here,
like the stupid Stormtroopers chasing the lothcats miles from the base. Things
did get a little silly when you consider why Sabine didn’t just use the TIE to
kill Thrawn while he was standing still, but overall this was a fun episode
with a lot of great ship action.
And I have to bring up the elephant in
the room: the lothwolf at the end. First glimpsed in the trailer, fans have
theorized endlessly on what this thing is going to be. While we didn’t get much
info here, we got a few basic tidbits on what’s going on with it: first off,
only Ezra can see it, probably because he’s force sensitive. I’d say Kanan
could probably see it too, but…you know.
And the other thing is what the wolf
says before it disappears at the end of the episode: according to fans who
watched the episode with closed captioning on, while it may have sounded like “Doom”,
it was actually saying “Dume”, which is apparently Kanan’s real last name. I
guess that was a thing from the Kanan comics I never read.
Overall these were both excellent
episodes for entirely different reasons. The first part was great for being
dark and different, showing Lothal in a completely different light than we’ve
seen it before, and the second episode was a ton of fun and reintroduced the
Force mysticism I’ve come to love from this show. While we may be rocketing
through the season at record pace, I’ve actually found myself hoping the
episodes are padded out a bit so we don’t end the show too soon.
FINAL SCORE (The Occupation)
9/10
Amazing
FINAL SCORE (Flight of the Defender)
8/10
Great
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