SPOILER My thoughts on Rebels and its finale

I’ve been off the forums for a while, and wanted to assess the entire second half of S4 before voicing my opinion on how the show closed.

I cannot believe that they did it; they actually pulled it off. For me, I have to admit, Rebels hasn’t been the most consistent of shows, but I’ve watched every episode at least once (been saving my first real rewatching of the show for when the inevitable box set comes out).

I almost always held The Clone Wars in higher regard because of its more consistent quality across all of its seasons, but I have to say that the latter half of Season 4 of Rebels — especially, and particularly, the final five episodes — are, at least to me, just as good as the best that The Clone Wars had to offer, if not better. They very effectively took characters from episodes that might have seemed like “filler” and brought them back in a way that was natural, but also fulfilling.

After watching the Rebels finale, I’ve only now really realised that the void due to a lack of closure on The Clone Wars was left with me for all this time. The show ends on such a high note because it doesn’t just end: it also plants the seed of something new and exciting.

I’m not normally an emotional guy, and like I hinted at, I’m certainly not the most attached person to the Ghost crew. Yet, only a few hours ago, I was openly tearing up and getting misty eyed time and time again throughout the finale, and I think that speaks to the show’s greatest quality: character interaction. I didn’t realise just how attached I clearly was to these characters, which speaks to something I originally found to be something of a fault with these characters: on the surface level, they’re kind of archetypal and whimsical, as you might expect from the channel that the show airs on. As time has gone on, the characters have been fleshed out and given a depth, and whilst they didn’t initially stand out as the deepest of characters, there was ultimately a nuanced depth and maturity added to the show as layers and layers of the beloved crew were peeled back.

The music in this show has always been great, but it really came into its own in the latter few seasons. Sabine’s theme illicited a massive emotional response from me almost every time it was used in the finale, and especially so when she realised that Ezra was going off to surrender himself to Thrawn and an emotional numbness and distraction came into play, brilliantly portrayed in the echoing fuzziness of the voices of the people around her.

Overall, the finale was a massive success to me. I was, admittedly, cautiously optimistic going into the final few episodes of the show, mainly because we hadn’t seen this team end a story that they want to tell the way that they wanted to end it. However, upon reaching the credits, I was filled with a sense of overwhelming confidence in the direction that Dave Filoni and the team are spearheading us towards.

The finality given in the closing moments might seem a bit rushed to some — and I have to admit that I found Sabine’s hair and the wide shot of her on Lothal to look a bit rough — but, to me, knowing where all of these characters ended up after the end of the Galactic Civil War on Endor — and knowing that there was a future for these characters that they want to explore — offers the greatest sense of payoff and a fully realised piece of almost nostalgic fan service by acknowledging a continuity, which I genuinely don’t think we’ve yet seen so effectively in Star Wars, across any of its materials: an ending which doesn’t just hint at, but boldly throws you in the direction of, a future, whilst respecting the audience enough as if to say “Don’t worry, we’ve got this”.

I really cannot wait to watch this show again, and hold my breath in eager anticipation of what Dave Filoni and the crew over at Lucasfilm Animation has in store for us next.

Let’s go find Ezra.