Star Wars Rebels - Season 3 (Spoilers)

[Dave]

Watched it with the kids and it was probably the most scary episode Rebels has ever done.

I'd love to see Obi-Wan off Maul once and for all.

[Nicklab]

Coming soon to Star Wars Rebels?  A character from Rogue One!

[McMetal]

Saw, Obi Wan, Mon Mothma, Darktroopers, TIE Defenders, Mandos...lots of goodness in the new trailer. 

[Nicklab]

It's very cool that they got Forest Whitaker to voice Saw Gerrera for the show.  And from the sound of things, I'm pretty sure they also got Genevieve O'Reilly to play Mon Mothma again.

The Mando arc seems like it's going to get interesting, and Sabine will get some serious character development.  But the best part here?  Obi-Wan Kenobi facing off with Darth Maul again!

[Nicklab]

It was nice to have a double shot of REBELS to kick off the second half of season 3.  And even better having Forest Whitaker on board to reprise his role as Saw Gerrera.

These episodes served as a nice bridge between the CATALYST novel and the ROGUE ONE movie, giving a little more background about the workforce that was used to build much of the first Death Star, and what became of them when the Empire deemed that they had outlived their usefulness.  And Hera's callback to the episode where the Ghost had previously been in Geonosis orbit and seen the manufacturing stations helped flesh things out, too.

There were a couple of details that I really appreciated.  First?  The language barrier.  All too often characters seem to be able to understand one another perfectly, despite speaking different languages.  Or there's a protocol droid that can translate everything.  This was different.  And when Click-Clack drew what appeared to be the Death Star the message was lost on the Rebels.  When they found the toxic gas cannisters they quickly assumed THAT was what the Geonosian was referring to. 

It's insidious that the Empire would kill all of the Geonosians in order to cover their tracks with the Death Star project.  But having seen ROGUE ONE and how quickly the Empire destroyed Jedha City and their own base on Scarif?  It makes it very clear that the Empire has become far more ruthless than some of the hapless Imperials we saw on Lothal in season 1.

I also appreciated getting some more background about Saw.  He's clearly lost a lot.  And because of that he's willing to do a lot more than the crew of the Ghost in pursuit of the cause of the Rebellion.

[Matt_Fury]

I like how they are finally starting to tie Rebels to Rogue One.  I guess they were just waiting until after the movie came out to do so.  Good on them for that!

[Matt_Fury]

The moral of this week's episode is never, and I mean NEVER leave Zeb in charge.

[Jesse James]

I liked the cameos of the movie better than the show itself, but I do find elements of the show fun and interesting.  I liked the droid and the idea of it in general.

[P-Siddy]

The moral of this week's episode is never, and I mean NEVER leave Zeb in charge.

Lots of nods in this episode.  "Screamers," "The Black Hole," and the recon droid is a nod to a McQuarrie design.

[Nicklab]

I initially dreaded last week's episode.  I wouldn't count Zeb among my favorite characters in the series, even if Steve Blum has had a pretty illustrious career in voice over.  I think a lot of it has to do with the character design.  But I have to say that he grew on me a little bit.  Having Zeb working with Chopper and AP-5 made for a fun dynamic, and helped develop Zeb's character a bit more.

Every time I hear AP-5, I have flashbacks to the depressed robot in "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".  I hope the showrunners can pair AP-5 and Chopper more frequently.

The Imperial Recon droid was interesting.  When the Star Destroyer was launching the probe ships I definitely saw that as a callback to the beginning of TESB.  And the Recon droid's protocol mode was an almost direct callback to the original McQuarrie illustration of C-3PO.  I appreciate how much that sort of thing keeps popping up in the post-George era of Star Wars.

As for sending the droid back to the Imperials?  A smart move, but Thrawn does seem to be playing chess while the Rebels are playing checkers.  Thrawn was initially looking at thousands of star systems for the Rebel base.  And now he's narrowed that down to 94 systems (Ahem, "Docking Bay 94" anyone?).  And I think he's also working at flushing out Fulcrum/Kallus.  I get the sense that by season's end Thrawn will probably attack the Rebels at Chopper base.  And I think Kallus may need to work towards some sort of exit from the Imperial Security Bureau.  So do the Rebels eventually end up at the base on Dantooine?  That one gets referenced by Leia when she was trying to save Alderaan, but was deserted according to Officer Cass when he reported to Tarkin.

This week's episode had a lot more depth.  I think we finally got a sense why Sabine has been so closed off about her past.  And her character went through some major development.  Fenn Rau certainly helped things along in terms of being able to give some of the backstory about the Mandalorians and the Dark Saber.  But seeing Sabine go through training with Kanan and Ezra was really enlightening.  I'm looking forward to seeing how this part of the Rebels story continues to unfold, because I think there's a good amount to come.

[Dave]

Finally got caught up on the last few episodes.  I thought the episodes with Saw were slow, but enjoyed the last two centered around first Zeb and then Sabine.  I tend to like the show more when they keep the scripts tied tightly to The Ghost crew.

I'm not sure how many episodes are left, but I was really hoping for more Thrawn vs. the rebels.  Agreed that its fun to see Thrawn's strategy at work and I'm hoping we get a great wrap up.

[I Am Sith]

My sons have been re-watching all of The Clone Wars seasons over the last few weekends and the thing that struck me the most was how the stories were able to develop over several episodes.  The story arcs were great and really kept you wanting to see what would happen in the next episode.  With Rebels, it just seems like they are trying too hard to wrap things up in single episodes week after week.  As if the producers feel that the viewing public is just too dumb to be able to remember what happened the week before.  This leads to poor character development, and episodes where things conveniently fall into place in order to wrap things up in 30 minutes.  I still watch every week, but I'm just really not as engaged as I was when TCW was in full swing...

[Nicklab]

Funny, but I see that REBELS has been taking a fairly circuitous route in developing some of their characters.  They don't really beat you over the head with it, though.  Ezra's story took some time to develop, and his path as a Jedi still seems to be unfolding.  And there was also an article that ran recently about how Dave Filoni spoke with actor Tiya Sircar about how Sabine's story was going to develop over several seasons so that she could inform her performance accordingly.  The last episode was very much about getting Sabine to open up about why she left her family.  And the next two episodes are going to explore that story even more.  It's definitely not a "one and done" sort of situation.

This piece just ran on Comicbook.com and has titles and synopses for the final 5 episodes of season 3.  I'm glad to see AP-5 is in the mix.  And the Obi-Wan confrontation with Maul should be pretty amazing.  But the story synopsis for the 2-part finale seems deliberately vague.

[Phrubruh]

So do you think there is any creditably to the rumor that Sabine is the child of Satine and Obiwan? How about that Ezra and Sabine are Rey's parents making Rey Obiwan's granddaughter.

[McMetal]

So do you think there is any creditably to the rumor that Sabine is the child of Satine and Obiwan? How about that Ezra and Sabine are Rey's parents making Rey Obiwan's granddaughter.

I kinda like that except Satine was Clan Kryze, not Clan Vizsla like Sabine plus she dead. Maybe her mom could be Bo-Katan if she married into another House.

And Ezra is way too much of a dork to pull a babe like Sabine. She needs a scoundrel!