So the majority of this season didn't really have all too much of a plot, it was very episodic and mostly used it's time to develop the characters, which I have no problem with, except I still feel like there was more that could have been done with that. The closest thing we have to an arc in this season was a villain named the Inquisitor (I'm not sure if he was a Sith lord or more of a General Grievous type character) as he hunts down remaining Jedi, you know, just like Starkiller in The Force Awakens, but I digress. And all of this came to a head when Kanin is captured by the Empire, tortured and our heroes need to save him. So really this was a pretty bare bones finale, Kanin is captured, they rescue him, but I still thought it was good, but I feel it was great because of certain moments of it rather than the episode overall. Firstly the fight scene between Kanin and the Inquisitor was badass, it was some of the best choreography I’ve seen in a lightsabre dual and you can really see the emotion behind it, where Kanin is just going all out, no fear whatsoever.
Also the "big reveals" at the end is probably what people are going to take away most from this finale, where the Rebellion has officially been formed and surprise, surprise, Ahsoka Tano is alive and fighting. Now I was trying to guess at who was going to cameo in this episode, at first I was convinced it was gonna be Admiral Akbar because obviously he's very important to the rebellion. Then I thought it might be Leia, and I started to come up with this idea that she was going to task our main characters with stealing the plans for the death star and that's what season 2 was gonna be, which sounds really awesome and I would love to see that. But the fact that it's Ahsoka is just as great, if not better, firstly because she was my favourite character in Clone Wars but also because, this means that The Clone Wars TV Series is now canon. Because if you don't know, after Disney bought Star Wars, everything outside of the movies released before is no longer considered canon, now everything being released, Rebels, the comic books, the novels, they're all canon from now on, and the fact that Ahsoka is here makes The Clone Wars canon as well, which is fantastic because The Clone Wars TV Series is what the prequels should have been, it's the good version of the prequels pretty much, so I’m happy it's officially canon now.
Apart from those few things, it was sort of a by the numbers type of finale, in fact most of the episodes felt like that, but again a lot of them were used to develop the characters so it's understandable, so hopefully it'll be improved in season 2. But my favourite episode of the season was Path of the Jedi, this I felt was the perfect balance between story, characters & philosophy. It expands on the Jedi culture by showing us this trial that all Padawans have to go through, we get a lot of development for both Ezra and Kanin and it was probably the most mature episode of the season. So that was probably the best episode for me.
So that's it for story, let's talk about the characters and I’m just gonna say, my first impressions of these guys were not good, the first episode felt incredibly generic, they all played roles that you had seen a million times before, but they all got better over time, I grew to really like them in the end, though being honest...some of them took me forever to remember their names, so, clearly they weren't that good. So first of all Ezra, now my biggest complaint with him is the same that everyone had, he is Aladdin, like almost exactly like him, he's a street rat, he's got a good heart, rebellious, a smartass, he even looks and sounds just like him, I was just waiting for him to breakout into song. But this is another reason why Path of the Jedi is my favourite episode so far, because that's when Ezra starts to take things seriously, that's when he did the most growing up and from that point onwards he was very good, he became a really good protagonist, and his lightsabre is pretty awesome.
Kanin was good, he is an interesting idea, he's a Jedi Knight except he was still a Padawan when Order 66 struck so he's training Ezra while at the same time training himself which I found interesting. Also this kind of shows that Freddie Prinze Jr is actually a pretty good voice actor, I mean I first took notice of this when he played James Vega in Mass Effect 3 and now Kanin which could not be more different roles, so that impressed me. Apart from that I can't really think of anything major about his character that stood out to me positive or negative, he was a good character, I’ll leave it at that.
Hera I think is probably the most interesting of the crew so far, I really like her as a character, she's the voice of reason on the ship, she's the captain and she's also kind of a badass, usually whenever they're in a bad situation, she's the one who is in complete control and thinking 3 steps ahead. So she's definitely the coolest character on the ship and I feel like out of all the supporting cast, she was the one who got the most to do.
Zeb, Sabine & Chopper I’m just gonna lump together because I don't really have that much to say about them they were good, though I felt like they're also the ones that got the least development, especially Sabine, she has such potential for an interesting character, she's a Mandalorian who's also an artist and she's sassy. There’s plenty to work with but she really didn't get much focus, so I’m hoping in season 2 we get more of her backstory. Zeb is sort of the same, he started out as being nothing more than the grumpy tough guy but once he started to soften up a little, he became more likeable. Chopper was just an ignorant little shit of course, he doesn't say anything but he's sort of the most arrogant member of the crew, even attempting to kill off an innocent droid that the crew were considering recruiting so uh...yeah Chopper's messed up.
So being honest no one character stood out as being the next the next big Luke or the next Han Solo, they were all good and I definitely feel like they could get better over time, I definitely grew to like em more as the show went on. But while none of them stood out individually, as a team, I felt they were much better, I like how they had their own little relationships amongst the group. Ezra and Zeb act sort of like a bickering set of brothers with a rivalry against Chopper, while Sabine and Zeb work really well together as a team, one's stealthy the other's strong and Hera and Kanin are the parents of the ship. They all worked really well together could work off each other and that's what made me like them as characters.
As for the animation...it was less than impressive. I mean coming off of The Clone Wars which in my opinion has some stellar animation to this, it felt like a downgrade. Things weren't as detailed, movement was a lot more stiff and the Wookies...oh god the Wookies. So yeah, I was expecting more. Although I will say they clearly went the extra mile with fan service here, they sampled a lot of the classic Star Wars music, referenced movie events and even had appearances by Lando, Yoda and Darth freaking Vader, all played by their original actors as well, Billy Dee Williams, Frank Oz and James Earl Jones, as well as C3PO, RSD2, Obi-Wan and i think Chewbacca showed up. So sometimes fan service like this can be annoying, especially the score, it was nice at first but when they kept using it over and over and over again, it kept wishing they would write something new, and don't get me wrong, I love the Star Wars score, but you don't need it to remind me I’m watching a show set in the Star Wars universe.
So yeah those were my thoughts on the first season of Star Wars Rebels...I quite enjoyed it, I’m definitely excited to see where it goes, as first seasons go, it did its job well at introducing me to the characters and story that it's going to tell even though there was nothing too impressive in this first season. So I’m gonna give Rebels a 7/10. If you're a massive Star Wars fan like me, definitely check it out, if you're a casual fan, it's not a necessity, but your kids are gonna love it.
-Danny
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